Goa - Mumbai

Goa

The beach at Arambol curves in a long majestic bow, with powerful waves in the warm sea crashing against a palm-fronded sandy beach. As we stood breathing in the night air, the laughter and music of bars and restaurants rippled along the shore, carried on the breeze into the vast open sky. Here we were, Goa - the recovering addict. The world´s party capital in the 1990s, now the chilled beach resort learning to live again without its all night trance raves.

We slipped slowly into total beach holiday mode here. Sunbathing and swimming took up most of our days. Fresh seafood came in off the boats daily, and good restaurants cooked up grilled calamari, plump prawns and sweet clams. We had a real return to good Italian food with amazing pasta at the Relax Inn and proper thin crust pizza at Fellini's. On the more traditional front, I wolfed down a genuine vindaloo (from the Portuguese  vin d´alho) - the Goan original still a spicy tomato-sauced dish but with strong garlic and vinegar flavours lending it a sour edge to balance the sweetness of the pork.

I took advantage of more ayurvedic massages - with a man whose hands were less interested in my ass for once. We took to evening yoga on the beach - along with all the other sun-setters practising their asanas; or those meditating, throwing poi or firesticks around; or banging drums, strumming guitars while gypsy-skirted girls swayed their hips to the music. Time telescoped and we sometimes struggled to remember what day it was. We punctuated our week noticeably with two trips out on a rented scooter. Rolling around Indian roads, we stopped by the Anjuna flea market and a host of smaller bays - Asvem, Mandrem, Chapora and more - always buying a pineapple from a beach-seller and having it freshly cut before our eyes, to be juicily devoured before getting tainted with sand.

With the music shut down from 10pm in the evening, Goa´s nightlife has changed forever. With the exodus of European hedonists, Russians have swarmed in. Game Indians now speak a smattering of Russian and have started adding mayonnaise to their salads. A hardcore rump of Italians corners some parts of Arambol: while middle-class Northern European couples form an enclave here and there. And hippies continue to regrow like the weed they smoke in Anjuna and Vagator. The make-up of Goa continues to evolve, but the stunning coastline, the practised ease of Goan hospitality and a ready-made infrastructure means it will never be forgotten.

Mumbai

Cricket on the Maidan in Mumbai

"Put the meter on!"
"Yes, yes, miss. No tension, no tension..
But there was tension. The Paulo Travels bus from Goa had deliberately dumped us on a motorway turnpike about 15km north of our intended stop - running behind schedule the drivers had decided to jettison the foreigners so that they could skip the drive down to Victoria Terminus. After a sleepless night, Mhairi and I unwittingly trusted the shouts for Colaba and allowed ourselves to be ushered off the bus. Instead of being a stone´s throw from our hostel, we had no idea where we were: and as we watched, a burly taxi driver physically beat other drivers around the chest and arms to get our business. Now we were on the hook for 950 rupees in a taxi ride that should have cost half that, maybe even a third.

A week in Goa had softened us up, and Mumbai suckerpunched us hard. We should never have got off the bus without demanding Victoria Terminus, our stop. The Indian city of dreams, city of Slumdog and Shantaram: it picked us up, shook us down, and smiled.

A Mumbai double decker bus!

After the first con, our guard was up and we hit our big city stride properly to take advantage of the best of Bollywood´s backyard. We scored some great masala dosas on Colaba Causaway, avoiding offers of drums, pashminas and other tourist trinkets to elbow our way into the small Indian eateries. We passed Leopold´s many times - for over a hundred years it´s been where East meets West over a drink in Mumbai. In 2008, it was where many people from both East and West met a premature end as Islamist gunmen from Pakistan burst in and sprayed gunfire everywhere, going on to kill 86 people across the city. But Mumbaikers are hard, like any big city folk, and the cafe reopened four days later, and still does a roaring trade.



Wandering north to the market, we passed one of the highlights of Mumbai: its train station. We'd been told, of course, but nothing prepared us for its magnificent pomp and grandeur. The guide books had been adamant Victioria Terminus, but when we saw it in its eye-popping reality our jaws dropped and we spent about half an hour taking inadequate photos of it, one of which I've kindly reproduced for you to the left. It contrasted sharply with the Gateway of India, a triumphal folly which photographed extremely well... See below, bigger picture.































But Mumbai above all is a city to be lived in. The city itself is rich - by Indian standards it is gleaming. Even its slums are rich. Compared to Calcutta and Delhi, the street traffic is well organised, the pavements are clean and the centre exudes the sense of relaxation that money can give. Rickshaws, cows and handcarts are banned in the centre, with neat taxis sporting Western style meters arranged in an orderly fashion on most streets. The con is still on here and there, but Mumbai is more refined and looks West for its influences. It is the only city with Starbucks, and if you really want to spend money on a night out then the bars and restaurants of bankers and Bollywood actors can burn your money like any London joint. The melting pot that draws Pushkars, Bengalis and Tamils in to mix with the more local Maharashtrans and Goans is added to by noticeable foreign clientele - East Africans sip beers in dingy pubs ( at least, with Mhairi and I) and white-faces pop out of the crowd more often than any other major Indian city. While the streets bustle, it is the purposeful bustle of a city going somewhere, not like Calcutta or other thickly crowded Indian cities where everyone is just going everywhere.

And this being India, Mumbai has its own treasure, protected from the smog and heat of the city by a 1 hour boat ride. Elaphanta Island houses a 9th Centurty temple carved into the side of and through a mountain. While our European ancestors where scratching through Roman ruins and building huts from wattle and daub, Indians' forebears were carving intricate giant statues using a level of precision and maths not reached by our northern archipelago for another 500 years. Under thousands of tons of rock with hand tools they dug out might caverns to glorify their deities. The caverns now are preserved for tourists escaping Mumbai's throbbing heart, to be reminded that India's soul is old and deep. Bullet holes still riddle some statues, as they were used for target practise by the illiterate Portuguese imperialist privateers that came to claim the Malabar Coast as "theirs" in the 16th Century.

Three faces of Shiva. The photo belies it size - this statue is fricking massive.

But if this trip has taught us anything, since Europeans first started feeling their way through the sub-continent, India is nobody's and everybody's. Even the concept of India is mostly made-up. The only thing that unites Indians is their diversity - Sikhs in Amritsar, Buddhist Ladakhis, Christian Keralans and the swathe of Hindu and Muslims that predominate also tolerate Jainists, Zoroastrians and Zarathrustrans. People of no faith bundle themselves along too. Some places are dry (both of rain and booze) while others are slaked in waters from the heavens and the brewery. Vegetarian or meat-loving, the food astonishes a Western palate, and is more varied than in any other country. From the depths of poverty where street-sleepers collapse at nightfall on pavements in the rags that they own, to billionaires like Lakshmi Mittal or global movie stars like Shah Rukh Khan: there is no typical Indian. And India is both old and new. For us, travelling through the country has allowed us to retrace the steps of ancestors, in awe of their achievements - forcing upon us the due humility as we consider our own accomplishments. And yet it's also allowed us to think about what we might do next, as the vibrant organic change that swarms, bustles and charges around the Indian lands begets creativity and the new. What for us will be the new thing? For the moment, that's Argentina. But in another 4 month's time, who knows?

Masala Dosa - there's a heap of potato and onion mash under there, and the crispy pancake has a light spicy red paste. You can see the scorching hot thin crimson sambar and its cool coconut chutney brother to the top right. It was the hardest thing we ever did to leave these meals in India. We WILL find them again!! Goodbye India.

Karnataka fling: Mysore and Gokarna

Momentarily distracted due to shifting continents (twice in a few days - not advisable), we´re now back on track and aiming to recap on the last few weeks of our time in India before we are swallowed by our new South American adventures! Now before I start I should emphasise that there are plenty of bad travel experiences and mini-furies littering our 3 months in India. I´m aware my posts are beginning to sound like endless cheerleading of the awesome view this, incredible dinner that variety - and should therefore preface my discussion of our time in Mysore with the admission that there has in fact been plenty which looks less rosy. I´ve been grumpily, lingeringly giardia-ridden more than once. We´ve had entirely sleepness nights` travel beside broken windows on wildly uncomfortable buses. There has been rudeness and bad meals, frustrations and indignations. At one point I wanted to punch a mosque attendant and at another T went ballistic over a tiny portion of calamari. Even as I write, my blood is still kind of boiling (disproportionately, unduly, should-be-reserved-only-for-serial-killers-child-molesters-and-Jeremy-Clarkson, boiling) at getting ripped off - for probably the only real occasion of the trip - on our sleep-deprived arrival in Bombay the other week. So the adventures have been full-bodied - as asphalt-smooth to landslide-rough as the Indian roads we´ve followed around the country.

So when I say OMG we kind of fell for Mysore and totes heart it big time, it is not because we are altogether without any means of discriminating, yeah?? Ok? Good. Our Mysore romance, if you will, then, was fuelled with the jasmine and sandalwood which fills the air, vying with the usual eclectic and heady mix of exhaust fumes, street-food, sewage and incense. And there is history and grand architecture infusing this walkable, friendly little city. The opulent Indo-Saracenic funhouse of the Maharaja´s palace is the necessary starting point, smack-bang in the middle of town - the first destination to which the ubiquitous cruising/stalking rickshaw-wallahs are desperate to take you from the moment you set foot outside to the second you retire at night (similarly in Fort Chochin, where you wonder exactly how lucrative this can be, the driver-cum-self-style tour guides often appearing to outnumber tourists five to one). This stunning, extravagent palace has its royal descendents - no doubt also suckers for the Belgian glass chandaliers, Glaswegian stained glass (I kid you not) and Indian precious metals in which their predecessors decked it out - still fighting to reclaim it from the state government. But alas the canny bastards ban photography inside so you´ll have to take my word for the interiors.

And of course, even more synonymous with Mysore (at least for the history buff) than jasmine or astanga yoga-bores, is the former city of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore - dangerous oriental tyrant to a generation of Raj administrators and an entire colonial historiography but freedom fighter, gentleman and scholar to the region. And he gives damn good palace too. Plus a beautiful mausoleum, losing points only for the inevitable banishing of his wife´s body to the outer tombs (I know it´s culturally-appropriate etc., I can just still never get with it, kids...). The entire epic complex of Srirangapatnam, filled with temples, paintings and monuments to past glories, is just a short bus ride out of town and made for a great half-day trip, where we ate fantastic cheap veg manchurian for lunch - generally subscribing to the Indian streetfood calculation whereby extreme tastiness and affordability of food is directly inverse to the apparent cleanliness of the culinary operation - and negotiated a reasonable rate for a rickshaw driver for a few hours. We also had some particularly endearing Photo-Session-with-Foreigner (an inevitable part of the tourist´s day in India, whether you spend it refusing or embracing your new-found celebrity), including the family captured here; our encounter with whom, for all the sterness of their photo-faces, was almost literally like being enveloped in a wall of beaming, glittering colour as we wandered back from the ghats.

Phenomenal food accosted us at every turn - I developed a fairly serious morning addiction to masala dosa breakfasts in the brilliant Indra Cafe (that only Bombay was subsequently able to deliver on) and flaming hot Veg Hyderabadis and seemingly endless rice meal dishes served on huge banana-leafs in Hotel RRR on Gandhi Square. Tobes had managed to go what we call ´full Indian´ by this stage ( a very useful term which can connote for us either `authentically Indian´or its polar-opposite,´typical-but-slightly-inexplicable-backpacker-in-India-behaviours-see-ludicrous-atire-very-loosely-`inspired´-by-subcontinental-dress-but-which-no-Indian-would-ever-dream-of wearing) in the sense of eating with his right hand. While I, sadly, never quite manage to lose the cutlery in its entirety for rice dishes... God I want a masala dosa. Really. I may need to Google south Indian food in Patagonia right now, the craving has hit me like a wall.

And beer came back! Glorious, cold lager sipped on the roof of the Hotel Shilpashri looking down on the square at night. Go to Mysore, man. It´s pretty great. Even our passage from Kerala felt plain sailing, so easily are our travel ambitions fulfilled these days - aircon inter-state bus! with free blanket to use and bottled water! and clean! and clean(ish) toilets in the bus station!! Ah, South India had us even then, with its citrusy flaming sambars and chutneys and its smooth highways. 

Mysore´s Devaraja Marlet is a metropolis of the senses, all organised by produce (the onion and coconut line, the flower line, the banana line and so on). Heads turned, we actually shopped in the city - a beautiful jasmine and rose garland, silks all round and a box of essential ois from sandalwood and black jasmine to waterlily and neroli. The latter was sourced from a stall run by the engaging Amil and Azam, incongruously, as they laughed, on the onion and coconut line: phoning down the alley for chai, the guys welcome customers from around the world for tea and banter while they guide you through their heady wares, offering thick volumes of recommendations to which your own picture and message is added if you choose to buy.

So we were smitten and could probably have whiled away longer in this friendly, relaxed town, luxuriating modestly in its embarrassment of historical and sensual riches. But it was time to go; this had just been the perfect city-break (and also our 8 year anniversary). Time to leave the efficient and pleasant pilgrim´s choice, Dasprakash Hotel (if austere and unsmiling - never an issue for us if the the former categories are ticked) for which we´d padded the streets checking five hotels on our first morning in a short-lived bid to stop being lazy and return to a more energetic, discerning backpacker selection process.

A mere twelve hours later on the 6am, 500 rupee public bus we clattered into a dark bus station, secured a 200 rupee rickshaw and disappeared down bumpy roads into the night, our only clue to the sea so tantalisingly close, the faint but growing smell of salt. And by 9pm there we were. Looking out onto the Indian Ocean by night at Nameste Cafe on Om beach, food ordered and beer in hand. I literally exhaled and said `I am very happy to be here´. 

I love travelling in India. But eventually you need a beach. You really, viscerally do. Gokarna is where people headed when Goa got ´too much´and somehow, despite the growth in popularity of the holy town´s gorgeous beaches strung out slightly inaccessably around the headland, Om beach has stayed resolutely tiny in scale. Nameste is its mid-range, there is one upmarket holistic resort hidden expensively from view, and then across the second bay there is a range of small shack restaurant-cum-guesthouses offering basic huts and, well, cement cells is probably the best way to put it. We moved from our first, pre-booked night at Nameste to an oppressively airless hut along the second bay at a quiet, pretty cafe. (You´re basically living on the beach so no big matter, however we did kind of file this room under ´too old for this´and resolve to up our game a little in Goa).

And that was it: for 3 days we swam and ate and drank a few beers in the evening and hiked further along to more remote beaches and swam a bit more... and looked out at this. Seriously, go away and travel - book a ticket somewhere, anywhere, now. I actually found it a bit harder to unwind than I´d expected, as sometime happens; it being hard to lose the tension that comes with Indian travel, however glorious and dynamic it is. And yet. When you casually wonder whether jacking in your job amidst global recession is a sensible move; when you add up the extent to which you´re embroiling yourself in debt and consider the holes in your CV; when you find yourself on the cusp of dysentry with another 10 hours on a bumpy death trap of a bus, breathing in dust and fumes, stared at by a hundred strangers and wondering if all this was such a great idea after all.

You end up on this beach after the sun has set, unable to remember or care that there could be any downpoints whatsoever.

 
***************

Addendum: if all this sounds idyllic, if life sounds too idyllic (even despite the dysentry talk), a reminder that it really is. And that I´m unaccountably, undeservedly fortunate. That among the jasmine and cascading heaps of fresh chillis in Mysore, one of my most abiding memories is this: at Srirangapatnam between sights, grabbing sodas to hide from the afternoon sun, a young girl around 8 or so, gesturing outside the shack for money or food, shrouded in a grubby oversized coat and blanket despite the heat - hair matted, skin peeling and eyes blank, in retreat from her own existence. We gave her some money. But not enough, not even close.The obscene inhumanity of which gets easier within a few days of landing in India than you would ever imagine possible from the West, where such deprivation is miniscule by comparison and hidden from view. And, yes, what could ever be enough? And how could you ever discern to whom and how much? And... But these are excuses. I can´t forget her face - or my shame at not giving more. And I shouldn´t.