Days 30-33
Today (Tue 25th) we have just spent chilling and relaxing in Goa. We have been doing some of the mundane things that backpacking involves like doing your own laundry and spending 2 hours waiting to get our meals served and we still haven't had dinner (hang on, I will just go down and order it, spend an hour writing this post and it should be ready by then....right I am back). But that's all the joy of Goa, things seem to get done when they get done at their own pace and that suits us just fine after the stresses of Indian travelling.
We had a surprise in our over night train to Goa from Mumbai on Saturday evening, an upgrade to first class! Our names weren't on the seating list outside the carriage but we made our way to the seats designated on our tickets anyway. After half an hour the ticket inspector came around and told us we had an upgrade. We obligingly made our way to the first class carriage and we were glad to find that the beds were wider and we had a lockable door instead of a curtain. Apart from that its much the same as 2nd class certainly not worth almost double the price you will pay for the upgrade. Without all the curtain twitching and moving around though we did get in a very solid nights sleep.
My wife commented that in any other country if you got an upgrade to first class your reaction would be "Hooraay". But in India it is "Wait a minute!...what's going on here?" Our suspicion lay with our fellow passengers, a couple of Danish girls. They weren't particularly young but had never done any serious travelling before and arrived in Delhi to be a bit overwhelmed by the whole experience. As a result they went to one of those scam "tourist offices", who kindly arranged the first 3 weeks of their holiday for the bargain price of 60 000 rupees (£700/$1100) each!. To put this into perspective we have spent less than this combined after 4 weeks, plus it didn't include all their meals or admission fees. In other words they got shafted! So back to our tickets, we had heard that these "tour operators" are very keen to keep their clients in the dark about getting ripped off and that means away from other independent tourists, so we suspected that they somehow saw the passenger list for their train, saw that other Westerners were sitting next to them, and upgraded us to 1st class so that we couldn't tell them how badly they had been stung. Sounds implausible we know but in this country anything is possible!
If that was their plan it worked well because we never got to telling the Danish girls our expenditure and we never seen them again in Goa as they were whisked away by their pre arranged hotel's driver. We on the other hand were wondering how to get to the beaches. We had acquired a 2012 Lonely Planet from a couple of Australian guys we had met in exchange for a breakfast in Darjeeling, it was proving its worth since we got it, but surprisingly the information on how to get to beaches in Goa was very poor. We also half expected those ever helpful touts to be there to try and pick us up at the train station but there was none. So we figured out we had to make a journey by train and bus to the alternative beach resort of Anjuna. For a place that is so well frequented by tourists we did not expect it to be so difficult to get to, but there you go. We got here eventually via a taxi that picked us up, and a sweltered midday hike with our full packs following an ill placed drop off 1.5miles from our desired hotel.
Each state in India has its own unique history, but none more so than Goa. Apart from the previous 1000 years of history or so that it has, it was first discovered by Europeans when the famous Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed in 1498. Incidentally we saw his crypt in Bellem, a Lisbon suburb in May of this year. A colony was soon founded by the Portuguese in Goa and it remained Portuguese until the 1960s when they refused to give it up to the independent India but after protests and an invasion they were forced to relent and Goa was soon to be governed by Delhi. As a result today Goa still has a strong Portuguese air about it, mainly by the presence of Catholicism. Rosary beads replace the Hindu idols hanging from the rear view mirrors and Portuguese style churches are everywhere around the coconut grooves and rice paddies, which is refreshingly familiar and idyllic.
Anjuna is full of accommodation, but its "not the season" so its mostly empty accommodation and as a result we are staying in our cheapest place yet at 500 rupees a night. Its on top of some lovely cliffs and a 5 minute walk from the beach so it great. Anjuna is a lovely laid back place, the beach is nice although quite narrow and rocky in parts. So we spent a few days around here chilling out as best we can.
After arriving I donned my Tyrone jersey as a rallying point to see if there were any other GAA supporters around, and we duly set about scouring hotels to see if they had Setanta Sports Asia, which has the rights to show the All-Ireland final in Asia. We haven't seen or heard of any of other Irish tourists in India so no one recognised the jersey and Setanta didn't seem to feature on any of the hotels TVs. But I would have been hard pushed to get them to change the channel anyway with the Cricket World Cup, English Soccer matches and the Singapore GrandPrix seemingly dominating the TVs. The next challenge then came to find a place with internet which I believed would be quite easy, but it wasn't as most internet cafes were closed. Eventually we found a place with free wifi, so I set about following the match via text updates on www.rte.ie.
As for the match itself any of my Irish readers will know that Donegal won after scoring 2 early goals which poor old Mayo couldn't recover from. So I would like to extend congratulations to Donegal on wining their second All-Ireland and as neighbours just to show there is no ill will between us I would like to dedicate the following song to their win: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL_PXBt85rY which I went to great lengths to ensure that it was played at our wedding in California last year. Also I can't wait for Tyrone to meet you next year!
After Donegal's win the fireworks started in Anjuna. I was surprised at this development as I couldn't really remember too many fireworks for Tyrone's All-Ireland wins, and I was pretty sure that there would not be any in old Portuguese colonies on the far side of the planet. Unconvinced that the celebration was Donegal inspired, my wife enquired with our waiter and it turns out it was the end of a festival for the Hindu God Ganesh, the four armed elephant headed god. He is the God of Wealth so he is a popular fellow and there has been a month long festival on going in this part of India and Sunday night was the culmination of the festival. It involves parading down to the beach with each family's icon of Ganesh and following an enormous amount of fireworks (which was the highlight for me) on the beach, the head of the family wades into the sea to deposit the icon of Ganesh there.
The amount of firecracker wrappers and marigold garlands, strewn across the beach was ridiculous, I can imagine that the HBPD would have half the city in jail if it happened in Huntington Beach. We were worried that the beach would be unusable for our next days lounging around. Miraculously enough the tide more or less cleaned the whole beach of the previous nights celebrations and we spent a lazy Monday on the beach.
On a side note I have also reached my own significant milestone. While wondering around Dublin airport I decided to take advantage of the weak Euro and the duty free and I purchased a Connemara Peated Single Malt Whiskey to act as my companion through Asia. On every evening that was required I would take a whiskey or two, not only would this put me to sleep quicker but I also maintained to my wife that it was keeping me healthy. That was until we reached Darjeeling and we both became horrifically ill and the poor old bottle of Connemara started to become a burden, because apart from being hideously heavy I was now worried that drinking any of it would set my bowels off again. I eventually warmed to it again and now I have finished it. Even after living in Ireland for 7 years, my wife reckons I finished it quickly, I on the other hand am quite ashamed that it took over a month but am pleased that I no longer have to carry its dead weight around!
Our plan now is to head to the southern Goan beaches tomorrow, which apparently are even more laid back than here, this will involve, well... more laying back! Oh life is tough but we deserve it after the insanity we went through in the North. Now that dinner should be ready...
Today (Tue 25th) we have just spent chilling and relaxing in Goa. We have been doing some of the mundane things that backpacking involves like doing your own laundry and spending 2 hours waiting to get our meals served and we still haven't had dinner (hang on, I will just go down and order it, spend an hour writing this post and it should be ready by then....right I am back). But that's all the joy of Goa, things seem to get done when they get done at their own pace and that suits us just fine after the stresses of Indian travelling.
We had a surprise in our over night train to Goa from Mumbai on Saturday evening, an upgrade to first class! Our names weren't on the seating list outside the carriage but we made our way to the seats designated on our tickets anyway. After half an hour the ticket inspector came around and told us we had an upgrade. We obligingly made our way to the first class carriage and we were glad to find that the beds were wider and we had a lockable door instead of a curtain. Apart from that its much the same as 2nd class certainly not worth almost double the price you will pay for the upgrade. Without all the curtain twitching and moving around though we did get in a very solid nights sleep.
My wife commented that in any other country if you got an upgrade to first class your reaction would be "Hooraay". But in India it is "Wait a minute!...what's going on here?" Our suspicion lay with our fellow passengers, a couple of Danish girls. They weren't particularly young but had never done any serious travelling before and arrived in Delhi to be a bit overwhelmed by the whole experience. As a result they went to one of those scam "tourist offices", who kindly arranged the first 3 weeks of their holiday for the bargain price of 60 000 rupees (£700/$1100) each!. To put this into perspective we have spent less than this combined after 4 weeks, plus it didn't include all their meals or admission fees. In other words they got shafted! So back to our tickets, we had heard that these "tour operators" are very keen to keep their clients in the dark about getting ripped off and that means away from other independent tourists, so we suspected that they somehow saw the passenger list for their train, saw that other Westerners were sitting next to them, and upgraded us to 1st class so that we couldn't tell them how badly they had been stung. Sounds implausible we know but in this country anything is possible!
If that was their plan it worked well because we never got to telling the Danish girls our expenditure and we never seen them again in Goa as they were whisked away by their pre arranged hotel's driver. We on the other hand were wondering how to get to the beaches. We had acquired a 2012 Lonely Planet from a couple of Australian guys we had met in exchange for a breakfast in Darjeeling, it was proving its worth since we got it, but surprisingly the information on how to get to beaches in Goa was very poor. We also half expected those ever helpful touts to be there to try and pick us up at the train station but there was none. So we figured out we had to make a journey by train and bus to the alternative beach resort of Anjuna. For a place that is so well frequented by tourists we did not expect it to be so difficult to get to, but there you go. We got here eventually via a taxi that picked us up, and a sweltered midday hike with our full packs following an ill placed drop off 1.5miles from our desired hotel.
Each state in India has its own unique history, but none more so than Goa. Apart from the previous 1000 years of history or so that it has, it was first discovered by Europeans when the famous Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed in 1498. Incidentally we saw his crypt in Bellem, a Lisbon suburb in May of this year. A colony was soon founded by the Portuguese in Goa and it remained Portuguese until the 1960s when they refused to give it up to the independent India but after protests and an invasion they were forced to relent and Goa was soon to be governed by Delhi. As a result today Goa still has a strong Portuguese air about it, mainly by the presence of Catholicism. Rosary beads replace the Hindu idols hanging from the rear view mirrors and Portuguese style churches are everywhere around the coconut grooves and rice paddies, which is refreshingly familiar and idyllic.
Anjuna is full of accommodation, but its "not the season" so its mostly empty accommodation and as a result we are staying in our cheapest place yet at 500 rupees a night. Its on top of some lovely cliffs and a 5 minute walk from the beach so it great. Anjuna is a lovely laid back place, the beach is nice although quite narrow and rocky in parts. So we spent a few days around here chilling out as best we can.
After arriving I donned my Tyrone jersey as a rallying point to see if there were any other GAA supporters around, and we duly set about scouring hotels to see if they had Setanta Sports Asia, which has the rights to show the All-Ireland final in Asia. We haven't seen or heard of any of other Irish tourists in India so no one recognised the jersey and Setanta didn't seem to feature on any of the hotels TVs. But I would have been hard pushed to get them to change the channel anyway with the Cricket World Cup, English Soccer matches and the Singapore GrandPrix seemingly dominating the TVs. The next challenge then came to find a place with internet which I believed would be quite easy, but it wasn't as most internet cafes were closed. Eventually we found a place with free wifi, so I set about following the match via text updates on www.rte.ie.
As for the match itself any of my Irish readers will know that Donegal won after scoring 2 early goals which poor old Mayo couldn't recover from. So I would like to extend congratulations to Donegal on wining their second All-Ireland and as neighbours just to show there is no ill will between us I would like to dedicate the following song to their win: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL_PXBt85rY which I went to great lengths to ensure that it was played at our wedding in California last year. Also I can't wait for Tyrone to meet you next year!
The amount of firecracker wrappers and marigold garlands, strewn across the beach was ridiculous, I can imagine that the HBPD would have half the city in jail if it happened in Huntington Beach. We were worried that the beach would be unusable for our next days lounging around. Miraculously enough the tide more or less cleaned the whole beach of the previous nights celebrations and we spent a lazy Monday on the beach.
On a side note I have also reached my own significant milestone. While wondering around Dublin airport I decided to take advantage of the weak Euro and the duty free and I purchased a Connemara Peated Single Malt Whiskey to act as my companion through Asia. On every evening that was required I would take a whiskey or two, not only would this put me to sleep quicker but I also maintained to my wife that it was keeping me healthy. That was until we reached Darjeeling and we both became horrifically ill and the poor old bottle of Connemara started to become a burden, because apart from being hideously heavy I was now worried that drinking any of it would set my bowels off again. I eventually warmed to it again and now I have finished it. Even after living in Ireland for 7 years, my wife reckons I finished it quickly, I on the other hand am quite ashamed that it took over a month but am pleased that I no longer have to carry its dead weight around!
Our plan now is to head to the southern Goan beaches tomorrow, which apparently are even more laid back than here, this will involve, well... more laying back! Oh life is tough but we deserve it after the insanity we went through in the North. Now that dinner should be ready...
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