India - Goa

---

The Journey
The journey was always going to be pretty laborious. A 20 hour over night bus from Diu to Mumbai was never going to hold much promise for good times but, when after 3hrs we'd only gone 10km over the bridge to the mainland I feared the worst! The driver managed to realise these fears and those 20 hours felt more like 20 years! He kept stopping and picking up his mates who all proceeded to get hammered and wander around the bus spilling Old Monk everywhere. Because they were all drunk he then had to keep stopping to let them pee for which he chose particularly pungent urinals which, in the most part, just emptied out into a puddle on to the street that they all walked through to get back onto the bus. He did manage to top that by stopping for the 'rest break' at one set of toilets that didn't even have the courtesy to provide a hole! He also held both the record for the longest most ridiculous tune for a horn as well as using it the most - which obviously wasn't annoying at all!

Being one of the most populous countires in the world, set to overtake China in the next few years, the idea of personal space in India is somewhat different to that which we have at home. This was demonstrated beautifully (and pretty much topped off the journey), when some woman decided to fit her and 2 of her children on the one seat next to me. I was rudely awoken by her knee in my face with some child draped over it!

We finally arrived the next morning in Mumbai. I was somewhat shattered after the arduous journey and as such was considering staying in Mumbai for a night or two to recover and look around. That was until on the way through the city to the bus station i saw no less that five people squat down and take dump on the pavement. I was on the first bus down to Goa...

Anjuna
My first stop in Goa was Anjuna in the North. A pleasant enough spot but, it was just before the season had kicked off there and as such had a slightly ghost town feel about it. There were, however, still plenty of people to try and get you to 'look in my shop. Just Look. You no like, you no buy.' Correct me if I am wrong but, that's not really a special arrangement, that's just shopping!

I met a couple of guys, Nick and Luke, who were kind enough to let me hop on the back of their mopeds and we went for a scoot around Old Goa, past paddy fields, through old Portuguese style villages and some of the other beach spots in the North which ranged from wide deserted beaches to Indian package holiday resorts. It really is worth dragging yourself away from the beaches to see the inlets and inland of Goa. That said, most of my time there was spent on the beach, making sand castles of Indian deities or in the Shore bar who sold us bottles of gin for a couple of hundred rupees. My hangover was not helped by the locals who went swimming in their white y-fronts and even less by the 60yr old dude who decided to jog along the beach in a thong!




Palolem
After nearly a week in Anjuna I headed south to lovely Palolem. I decided to do this on the public buses. It did take 4h.5hours to get about 100km but, I met some lovely people along the way, got invited to several peoples houses and got to see even more of the steamy palms and paddys that beach goers tend to miss.

Palolem is a lovely palm fringed cove with a curving ribbon of golden sand greeting the waves that crash onto it. It too was slightly quiet but, I think on this occasion that may have been a blessing. Just in the week that i was there, several beach bars and sets of cabins materialised from nowhere. It appears that they are remade each year which, given that most of them use paper for light shades which, we were assured very matter-of-factly, did catch fire of a regualr basis, was probably why!




The guys from Anjuna headed down a bit later and we went for another scoot around the southern beaches, watched sunset at Patnem and explored the quiet beach at Angonda which, was lovely except for yet another old dude who thought he'd take a wander up the beach in a posing pouch!


Most of the days were spent on the beach, body surfing in the waves, having a beer or two, sampling the local cuisine, whipping up some tandoori fish and marevelling at the ability of the waiter to both stay stood on Nick's feet while writing down the entire order and then still coming back to ask us what we actually had when we asked for the bill!

In fact the most energetic thing that I did was to hire a boogie board one day which was quite a good laugh and which I also managed to swap with one guy for a go on his sea kayak. I had it for three waves: The first one I smuggly caught perfectly and rode into the beach, the second I embarrassingly got completely nailed and dumped on the beach trying to hold onto my bikini and the third one I took out a surfer on the way in! The guy, then wisely took the kayak back before I did any more damage!

Palolem was rather more lively than Anjuna and so it did seem rude not to take advantage at least once! The sun came out proceeding a few stormy days and as such Luke's decided to ditch his night bus and hang around a bit longer. We all subsequently managed to get accidentally hammered which, we blamed on the local gin but, which in reality just showed us up as no longer being able to handle it! Consequently, I didn't emerge from my room until about 4pm the next day having spent most of it crawling from the bed to the bathroom and Luke managed to lose his key and decided to rip half the side off his cabin in order to get in rather than getting the security gaurd to break off the lock. Given that, in typical Indian efficiency, it took the security guard four hours to do this the following day, this was probably a wise decision!

After probably a bit too long in Palolem some lovely antipodean ladies we'd met on the G+T night, Emma and Renee, and I decided to head off inland to Hampi and then onwards down to the backwaters and beaches of Kerela.....

Full pictures at www.picasaweb.google.com/dabilster choose Goa Album

---