Tuesday 25 November 2008
Mumbai – Goa (Arambol Beach)
So it was the middle of the night on the train to Goa. The previous day I had some exciting moments in the toilets. This was nothing unusual. For my whole trip I'd been pretty OK with my guts. Even eating at roadside cafés under Raj's instruction I'd not had any problems. Yes, I had the odd twinge in my stomach and the odd emotional moment in the toilets, but nothing more serious than that, and only slightly more than what I experience at home. However there had been a couple of urgent visits yesterday, and as I went to be I was feeling thirsty, with a temperature, and fairly tired.
Then I woke up in the middle of the night and had to go to the loo. Luckily I'd been saving up loo roll from all the hotels I'd been to so far. It was done with pretty quickly and I was soon back asleep. Then it happened again, though again I coped with it fine.
Then the guy came round with breakfast. It was 8 already and I was still feeling very tired. I had to get up anyway so I sorted that out, but then I didn't feel like eating. I had one of those sausage-shaped vegetable samosas that I had on the previous train journey (which I found out were called vegetable cutlets) which I liked and were tasty, but I wasn't into it. I forced down a few mouthfuls but I couldn't take it further. Plus I was still really tired.
I crawled back into a spare bunk, asked Megan to wake me up at my stop (we were getting off at the same place) and fell asleep. A good few hours later we arrived at Thivim station and disembarked. I was hoping there was a taxi service as I had no idea how to get to Arambol, the beach I wanted to visit first. Megan mentioned there was a bus, but I wanted to taxi it all the way. Luckily there was a car park full of taxis to help out so I arranged one of those.
As I was getting in three guys happened to talk to Megan and as they were going to the same place as me (Megan was going to Ajuna) she sent them my way and we ended up splitting the fare, which was sweet. They were Evan, from South Africa, Tim from Australia and Pat, a plastic paddy from Manchester with a fair accent.
This is what I had been hoping for, since I first arrived in Bangkok (well, one of the things...). A bunch of easy-going travellers all doing roughly the same thing, looking to have fun, sharing stories and advice and sharing the costs as we went along. A bunch of westerners that I could relate to. And then we arrived at the beach.
One of the other things that I had wanted from this trip is something that meets my ideal of a sunny, beach-based holiday. The bar had been set by a beach aptly called Paradise in Uluwatu, Indonesia. It was a small beach backed by a gently sloping cliff. On the slope there were various wooden huts built into the landscape. Each were a series of guest houses with basic facilities and wholesome restaurants attached. It was in fact a surfers' beach and there were big waves coming in, which meant there weren't many swimming opportunities – that was about the only bad thing. But it was sunny, hot, relaxing and beautiful. I made some friends, made some fans of Doppler and generally had a happy, relaxing time. Is that too much to ask?
Well it hadn't happened in seven weeks of travelling. Phangan Beach Resort in Thailand was close but not close enough.
And then we arrived at the beach.
It was a long cresent of a place, with a hill on the right and a town behind it (selling all sorts of hippie paraphernalia). I had been recommended a hilltop guest house by some Australians I met and the guidebooks, so we sought it out and found somewhere sweet. The huts were exactly like Indonesia but with the toilets attached to them (like Thailand, funnily). We had a view over the whole beach and it looked like paradise. It was hot, like Indonesia, like Bombay, but there was a good wind coming in off the Arabian Sea which meant things weren't too bad. The back of the beach was fringed by bamboo covered restaurants, and behind them was a thick line of palm tress. Pat, who had only ever been on holiday to his relatives in Ireland had never seen a tropical beach before, and just sat there with a massive grin on his face.
We had arrived.
I was sharing a room with Evan. He reminded me a lot of Alain, both in features and some mannerisms, though he didn't quite have the full on party spirit of Alain, he was a bit more chilled out and a bit more Saffa. He was an engineer on oil platforms in Congo-Brazzaville and Oban in central Africa and originally from Durban. A pretty cool guy all round.
I cleaned myself up after the travels and had a bit of lunch – chicken soup and some toast. A a glass of water with a bit of sugar and salt mixed in to replace the electrolytes. It took a while to eat but it all went down well and I didn't need to rush to the toilet, so that was good. But I was still feeling tired so I went to sleep in the hut for a good while.
Eventually I woke up but had a dull headache, so I took a pill and revived myself. I sat at a table, overlooking the bay. I started reading 1984 as I'd just bought it and had never read it before, despite knowing all about it. Seems like he nicked some ideas from a reality TV show. I don't often read fiction as I find it's often too laboured and unlike reality for me to buy into it. But I actually found it very easy to enjoy, and very readable. The harshness of the people and environment in that book was a huge contrast to my current situation.
The sun set in the big, Rothko-like way it does over here. The lack of variation in the atmosphere makes it visually less interesting that the ones I saw in Thailand, but more monumental instead. After dark Evan and I wandered down the beach to see what it was like and choose a restaurant. We chose the most popular. I had a mushroom pizza to keep things simple and bland. We were soon joined by Tim and Pat (who were staying in a different place). I was feeling hungry and ate my food at normal speed. I was getting better.
Unfortunately halfway through the meal, Tim started getting worse. He'd just eaten a big plate of shark and started making regular trips to the loo. Later on he excused himself and went home, only to find that he couldn't unlock his door, so he had to sleep outside and go “in the bush”. Meanwhile we found the only “happening” part of the beach (it is pretty quiet here) and had a few beers (I had a couple of small ones and was OK) and watched the fire shows. They weren't a patch on the ones at Ko Tao, but full marks for trying.
There was some dance music playing – I presume it was Goa Trance but it sounded too rough to me, and people dancing like they were half at a 1989 rave and half possessed by monkeys. I don't think they were on drugs, which made it even stranger.
There are a lot of long timers here, far too many white people with dreads, and lots of people who are probably experiencing many different levels of consciousness all at the same time (or at least that's what it looks like to me). A little later someone started playing a “hang” - which is like the top bit of a steel drum turned upside down and played by tapping. It creates a watery, melodic chiming sounds which is very relaxing. A crowd of people gathered round when it started as though they were on a fixed timetable. They must be the people in the know. That pretty much took us to the end of the night.
It's worth mentioning here that the locals do clearly have a Portuguese / Iberian influence in the way they look. A rare few look extremely western with light skin and just a bit skinnier than you'd expect in Europe. Others look pretty much Indian but with subtle aspects of their features in the Portuguese vein. It's hard to describe exactly what – I want to say a soft, roundness of the face and a happy expression but that doesn't really make it uniquely Portuguese. You'll just have to come here and see for yourself.
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