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Published: March 16th 2007
We arrived in Arambol, a small beach town in the far north of the state of Goa, on February 11th, with the intention of staying for about a week. After a few days we learned that no one successfully stays for a week—most people end up stuck in Arambol for months, unable to leave the idyllic beaches, the multitude of fantastic restaurants, the dirt- cheap seaside hotels, the always-friendly locals, and the generally relaxed and happy atmosphere. We managed to escape after three weeks, which isn’t too bad considering the number of people whose one-week intentions turn into months.
Arambol is a hub of dreadlocked hippie ex-pats, many of whom haven’t left Goa for years. There is also a strange “fairy-culture” of younger hippies-in-training, who dress in curl-toed boots and sexed-up Robin Hood-like costumes and prance around in the sand at night twirling fire batons. There is a constant assortment of thong-wearing men and women sunbathing on the beach, and the occasional fully-naked man broadcasting his “liberation” to anyone and everyone. A surprising number of ex-pats’ kids crawl around in the sand, as naked as their parents, wooden beads around their necks and wrists. Vendors walk ceaselessly up and down
the beach selling blankets, beads and fruit. Boys on bicycles with coolers instead of baskets pedal down the beach selling ice cream, announcing their approach with their bells. Semi-stray dogs roam in packs, occasionally going for a swim in the surf. And, of course, there are cows, wandering through the sand. As if oblivious to all of it, the local fishermen haul in their nets at sunrise and sunset. The occasional Indian tourist walks down the beach, staring at the bizarre antics of the ex-pats and travelers. Within the town itself, vendors line the streets selling clothes, cloth beach totes, jewelry, carvings and tapestries, calling out “looking is free” and “very cheap price” to everyone who passes. The local Indians are primarily Christian (from past missionaries), and bright white churches stand out against the palm trees. Hindu-looking roadside shrines hold Christian figurines draped in orange marigold garlands—a strange amalgamation of cultures and religions. The women wear colorful knee-length patterned cotton dresses instead of sawar kameez or sarees, but otherwise the people are familiarly Indian in their day-to-day living and their smiling curiosity about the strange travelers in their midst.
We stayed at a hotel called God’s Gift, which was
run by an extremely friendly local named John Baptist. After two days in a small one-windowed room, we were able to switch into a corner room with a small balcony, attached bathroom, and cool cross-breeze from the two windows, for 350 rupees ($8 U.S.) per night. The hotel was a minute’s walk from the beach, just behind the palm tree-covered sand dunes, a little ways down the beach from the center of town. We arrived on the first night a little before sunset, and hurried down to the beach for a swim before night set in. We went swimming in the gentle waves, and found the warm Arabian Sea filled with photo plankton—little sparkles of light that flashed on our skin and in the surrounding waves. We explored further down the beach afterwards and stopped for great seafood pasta at a packed Italian restaurant on the sand. At night the beach was lit up with twinkling lights and candles from the various restaurants and bars tucked into the surrounding palm trees, and the occasional bonfire or fire dancer. The place seemed magical and impossibly perfect.
In daylight, Arambol revealed the extent of its character, and we spent the next
few days wandering through town and along the beach, trying different restaurants and juice stands. The 13th was my birthday, and I spent most of it in the sea and sand. Jeff bought me a hammock and we set it up in the palm trees near our hotel in the afternoon. I had birthday apple pie with ice cream (couldn’t find chocolate cake) at Double Dutch, a restaurant in town serving amazing breakfasts and great desserts at tables scattered in the shade beneath a grove of palm trees. Jeff even tracked down a birthday candle for my slice of pie. For dinner I had prawn-stuffed calamari, freshly-grilled kingfish (scales and eyeballs still present), and a fresh strawberry daiquiri at a restaurant on the beach. It was a great, and peaceful, birthday.
The following day Jeff and I met a couple, Ben and Yumi, who were from France and Japan respectively, and were paying their way traveling by giving massages. Aside from giving great massages on the beach, they were great company and we ended up spending time with them every day from then on. We built a bonfire one night in the sand, heated up apple pie from Double
carnival parade
Photo by Jeff @ eyeballimaging.comDutch over the fire, and slept on mats under the stars. Jeff did a photo shoot of the two of them giving massages in the ocean at sunset while I held a flash and a reflector and Ben and Yumi tried to look relaxed and keep from laughing while getting repeatedly drenched by the waves. We had dinner together one night at the best Italian place in town, shared a bottle of wine and splurged on desserts after our pizzas. Otherwise, the four of us spent most of our time together at Amos, a restaurant on the beach in front of our hotel, and became friends with Melvin, one of the local guys who worked there. He was quiet but always smiling and quick to jump to help us out with anything, and thanks to him we gave Amos a lot of business, despite the sometimes mediocre food. We met a number of other travelers there from all over Europe and Asia (still very few Americans here) and traded advice for places to see in further travels. Arambol was enticing for a lot of reasons, but as always the people are most central to making a place feel welcome.
fire dancer at carnival
Photo by Jeff @ eyeballimaging.com Carnival, corresponding with Mardi Gras, occurred during our first week in Arambol, and the local hippies put on an elaborate parade on the beach. They put up colorful decorations along the beach and people wore elaborate costumes. Two bicycles were rigged together to carry a mobile djembe drum setup to lead the parade, followed by a crowd of costumed people dancing and spinning in the sand. When the sun set the fire dancers came out and put on a show until the tide rose and the crowd settled down at a bar on the far end of the beach with a huge bonfire and a dance floor. When the bar shut off the music to comply with local rules, a drum circle took over around the fire, and the dancing continued. There was still a crowd of people around the fire when I left to go to bed, and I’m sure the party continued through most of the night.
Our only negative experience in Arambol was a short bout of food poisoning, probably brought on by our desperate love for sushi and our (perhaps foolish) willingness to try it at an unremarkable seaside restaurant. We were wary, especially because
it was certainly not a sushi-specific restaurant, but the allure of wasabi and tender fish was too much to pass up, and we decided to try one tuna roll to start out. When it came it looked like a tuna roll, except the fish was the wrong color—because it was cooked. Disappointed but sure we couldn’t very well get sick from cooked sushi, we ate it anyway. We both got sick about 24 hours later and spent one day taking turns in the bathroom. At least we got sick together, and it didn’t last very long—we were soon back to our usual day of swimming and wandering.
Ben and Yumi left for Thailand a week before we moved on. The night before they left we planned a send-off bonfire in front of Amos with all the other Amos regulars, complete with more heated apple pie from me and Jeff, a good bottle of wine from a French couple that they brought with them from France, a pizza from a Spanish couple, fresh fruit salad from Ben and Yumi, and a local ex-pat saxophone player. Before everyone showed up Ben and Yumi told me and Jeff that they had something
for us. When we had had our first bonfire together, Jeff had joked that they ought to offer massages by the fire as a romantic couple’s massage package. Our surprise was just that—an hour-long massage with the fire on one side, the sea on the other, sand beneath us and the moon and stars above. It was as amazing as it sounds, and getting it as a gift from our good friends made it even better. We said goodbye the next day with the sincere hope that we will see them again.
Our decision to stay a full three weeks was based on the desire to track down some huge hanging white geometric lights. We saw them floating high in the trees at an outdoor bar, and learned that they were sold at the Saturday night market in Anjuna, a nearby town. We had missed the market the first two Saturdays, opting to hang out in Arambol instead of taking a taxi out of town, but we heard from multiple people that the market was amazing and not to be missed, plus we wanted to buy some of the lights to ship home. We bought train tickets for the
evening of Monday March 5th so that we could go to Anjuna the Saturday before and have time to ship our purchases on Monday before we left. The Anjuna night market is a brightly-lit and well-contained cluster of stalls selling handmade clothing, jewelry, art, and various local crafts. Probably half of the vendors are locals, while the other half are foreign ex-pats. There is a stage in the center with live music, a row of varied and excellent food stalls on one side of the market, and a couple of small bars. We had done very minimal shopping so far in our trip, since we have to carry everything on our backs, but since we planned to send a shipment home we finally felt free to buy what we liked. We bought some clothes to ship home to wear after our travels, two beautiful carved wooden masks, a brass door handle of the mermaid goddess Tara to put on our front door some day, a seashell ring for me, and of course the white hanging lights. The market truly was worth waiting around for, especially since “waiting around” in Arambol is hardly something to complain about.
That night around
4 a.m. there was a complete lunar eclipse. We set an alarm and went up to the hotel roof to watch as the earth’s shadow turned the full moon a dark red color. We took photos of the eclipse through the silhouettes of palm trees, until the shadow began to pass and we went back to bed.
On Sunday, our last full day in Arambol, we decided to walk to huge holy banyan tree in the rainforest outside of town. The tree is a little past a freshwater lake that comes 100 feet from meeting the ocean and provides great relaxing swimming after being bounced around by the sea waves. That day happened to be during the celebration of Holi, a holiday characterized by throwing colorful powdered paint. Holi is celebrated more in the north of India, but Arambol is not a place to turn down a party, so plenty of people were running around covered in paint (ourselves included, by the end of the day). A number of local men were dancing and drinking on the beach, and one was so drunk he was rolling around naked in the surf while his friends laughed and tried to re-clothe
him. Everyone was grinning and shouted “happy Holi!” at us as we passed, and it was an all-around jovial day. The banyan tree, which was about a 15 minute walk into the forest, was a cool and quiet contrast from the celebration taking place in town. At the base of the tree is a carefully tended shrine, which is cared for by an ex-pat who has lived beneath the tree for years (He claimed it was ten, but others say it has actually been three. I suppose three years under a tree would feel like at least ten). His few possessions—clothes, books and some silver cooking pots and utensils—were neatly arranged on the rocks behind the tree, and baskets were filled with fresh vegetables and fruits brought by visitors for him to eat. There was a pure white cow on the cliff above, which he cared for and milked to make ghee (a clarified butter used in worship). There were a few other travelers there, and we all sat on mats under the tree for a few hours, talking occasionally but mostly just listening to the forest around us. Every once in a while someone new showed up (often paint-covered)
and joined us. The man who lived there—I unfortunately didn’t get his name—seemed peaceful and serene at first, but when he suddenly couldn’t find his bag he panicked and began shouting and swearing and running in circles around us, screaming about the injustices of the world and threatening to kill himself if he didn’t find it. None of us knew exactly what to say, and thankfully he found it after a few minutes of ranting. His explosion definitely broke the idyllic illusion of the meditative renouncer under his holy tree, although it didn’t ruin the beauty of the place itself.
As we walked back from the banyan tree, covered in paint from Holi, we passed a group of Catholic nuns. One of them was so horrified by Jeff’s appearance—I guess because of the paint, his shaved head, and his earrings—that she brought her hand to her mouth in horror and said “My God!” as she passed. It was tempting to toss a little paint in her direction, but we resisted.
On Monday March 5th we mailed our Anjuna purchases back home through a parcel shipping service in town (where they went so far as to sew a cloth
bag around the sealed box), packed our bags, said goodbye to the people we’d met, had a last meal at Amos, and took a cab to the train station to catch our overnight train down to Kerala. We got to the station around 9 p.m., an hour before our train was to depart, only to realize that we in fact had tickets to the 6 p.m. train. This was the first time we’d paid a travel agency to get our train tickets, rather than going to the train station ourselves, and we kicked ourselves for not making sure they’d bought the right tickets. There were no available sleeper car tickets for the 10 o’clock train, but the man at the ticket office told us that we’d probably be able to find bunks if we bought general tickets. We decided to try it, and if we couldn’t find bunks we would just hop off at the next stop and find a hotel—which could be an interesting adventure, at least. As it turns out, there were a number of available bunks, and we made it uneventfully to Kochi, Kerala the next evening.
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Cassandra
non-member comment
sexy lady
looking tan laura ;-) miss you and going to write an email this weekend!