Panaji
After the overnight train journey into Goa we arrived a few kilometres away in the state capital Panaji. We got off the train and Mike (the Australian we met in Mumbai) was (somewhat irritatingly) waiting for us, he had intended on getting off further south but decided to follow us (a trait that continued).
One thing we’ve found incredibly useful throughout India are pre-paid taxi booths. You turn up at the booth, give them your destination and they hand you a slip of paper with a fixed price and allocate you a taxi. This saves you getting ripped off to the tune of a couple of hundred rupees per cab.
We turned up at the taxi booth and we got a cab (with Mike and a couple of other guys).We jumped in the taxi and an hour later were checking into the hotel that Laura and I had booked and that the other three had decided to stay at too.
After checking into the room we went out (as a group) for some food. Now the food in Goa was pricey (by comparison to the shit-havens) but still pretty tasty. We didn’t really encounter many local Goan specialty dishes, but fish curry with coconut was pretty nice.
We spent the next few days exploring the town, we found tobacco supplies (a good smoker is always prepared) bleach and hair dye (to bleach my hair) and generally milled about for a couple of days. We took in the local sights (consisting of a church) and people watched.
Irritatingly, whenever we went out and Mike and the other two tagged along they expected me to negotiate all taxi fares, speak to the locals and generally be there dog’s body. Whilst speaking Hindi is an asset Goans speak ‘Konkani’, it’s much the same as being able to speak english in France (so almost no help at all). We decided at this point to dump Mike and his compadreas (or do-orst in hindi) as soon as humanly possible. We left on day 3, and caught a local bus to Madagon to catch a further bus to Anjuna.
The local buses in Goa (and as we found later across India) are cheap and comfortable, the bus conductor also often gives up his seat to allow tourists to put their rucksacks somewhere.
We thought we had escaped Mike and crew on the bus to Madagon till they turned up at the last minute, I was hoping that the bus conductor might have tried to charge them 50 Rupees for the journey (we paid 10 each), alas he was honest. We got off the bus at Madagon, and quickly jumped on another local bus to Anjuna.
Anjuna
We got to Anjuna in good time, got off the bus and looked around for a rickshaw to get to our guesthouse. There were a few rickshaws hanging about so initially we weren’t worried about getting a decent price. Now it’s illegal for a rickshaw anywhere in India to operate without a meter. For anyone that has been to India it’s almost a rarity to get into a rickshaw without the driver saying that the meter is broken or not present at all.
<—- (Auto) Rickshaws
I’m going to sidetrack for a while on rickshaws. The best way to work out how much a rickshaw journey should cost is a little research. Each state government publishes the rickshaw fare card (for flag fall and per kilometre) on a quarterly basis in the state gazette which is freely available online. Using a map (probably from your guidebook) you can estimate how much a fare should be. More than likely you’ll pay over the actual rate, but without a prepaid taxi / rickshaw booth in sight this is often you’re only choice.
—–>
To continue, I approached the rickshaw drivers and started to negotiate a price, now the rickshaw drivers in Anjuna would not take anything less than 100 rupees for a 2 minute journey that should have been minimum fare. At the same time Mike and his cronies (I’m getting more disparaging as I write) decided to wait behind me assuming perhaps that I would be negotiating their transportation as well. After rectifying this dillusion I got back to negotiation. I couldn’t get the rickshaw drivers to budge on price so I called the guesthouse we were booked into for some advice. The owner responded by saying that if we headed down the street towards the guesthouse he would give come and meet us, the owner true to his word turned up with his car 30 seconds later and we got a ride to the guesthouse. At the same time we had avoided telling Mike where we were staying, a win-win situation.
The guesthouse was lovely; we were staying in the dorm for a little over £2 a night each which was relatively clean and spacious. We did a spot of shopping for Laura to acquire some harem trousers (or slag pants). Shopping in tow we went back to the guesthouse and showered etc, as it was getting towards dusk we went out to go and see the beach, we had some food and settled for the evening.
The following day we did much the same and went out for a few beers in a local eatery / bar. We were sat eating our dinner when a hippy (with a strong resemblance to iggy pop) walked over to say hello. We said hi, and asked him how long he had been in Goa his response was something akin to
“I don’t do small talk, how far have you come in your life, I do yoga and meditation, I have no responsibilities, I’m not trying to take your woman..”
This went on for a while, and we eventually managed to get rid him. Travelling is all about meeting people but there is a certain type of person that I can’t bear that we seem to have encountered throughout India (and Nepal). It’s the pretentious hippy idiot that wears clothing akin to a circus performer and then ascribes scientific terminology to religious/spiritual beliefs (mainly that we have three eyes, various shakras respond to magnetism generated by certain yoga teachers of a specific level (scientology???) and crystals in our skulls – much like the last Indiana Jones film, utter shite).
Anyway, we went to the beach a couple of times (the beach in Anjuna is rocky below the water line and leaves you with a diesel like taste in your mouth), went swimming (no sunbathing as we are taking an anti-malarial that makes your skin paper thin and thus easily burnt) and relaxed.
Laura got hassled by every lady on the beach to come look at a shop. One woman’s response to “No, thanks” was “Why Not!!” in an extremely offended tone. The best response from a shop keeper was “Is my shop not good enough for you?!”. For any ladies reading the blog it’s also worth mentioning that groups of Indian teenagers/men take holidays to Goa specifically to stare / perv at western women sunbathing. This normally consists of a slow walk past a couple of times, once the lads have spotted someone they like, they literally stand there till you tell them to go screw.
After Iggy, we some nice people at the guesthouse, a Swedish girl called ‘Ziggy’ (honestly, I’m not making this up) and a couple of lads from York (nice to hear a northern accent once a while). We drank quite a bit of Indian rum (called ‘Old Monk’).
Three days before we were meant to leave Mike (sans compadres) turned up at our guesthouse and decided to stay in a dorm (he was the epitome of the fart that follows you into the room).We did our best to ignore him, however when we were booking our next train to Kannur in Kerala, he overheard us and tried to book onto the same train, luckily he was too late and he booked to go to Kochin (further south in Kerala) a couple of days later.
Mike in his own words was “a traveller that really liked Thailand, sitting in a bar and talking to other travellers”. We didn’t read too much into it initially but after a few conversations this should have been “I like to go on extended holiday’s to Thailand and sit in a bar, talk only to other western travellers and treat locals like shit”. I’m pretty certain that he despised India; I don’t think that India is for everyone, it can be a really hard place to travel but if you hate it, why not leave? Mike literally treated any locals he came in contact with (mostly in restaurants/bars/trains and buses) like crap. I can honestly say that I sympathise with every Indian that he encountered.
We left Anjuna on the bus (again to Madagon) and got to a train station where caught the train to Kerala (blessedly free of Mike). The guesthouse (Anjuna Palms) owner and his wife were lovely, and I managed to get one of my favourite Indian dishes (Egg Bhurji – scrambled eggs with chilli, garlic and curry powder and onion eaten for breakfast) almost every day. I don’t think I’ll be heading back to Goa anytime soon; it was too touristy, with too little to do.