My five week stint in Goa was a bit wacky, budget-wise — I spent a crazy (for Goa) amount on accommodation, and very little on anything else! Turns out, if you cook all your meals at home (bliss!), score a free bike from a rad wee Goan dude, and spend your days doing online yoga, cycling around Palolem, and drawing your fingers off, you don’t end up spending a whole lot of cashola!
I only ventured out of Palolem a couple of times, and even then, the bus fare was around 30c.
The cheapest month, by a long shot*!
Food: $3.57/day
Eating out in India is cheap, sure, but cooking is even cheaper. $3.57 a day bought me ridiculous quantities of fresh fruit and vegetables, oats, nuts, chickpeas, lentils, coffee, tea, and eggs. For more on my Goan grocery list, check this out.
Vegetables at my local grocery store in Canacona. I think those bags of tomatoes went for a whopping 30c.
Travel: 12c/day
While I was in Palolem, I pretty much stayed in Palolem, apart from daily bike rides (did I mention my free bike?) to Canacona. I ventured out to Madgaon a couple of times, but at 30c per trip, my daily average stayed ridiculously low.
Miscellaneous: $1.15/day
Palolem’s miscellaneous items: pencil case, shampoo and conditioner, laundry soap, sketchbooks…
Accommodation: $10.45
I splashed out on my accommodation, and don’t regret it for a second. Just over $10 a night for a huge, open space, a great kitchen, and even a drawing table! Sweet deal.
Drawing table! Kitchen!
Total: $15.30/day (It does my wee heart good to know that, if all else fails, I can always go back and live in Palolem for just over $5000 a year. Not the worst back-up plan ever.)
*Note: When I first started thinking about spending a chunk of time in Palolem, I stumbled upon this lovely blog — as cheap as my month felt, Candace did basically the same thing for just over $300! Blimey.
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