North Goa
Goa
Goa is one of the smallest states in India, known to tourists for its beaches and parties. Beaches and parties? clearly we had to investigate. So Fritz, Mike (another googler), and I decided to check it out despite warnings that it's no good right now since august is still monsoon (off) season.
For the record, monsoon season starts around may and ends in september. Then it is 'season' as the locals say it from october through about february. March it starts to get hot, around 35 C in April (95 F) before monsoon kicks off again.
Our Goa trip began saturday morning from the Bangalore airport. It took the dude 30min to sell us 3 tickets. Good thing we were the only ones there. We actually flew 1.5 hours, stopped somewhere, then continued on another 1.5 hours to the only goa airport. Both legs of the trip we got full meals on the plane, and it wasn't too bad.
Upon arrival we decided to head north to Vagator and Ajuna beaches, about 60k from the airport. Once we stepped outside the airport we were accosted by 238 locals all at once. That was fun, and mike especially enjoyed it. But we secured a taxi to take us there for about 600 Rupees, which is about $13-14 USD. Not bad for an hour
taxi ride.
We arrived in Vagator (north goa) and again were accosted by 376 locals. We were offered “much good price” and even though we did not want anything, they wanted us to make a “very promise” that we would buy from them later. Two of them were very persistent, following us down the beach. One of them, nikita (?) could have been the best salesperson ever. She asked about my family, had a great smile, tried to tell me things about the area, help me out, and only a couple times would quietly ask me to buy from her if i wanted anything. Eventually i did buy some stuff, so i was quite impressed. The beach itself sucked, but i can see how several thousand people could have a lot of fun here. There was just one hut open on the beach, so we relaxed and had a beer before going to ajuna. 
Ajuna was much nicer than Vagator. It's only 2-3 km south, but the town is a bit bigger, with several places to eat and sleep. We immediately procured a place to crash and then headed out. I read that there were big parties here, and we sorta stumbled upon 'paradiso', a really great spot on the beach that is packed with about 4,000 people during peak season (december/january). The dude said about 100-200 would show
up tonite … wow. Based on what we've seen, that's about half the population of northern goa during the off season. It turned out that he was right, we had a blast. They played goa trance all night, which kinda sucked, but i met lots of people and had a good time. 
Paradiso (dope club in ajuna beach) inside and out.
This is Ajuna beach in the daytime.
The rest of the trip was spent in southern goa, to be covered in the next goa entry.