Installment 1: Goa

Lauren and I went to Goa together for five days at the end of semester. We stayed in a beach shack guesthouse called Hotel Paradise at Anjuna beach, of 1970s and 80s acid parties fame. Goa is a beautiful place. The coastline is fairly unspoilt, bar a few petrochemical plants (just swim up stream!) and the towns are few and far between. There are not too many cars, as most people prefer mopeds to negotiate the windy, single-track roads and byways. Unlike most of India, the Catholic presence in Goa is far more evident: in the little immaculate white churches, in the roadside shrines covered, ironically, in marigold garlands, in the terraced town houses. All the people we met from Goa itself were good natured, happy, and anxious that we should see Goa as the tropical paradise it really was. There are a lot of white people living in Goa. Possibly they are relics from the acid days, and you can tell just from speaking to some of them, that this is not a prejudiced assumption. Instead of detailing each day, I will try to summarise the things that stuck out most in my mind about the trip:

1.   The sea food. I know I think about food a lot. It is generally one of the things on my mind at nearly all hours of the day. And, having lived on pretty much vegetable soup, radish and lauki salad and porridge for a month beforehand (so depressing), the sea food in Goa was an incredible prospect. On our second night we had a whole lobster each, cooked to perfection in garlic butter, for under ten pounds. I had tiger prawns and calamari, all fresh from the sea that day, all cooked to perfection. Anjuna beach is typically very busy with tourists in the high season, but in early December it is perfect. There aren’t too many tourists, and so there is more availability of fish, and the prices are lower. I don’t think I had eaten so well in the four months I had been here. Not only that, fresh fruit juice was everywhere, there were ladies selling coconuts on the beach for 15-20 Rs a pop, and loads of stuff was vegan/vegetarian and, above all, fresh. That one week restored my faith in food.

2.   The drug casualties. There were groups of middle-aged to aging men and women on the beach, all looking a bit too brown for their own good. They all wore ridiculous clothes. One man I saw in a red cloth thong (I was later horrified to find out he came from Scotland). Women tended to wear incredibly tight mini dresses and biker boots. There were a lot of biker boots. And everyone had that ‘rave’ style clothing: halfway between hippy and acid house, with long elfin hoods and zigzag hemlines. One older man came up to us on the beach and just stared at Lauren as if she was an alien and then yelled “Oh my GOD! You are SO WHITE!!” He then proceeded to tell us about his history book that would help rewrite a lot of modern history and solve various conspiracy theories. He even invited us back to his beach shack. We ran away to the other end of the beach to avoid him. Another man, a little younger and a lot sleazier, asked me if I knew what exactly I was taking a photograph of (a palm tree filled beach scene to make everyone at home incredibly jealous, or so I thought). I said no, I had no idea it was famous for anything in particular. He told me that I was taking photographs of one of the most famous party places in the world, and that once he had known several thousand people to party there at once. “Even Dr Hoffman attended,” he said sagely, expecting me to be impressed with these higher echelons of partying. He was less smug when I told him I had no idea who Dr Hoffman was. I hope it made him feel old. Or at least, too old to be hitting on me. On a different occasion, Lauren and I saw an old woman wandering the beach in purple tie-dye spandex looking a bit too dazed and confused. She was a sorry sight. A lot of people obviously just stayed in Anjuna. And why not? It is beautiful and has so much of what they love. Every single beach bar plays awful trance every day, all day, in homage to the Glory Days.

3.   The beaches. They were beautiful. Everything the Bounty advert had promised came true. They were smooth, palm tree-lined stretches of golden sand. The water was warm enough to go in without flinching. The heat of the day meant you had to get in to swim just to cool off. There were hardly any rocks, and hardly any seaweed. All you had to watch out for were lots of little hermit crabs that were washed up in the surf. Every beach had its quotient of beach shack restro-bars, all playing either trance or Bob Marley. The latter was generally preferable. Each restro-bar had its own sun loungers, so you could sit and order from the comfort of your lounger and someone could watch your stuff when you went in swimming. Patrolling the beach are men and women, all selling something or other. Many of the women are carrying great baskets on their heads with pineapples and coconuts inside. They give you the coconut with the top hacked off so that you can drink the water, and then they will hack it up again so that you can eat the cream inside. Other women are carrying huge bags of jewelry hidden within the folds of their saree. We eventually caved into these and bought one anklet each off two different women, to try and be fair. The women would approach you and introduce themselves and then tell me that my friend was “White like chicken!” or “White like milk!” (sense a theme?). They would warn me in strong tones: “You are sister? No sister…well…your friend, she is so white, like milk. You must keep her out of sun. Very dangerous for her. You must do this.” A few of them were incredibly wily and funny women. One sticks out in my mind called Tanya, who sat and talked with us for about half an hour on everything and anything and somehow managed to steer the conversation to her anklets every thirty seconds and then would giggle when we tried to avoid the question. The men wandering about gave massages. I have to say, some were a bit too enthusiastic to give massages to us, but some were just plying a trade. I witnessed one incredibly fat and hairy man covered in gold jewelry and a huge moustache in just his underwear getting rubbed down by some poor little old man. It was more than slightly horrifying.

4.   I had my first Ayurvedic massage. Not by a wee man on the beach, but in a salon called the Orange Salon in the Villa Anjuna hotel. It was very nice and relaxing, though the woman laughed at me for asking if I should take my bikini top off or not. It was also a bit more than awkward when, once finished, they sat us both in a steam room together to drip for a while and then led us to a shower together too. When we got in the steam room, it was incredibly awkward and we just had to laugh to keep from imploding with the ridiculousness of it all.  I had never envisaged that Lauren and I’s friendship would take such a personal turn. Apparently this always happens to her, a naked embarrassing moment, and I should have known better. Ah well. Nothing I haven’t seen before.

 

By the time we left Goa, there was a noticeable increase in the amount of Brits on Tour. I think I wouldn’t have liked it so much if it had been too busy. On the Wednesday it was the flea market in Anjuna. People from all over the state come for it, and it is a major tourist attraction. Stalls selling spices, teas, cheap rave clothes, designer leather goods, and every kind of jewelry you could think of, all shouted for attention. It was quite overwhelming. I got Iain a silver cuff for his Christmas, but we eventually had to leave and go get in the water just so that we could escape the bustle. The other issue we had was that there was no street lighting or beach lighting in Anjuna. To get to a beach bar for dinner, one would have to walk across a good stretch of unlit beach: not something recommended for young women. If only there had been some more lighting, I am sure our stay would have been perfect. We were knackered by the time we left. We hadn’t had much sleep, not due to partying, but due to the beach shack we stayed in. it had a thatched roof. You could hear every little shuffle of tiny feet in the night. It might have been geckos. It might have been mice, Worse, it might have been rats, cockroaches, or snakes. We didn’t know. All we knew was that occasionally there would be a scuttling sound right above our heads, or in the bathroom, that would freak us right out and make it impossible to sleep for fear that as soon as you closed your eyes a snake would drop onto your face and a rat would munch on your toes. I was sad to leave Goa. It was a tropical paradise. You could see why it is becoming an incredibly popular place for tour packages. The perfect dose of winter sun, cheap and good food and parties.

I think if I went back though it would be about the same time. It was the relaxation post-exams that I needed before heading home for Christmas. I was completely ready to go home. I have been looking forward to it for weeks and weeks. It is not that I don’t like it here. I do. I was just ready to go home. To see the family. See Iain. My friends. Glasgow in December rain. The German Christmas Market. Things you don’t think you will miss, like cheese. (Real cheese is non-vegetarian, and paneer doesn’t count as real cheese.) Home time will be my next installment.