If you’re based in Pune or Mumbai, a weekend getaway to the sun, sand and surf of Goa needs no excuse. Especially if your travelling companion happens to be Mercedes’ latest CLA-Class
Story: Aninda Sardar
Photography: Sanjay Raikar
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
— Excerpt from ‘The Lotos Eaters’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Watching the sun set on the western horizon over the Arabian Sea with the light evening breeze tickling the back of my neck, it was hard to imagine that there were others in other parts of the world for whom the workday was yet to come to an end. Goa does that to you. Isolates you from the mundane world that you inhabit every day, trivialises the routine challenges of daily life and puts you in the real world equivalent of the fabled island in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, ‘The Lotos Eaters’.
The journey to the gradually deserted Miramar beach in Panaji, Goa, had started at six in the morning, nearly 500 kilometres away in the hill city of Pune in neighbouring Maharashtra. We had started from the Car India office in a brand-new Mercedes-Benz CLA200 CDI, the German car-maker’s latest product in a segment where they had none. Designed to provide luxury and cater to the demands of those who want high aspirational value in their compact saloon cars, the CLA is every inch a Mercedes and brings with it all the benefits that flow forth from the house of Mercedes. To its credit, the CLA has made short work of the 531 km to Miramar, covering the distance in less than seven-and-a-half hours, thus registering an average speed of 70.8 km/h. That despite three stops for photo-shoots, a breakfast stop at about 8.00 am and then a lunch stop about half past two. Not to mention a 13.1 km/l overall fuel efficiency. Now, that’s impressive.
