Goa: The Beach Life

I lay on my back and tried to relax. The sound of rolling waves crashed back and forth in the dis­tance, which helped. How­ever, the sun was beat­ing down, heat­ing the air and leav­ing me gasp­ing like I had my head in an oven. It was also mak­ing the sand hot to the touch and the use of san­dals more of a neces­sity than just a fash­ion statement.

San­dals.

I hadn’t worn shoes for 2 months. A new adult first, mean­ing that my feet were always dusty; the ever present Indian dirt and sand sticked to my toes. Every night I showered and a tor­rent of black washed off my feet. I turned onto my side and spied Cesca on the next sun loun­ger, she was tak­ing in the sun by lay­ing on her front, her bikini open at the back to allow a tan, but – since I had rubbed in some cream for her — no white line or burn­ing. I reached to the table between us and took down my beer and my book. It was called The Mas­ter of Go, by Nobel Prize win­ning author Yasunari Kawabata.

Then my phone rang. It was my best friend Mark.

I thumbed the screen and the call con­nec­ted, “Mark!” I exclaimed, genu­inely please to hear from him, “It’s great to hear your voice. Where are you?” From over the con­nec­tion I could hear what soun­ded like traffic and men talk­ing; the sounds of Lon­don. The sounds of home.

“Heyya, I thought I would give you a call,” his voice was raised like he could not really hear me and was com­pens­at­ing by shout­ing; he must be at work on a build­ing site, “I’m in a man hole at the moment sort­ing out found­a­tions for a new tube station.”

“Wow,” I said, interested.

“Yeah, it’s for the Olympics and all that. Any­way, it’s cold, wet and hor­rible and I am down this smelly hole and I thought I could do with cheer­ing up. Where are you?”

I could well ima­gine Eng­land in Feb­ru­ary and being stuck out in the legendary Eng­lish wet winter could not be much fun. I looked at the majestic view around me. The beach stretched off to the right and ran into a high line of cliffs with chalets atop the jagged rocks. This had a path run­ning down that ran right behind us giv­ing access to the twenty or so beach­front guest houses. A sort of mot­ley col­lec­tion of flop houses that ser­viced the lower order of trav­el­ler and would only be reviewed in back­packer bibles such as the Lonely Planet. These ran past us to the left and on down the end­less beach, which was also home to a couple of dozen bars of all levels of cool­ness, before round­ing the head­land in the hazy dis­tance. The beach itself was dot­ted with people play­ing in the surf, loun­ging on beds like ours, doing yoga and drink­ing. Every­one looked like they were on a sort of the-morning-after-we-are-the-cool-kids vibe that only a night spent drink­ing, going to parties and get­ting laid can get you.

Sure enough, for a cer­tain type of per­son Goa was a seduct­ive paradise.

“Oh,” I said to Mark, who in my mind was strug­gling in the cold and wet down a big hole; traffic run­ning all around, “I’m in Goa, India…”

“I see.”

“On the beach…”

“A-ha.”

“Drink­ing cool beer in the sunshine.

“Is it beautiful?”

“Most def­in­itely. Wish you were mate,” I said hon­estly, “you would love it.”

“Thanks-“ he then shouted some­thing to someone off the phone that ended in swear­ing, then he was back on, “Look. I have to go.”

“Sure. Hope the kids are well.”

“We are all look­ing for­wards to you com­ing back. The lads too, we will all share a beer with you at Ground Zero.”

“Deal, can’t wait.”

“OK, bye!”

And then he was gone.

“Bye, buddy.” I sud­denly real­ised that I was really miss­ing him and the rest of my friends.

I looked at the sea again.

Like I said, a cer­tain type of per­son would love Goa. Just not me.

A week pre­vi­ous we had left Ellora and headed back towards Mum­bai, before jump­ing off at a junc­tion in the middle of the night and catch­ing the con­nect­ing train down into Goa.

Goa is split up into dif­fer­ent parts. The area around Colva in the south is all fam­ily places. No drugs, no happy piz­zas or top­less girls and not much yoga. Then there is Man­ad­rem, roughly in the middle, which is chock full of middle-class Indi­ans. Then there is the wilder north­ern town of Ara­m­bol, which has been given over the trav­el­lers. Ara­m­bol is fam­ous. Moon parties, drink, drugs and lots and lots of piz­zas; happy and oth­er­wise. We had star­ted in the south­ern end as it was closer to the sta­tion and after buy­ing a very expens­ive taxi ride had ended up in a fam­ily resort/guesthouse with beach­front  views. The idea was to chill out down here and then work our way back up to the north before head­ing inland towards Hampi and Mysore. It was good plan.

This gues­t­house was fun, in a sens­ible sort of way, and the food was really nice. We chilled, read some books, had some fun and then made plans to find a good hotel for Valentine’s day.

Valentine’s day is big news in India, but not nor­mally for the right reas­ons. The Indi­ans have many cus­toms that on the one hand might feel quite lib­er­ated and on the other are not. Pub­lic Dis­plays of Affec­tion (PDA’s), for example, are fine between men. That is between pals; what the Brit­ish now call bro-mances. But, PDA’s are not fine between men and women. The highly sexed west­ern valentine’s day, rubs Indi­ans up the wrong way some­thing chronic. Which is to say that it causes all sorts of ten­sion and in India where there is ten­sion, pas­sion and pub­lic sexu­al­ity then there is viol­ence. Goa is the worst flash­point for this.

And it is all the west­ern­ers fault.

I am going to sound like a “grand­dad” now, so before I do let me say some things in my defence. I am a mod­ern Lon­doner. I am con­fid­ent sexu­ally, com­fort­able with women and in every way a lib­eral minded per­son. This lib­er­al­ity has been the driv­ing force that enabled me to find my reli­gion of Dao­ism – that and my philo­sophy degree – and as such I am cool with people cut­ting loose. I can cut loose too and I like Mary J as much as the next Philo­sophy Graduate.

Right, so, as I said this is all the west­ern­ers fault.

There is a cer­tain type of per­son look­ing for some­thing in par­tic­u­lar when they go trav­el­ling. Goa attracts these people like flies. Ser­i­ous Ergo­phobics or, as Douglas Adams called them, “Fart Arounds”. They moved in around the late 70’s and never left. This influx has given rise to an entire enclosed cul­ture that exists in the north of Goa. A cul­ture that doesn’t exist any­where else in India (that I saw). India is still a very closeted coun­try when it comes to sex. White smooth-limbed west­ern girls with their boobs out are a massive cock­tease that the aver­age gently-repressed Indian male finds hard to deal with. Goa is chock full of people that think two things. Firstly, that they can do what the hell they like and to hell with any­one else. Secondly, that India is the same as Thailand.

Believe me, it is not.

The only reason that the Indian gov­ern­ment doesn’t roll out the riot police and throw the lot out, is that the tour­ists bring in a lot of money to a poor coun­try. And that is the big thing for me. When I see west­ern­ers mis­treat­ing a cul­ture and exploit­ing it through the power of their money I get angry in a little place inside. And if I feel it, the Indi­ans def­in­itely do. Those not too turned on to think straight.

While in Mum­bai I read in a national news­pa­per about the “worry” regard­ing Valentine’s day in places such as Goa. That the licentious­ness would cause flashes of violence.

It has done in the past.

It was repor­ted that in 2007 a couple of European girls and their boy­friends had been beaten up out­side a local bar where they had been drink­ing all day. The infer­ence of the art­icle was that the lady in ques­tion had been under­dressed, was drunk and very abus­ive to the loc­als’ feel­ings. In India, you have to watch the pub­lic mood care­fully. This event had shocked the west and been played down as local trouble, eas­ily sor­ted, but I can almost guar­an­tee that what happened was instig­ated by a loc­als reac­tion to their attire, their atti­tude, their rude­ness, their drunk­en­ness and prob­ably all of the above.

We wanted none of that.

I never for­got that almost all the police in India have a sub-machine gun.

So we attemp­ted to book a great hotel in the middle of Goa, used by the Indi­ans them­selves, so that we might avoid any unpleas­ant­ness. We did avoid it, but unfor­tu­nately we booked an abso­lute dive of a hotel that was extra­vag­antly expens­ive and we hated every moment there that was not spent in our room. Take my advice, unless you want to spend your days eat­ing bad food covered in flies with ter­rible ser­vice, high costs and a small beach then stay away from Mandrem.

After Valentine’s day we bit the bul­let, caught a Taxi to the North, and got stuck in. The town of Ara­m­bol is basic­ally three long roads lead­ing down to the beach. Each road is abso­lutely lined with guest houses, bars and tour­ist shops all selling authen­tic crap to west­ern­ers and cater­ing for the trav­el­ler crowd. Mile after mile of this leads finally to the beach and more bars and beach clubs before another spate of gues­t­houses. It was to one of these we made our way by trudging through the sear­ing heat toward a large blue con­ver­ted house inches away from another identical copy.

Our room was tiled like a bath­room and had white­washed walls. Quite romantic in a down to earth kind of way. We unpacked our mos­quito nets and made a bed tent to pro­tect ourselves overnight.

We then went shop­ping and look­ing for beer and food.

As any­one who reads this blog must surely know, I am some­what of a culture-vulture when on the road and, since Cesca does not par­take of the magical herbs, this left me some­what at a loss for some­thing to do, until I man­aged to pull up some WIFI in a great café and get on with some writ­ing, fol­lowed by brows­ing an excel­lent and well stocked second hand book store. Cesca was not in love with this idea. Indeed we only finally reached agree­ment when I put the laptop away and laid on the beach.

And melted.

On the flip side, the sea was great fun and we found a fant­astic Italian res­taur­ant just off the beach. It was near here that I saw my first Ahsram-Girl.

An ashram is a reli­gious her­mit­age. Addi­tion­ally, today the term ashram often denotes a locus of Indian cul­tural activ­ity such as yoga, music study or reli­gious instruc­tion, the moral equi­val­ent of a stu­dio or dojo. WIKI

Ashram-Girl is a term I inven­ted for the very white and thin west­ern girls you occa­sion­ally see wan­der­ing around places in India. They are easy to spot as firstly, they are very thin after weeks/month/years spent in Ashrams. Secondly, they have that genu­ine bene­fi­cial smile of the believer in whatever it is the ashram teaches. Finally, they only wear Sari’s. I saw a num­ber when I was in Goa and they all have some­thing else about them too, they take your breath away. They are beau­ti­ful — In the way that only the con­tent and happy can be. Radi­ant I guess you would call it. The first one I saw lit­er­ally par­ted the crowd draw­ing bows, smiles, nudges and “wow” state­ments from all the male Indian shop keep­ers. She smiled like a paint­ing of the Madonna and wil­lowed her way to wherever she was going.

Whatever they are doing in those Ashrams, and some of them are all about sex to the point that you get a HIV test when you arrive, I don’t sup­pose they need to advert­ise. There are all sorts of legends regard­ing them, and all sorts of ter­rible tales as well. Abuse, rape, enforced drug tak­ing, star­va­tion and even death. There exists an entire trade in kid­nap­ping these people back to their fam­il­ies and many Hol­ly­wood films on the sub­ject too. I had known a true believer when I was in school (in her case a Chris­tian) and while she wasn’t nat­ur­ally beau­ti­ful, she was radi­ant in the same way that these girls were and I admit that it is a little scary. They look a little lost in another world. That they wear this one lightly. I could pic­ture Cesca in such robes, lost to her­self, her fam­ily, liv­ing a strange life in India, liv­ing some true spir­itual life of yoga and I didn’t like the idea one bit, but I won’t deny that the part of her that would embrace that life is one of the many parts of her that I am attrac­ted to.

Over the next few nights we partied, ate, drank, shopped and sat in the sun. I went through book after book from the shop until I came across one that would change my life.

The Tao of Pooh and Te of Pig­let (Wis­dom of Pooh) is not a real Dao­ism book. It is not exactly well thought of in terms of intel­lec­tual Daoist stud­ies, nor is it in line for any sort of prize for accur­acy, under­stand­ing or fac­tu­al­ness. Nev­er­the­less as a start­ing point for a long men­tal jour­ney it was per­fect. The book is about the Chinese Reli­gious Philo­sophy of Dao­ism. Or more accur­ately, it is about the West­ern­ised ver­sion of the Chinese Reli­gious Philo­sophy of Dao­ism. The writers claim that Win­nie the Pooh is Daoist. It is a such a strong idea that mil­lions of people have read and instantly under­stood – or thought they have – Dao­ism without read­ing any­thing else about the reli­gion. For most that is the first time they receive “know­ledge out­side the scrip­tures” and as such most come away with a self sat­is­fied sense of hav­ing “got it”. They then get back on with their own lives and that’s that.

Daosim. Sor­ted.

For a few oth­ers this leads down a rab­bit hole and after a very long jour­ney, into won­der­land. I will have much more to say on this sub­ject in a later Philo­sophy post, but suf­fice to say, that while I have listened and read Alan Watts for many years by this point, only the talk of Zen had really inter­ested me. His com­mon ref­er­ence to Dao­ism had not, at that point, stirred me. This book, about a fic­tional bear with very little brain and his iden­ti­fic­a­tion with an ancient Chinese Philo­sophy was the first time I really con­sidered it.

Even­tu­ally Cesca and I booked a train ticket from the nearby town of Panjim and caught a taxi out of Amabol. I was finally feel­ing relaxed, and little sun burned. The atmo­sphere of the place made it impossible not to chill out. We arrived in Panjim and booked into a guest house called Park Lane Lodge.

The owner was very eccent­ric, and the gues­t­house was basic­ally a room in his large house. It was the only place I stayed that had a curfew and the room was not par­tic­u­lar well cooled, so we walked around and found an ATM.

Panjim has a very nice feel of colo­nial archi­tec­ture and a Por­tuguese vibe to it.

It was a nice place to wander around before tuck­ing into a meal of grilled fish at the towns top hotel.

Then we walked back to the gues­t­house and I star­ted to feel thirsty. Like I really needed a cup of tea. We got back and tucked into bed.

Then a hole opened up and I fell into hell.

The first thing that happened is that I need to use the facil­it­ies about half an hour after turn­ing in. As I sat on the seat I sud­denly felt wrong and threw up. Then both ends of me threw up for about 5 minutes. I had Indian food pois­on­ing. Bad. Feel­ing that the worst was over I showered and man­aged to make it back to bed.

But, only for ten minutes.

My body was then wracked with pain in the stom­ach and I had a ter­rible thirst. I tried to sleep but every ten minutes I was forced to drag myself to the loo in agony. I drank and drank our reserves of water to no avail. I even­tu­ally had to wake Cesca to go and get some more water from the guest house owner, who thank­fully was very help­ful and kind. After a very long night I was feel­ing even worse. I couldn’t get up in the morn­ing, I couldn’t really see any­thing, nor keep any­thing down. I was drift­ing in and out of a night­mare dream that I remem­ber well, it was of a vampire/devil char­ac­ter bit­ing me and smil­ing a toothed grin. The super strong sun was now on the room’s roof and heat star­ted to radi­ate into it.

It is fair to say that I suffered that day. I had drunk 8 litres of water through the night and I was start­ing to worry.

Cesca went out and bought me all the cold drinks she could, elec­tro­lyte powder and cokes. These kept my sug­ars up and replaced all the min­er­als I was los­ing rapidly.

I then decided to pop an anti­bi­otic. We had brought with us a small col­lec­tion of Cipro­floxa­cin, which is a strong anti­bi­otic used for ser­i­ous gut infections.

Cipro­floxa­cin (INN) is a syn­thetic chemo­thera­peutic anti­bi­otic of the fluoroquino­lone drug class.It is a second gen­er­a­tion fluoroquino­lone anti­bac­terial. It kills bac­teria by inter­fer­ing with the enzymes that cause DNA to rewind after being copied, which stops DNA and pro­tein syn­thesis.  WIKI

I couldn’t read the instruc­tions but I knew what was the dose as I had taken them in Cam­bodia. It was 500mg for gut infec­tion and 700mg for tuberculosis!

Though that day I was deli­ri­ous and didn’t know myself or Cesca. I can remem­ber being locked in a short repeat­ing dream that was com­ing and going like a wave and con­stantly repeat­ing itself.

The next day I felt a little bet­ter, but I was as weak as a day old lamb. Cesca took me to the fam­ous Panjim church and we tried to climb the steps, but I couldn’t.

I was so weak. After a hour climb­ing steps that should take less than a minute we went back to the guest house and I tried to eat something.

I couldn’t. My appet­ite was ruined.

I made a prom­ise then and there. Next time someone gets that ill, we are book­ing into a top hotel and get­ting air-conditioning and room ser­vice. It sucks to be ill in an Indian Guest House. It is the worst pos­sible loc­a­tion short of the middle of the Indian jungle. It wasn’t until the next day that I felt well enough to travel. We waved good­bye to the gues­t­house owner and passed out of Panjim towards the train station.

We clambered aboard a train and I con­sidered our time in Goa. Beach hol­i­days and lay­ing in the sun was not the reason I left home. How­ever, hav­ing said that, I think Goa has almost everything that a beach hol­i­day could offer. Goa has a massive massive range of accom­mod­a­tion and beach styles and you are sure to find some­thing that suits you, just keep mov­ing if it doesn’t. As for Panjim, well I had been purged by Panjim, it was a very nice look­ing place, but I can never for­give it for try­ing to kill me.

Now we were head­ing to the one of the most mem­or­able parts of our trip to India, indeed the world. We were going to the coun­tryside for a rest cure in a UNESCO vil­lage on the banks of the river Ganges.

The train stopped, we had arrived in Hampi.

Regards,

Basho

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