In this blog... I go to the beach, have my palm read and see a load of live music
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Goa is synonymous with India, but in reality isn't the real India at all. One of the country's 28 states, the former Portuguese colony was only taken back as part into India about fifty years ago, giving it a much more laid back and European feel than the rest of India. For me personally it's always eluded thoughts of swaying palm trees, hippies, and trance music, and indeed I've found that to be the reality. But with Arumbol at least, it's heyday as a travellers paradise appears have since past, with hoards of tourists, commercialisation, unplanned development, and police rules taking away the relaxed magic it would have had in the sixties. That said, it's still a very appealing destination and in many places beautiful. It's just not paradise.
Naturally it's fair to say the past week or so hasn't been action packed or cultural like the previous few, and the pace of life has slowed down to that of a turtle. It's a nice change in many ways, but doesn't necessarily make great reading, so I'll spare you the full diary and pick out a few bits.
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| Arumbol beach |
Waking up on the night bus from Pune, I was shattered, having reminded myself that the irony in the phrase 'sleeper bus' is that it's very hard to actually get any kip due to the constant moving around whilst you lay down. Arriving in the inland town of Mapusa, I shared a taxi to the coast with a German girl who'd also been on the bus, and once at the large coastal village of Arumbol had breakfast with her at a little vegan cafe, her choice I add, before heading different ways. Arumbol is a pretty, laid-back village in the north of Goa, dominated by a strange mix of hippies and Russians, and sometimes Russian hippies. Indians are most definitely the minority for once. The long white-sand beach is beautiful, and backed by a small jungle of palm trees, indispersed with lovely little makeshift bamboo huts you can stay in, but after asking in about ten different places I disappointingly found nothing available, so went to a boring ol' guesthouse in the village behind instead.
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I started my time in Goa as I meant to go on - with a doze, some lunch at a nearby cafe, a walk along the beach and a late-afternoon beer at another place on a quiet rocky piece of coast. These small bamboo and palm leaf cafés seem to dominate the whole stretch of coastline, and are great hang-out spots with their nice seats and sunloungers. Most days thereafter consisted of various combos of hanging out with people, reading, writing, walking, swimming and listening to my new-found passion - podcasts. I finished off the book I'd been reading - What Young India Wants - an interesting read which seemed to boil down India's problems to government corruption, lazy politicians, an undemanding population that only votes for people for their own caste, Simon-says schooling and a lack of creativity generally.
The highlight of the first day was a trip to the doc, I say highlight as this was thankfully my last rabies vaccination, after a month of weekly jabs following the dog bite on New Year's Day. Come get me dogs, cause I'm immune! The process of getting the jabs has varied whichever town I'd been in at the time - one was at a pharmacy where a guy, hopefully a nurse, turned up on his motorbike and did it. Another was done at a backstreet pharmacy by the owner himself, another whilst sat in the back of a open fronted pharmacy, and one in a fairly posh clinic by a nurse, and the cost every time -just £1 (100 rupees).
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| Abiah and Lambo |
The first couple of days in Arumbol I found it difficult to meet people to hang out with, thanks to the majority either being couples, stoners, or large clique groups. But as the week went on at various points I briefly met and hung out with a couple of Finnish guys, some Israeli girls, a German electrician who helped to build the Fendt tractor factory, and a Spanish guy who by chance I'd met in Pune a few days before. Yes, a very male dominated place again. On the third evening at the nightly sunset drum circle on the beach, where foreigners bring along a drum and jam away whilst others dance wildly in front, I spotted a familiar face. One that's hard to miss since he's a 6'6" dreadlocked Dutch guy, known by his pals in India as Lambo - the Hindi word for tall. I tried to think where I'd seen him before, then remembered back to East/West cafe in Rishikesh, northern India, where I'd hung out a number of times back in December. Along with an Israeli girl we met the next day, most evenings over the week the three of us hung out together, which was great since we shared a similar sense of humour, and as with many people from both those nations, they spoke perfect English.
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| Typical scene outside the crazy Love Temple resort |
One morning I awoke to the sound of laughter outside. It was a very strange laughter though, continuous and very forced sounding. Was this some sort of early-morning stand-up comedy extravaganza consisting of just one-liners I wondered? Even better - it turned out to be people doing laughter yoga, at a strange beachside resort nearby, interestingly named the Love Temple. This placed seemed to be the epicentre of hippiedom in Arumbol, with the beach outside filled with dreadlocked and tattoo covered people meditating, learning various circus skills, smoking pot and generally fulfilling the stereotype you come to expect. It sounds like I'm hippie bashing here, but I did meet one or two by end of the week who were quite fun and engaging. Still not my scene though.
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| Nightly drum circle at sunset |
Soon after hearing said laughter yoga, the noise from my room changed to Goa's signature sound - trance music, coming from the roof of our hotel where it turned out a Russian guy was interestingly living in a bamboo-framed cotton tent, and practicing his DJing outside. But trance wasn't the only music to be found in Arumbol, 'cause there's also a good live music scene. One evening I watched a couple of American acoustic guitarists who surprised me with their creativeness, another evening a live reggae performance consisting of various travellers who seemed to have formed a band for a few days.
The best though was a live jam session in a tiny makeshift cafe, run by a hilarious Tibetan guy known as Cookie who's catchphrase was greeting everyone with a funny Mary Poppins-esq 'hello'. This live jam session had a mix of people playing acoustic guitars, an accordion, a bongo and a bass guitar all coming together in fantastic quirky manner. It was so infectious that they went on long past the 10pm noise curfew enforced in the town, and Cookie got taken off by the cops! 'Its not the first time, nor the last' he said the next day smiling. A couple of the beach cafés sometimes paid a bribe, sorry bought a licence, from the local police to stay open til 3am. So two or three nights we ended up out 'til closing time at these great beachside trance parties, with some excellent foreign DJ's, and everyone either inside or on the beach dancing around barefoot. It was fantastic, and I loved the laid back feel to it all.
You may recall a few weeks back I wrote about getting my palm read. I couldn't help but think at the time it was a load of tosh, just someone picking out the obvious or generalising to get my cash. To be fair I had it done in a gem shop, where they guy obviously just wanted to flog birthstones 'to balance your jupiter' as he said... Hmmm. Lambo was telling us how he'd learnt to read palms over the past couple of years, and knowing he was a genuine guy and all he'd want in return was a beer, I asked him to read mine. This time I felt a little more convinced that there might be at least something to it, partly 'cause I trusted him but also because the outcome was more accurate. His reading described my personality and past with a depth beyond an acquaintance of two days, and told me some interesting future predictions, and whilst there was a couple of things that didn't quite tie up, he did admit as much. The trouble for me with someone predicting your path ahead is that it's based on the notion of the future being pre-destined, written already, but as with most people I tend to believe that the future is based on a mixture of preparation and chance so can't be predicted. That said, whilst not completely convinced I now believe there might be a bit of something to it, and recommend palm reading to anyone for a bit of fun or curiosity as long as it's done by someone you trust.
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| Trees along the shoreline |
The beaches around Arumbol are beautiful, and surprisingly clean for a nation that leaves their rubbish wherever they like, and great to stroll along. Indians for once were the minority, but the few Indian tourists never ceased to make me smile, jumping around and playing in the water like ten year olds, I guess it's the first time in the sea for many of them. In this conservative and sexist country as ever the groups were mostly men, who go in the water either fully dressed or in their underwear, and when you did see a woman on the beach or sea they were generally covered up in saris or loose t-shirts. One day I wandered off behind the beach up a narrow sheltered valley, to a fantastic big banyan tree that people talked about - with a spiders-web of branches drooping to the ground. It seems the tree is quite an attraction for the hippies and there was a circle of them sat at the base if it smoking pot with an Indian sadhu - an old holy man sat in a white robe giving them pearls of wisdom. It was a strange sight, but not as much as when I wandered down one of the small paths that led away from it, to find a few groups of hippies living in small camps in the woods. Sometimes in tents, sometimes just sleeping in the open air.
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| Catholic church, Indian Goa style |
Goan food is a little different to the rest of India, with more emphasis on meat and fish, and some different Indian dishes that I'd not seen elsewhere in the country, such as xacuti (chicoti) and vindaloo - the latter not having the notorious spicyness as at home. Or maybe my spice tolerance has just gone through the roof. I also found and ate beef for the first time in India, not generally eaten as cows are sacred in Hinduism, but with Goa having a high Christian population and lots of foreign tourists, things are a little more relaxed. The beef wasn't terrible, but the finest steak of Philip Warren butchers' it certainly was not. Alcohol is another difference in Goa - much cheaper (lower taxes) and available everywhere, rather than just a few tightly controlled shops elsewhere - Portuguese influence again.
Arumbol grew on me over the eight days I was there; it was quite moorish and I'd ended up quite liking it. But Goa is a big area with lots to see, so I headed next a few miles south in search of quieter beaches and better nightlife.
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| Of course there's cows on the beach, this is India! |
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| Fresh water lake behind the beach |
