GOA!

I've just waded through water on the shores of a long, overcrowded goa beach, and waded through the guys asking "darling, how about a jet ski?" or "how about some cocaine?" i kid you not. I have, to your approval I'd guess, declined on both offers. I"m sitting in an "internet cafe" more like the kitchen of someone's house, looks like, on a side road off the beach, you get two blocks away from the main drag and you feel like you are in inidia again, not a sea of rotund white whale-like russian tourists wearing gstring bikinis.... yeah. india? odd. all I can say is there must be some really good rates from moscow to goa, though where are these people in the rest of india? must just come here for a cheap beach vacation. heh. Not to sound like a hater. or a "superior tourist." I've been basically living life in the lap of luxury myself. well not really luxury, i still don't have ac or a tv, but im within 100 meters of the beach for god's sake. I"ve been galavanting around Anjuna beach for the last 4 days, (Goa), and now today I moved all of 4 kilometers south to Calagute/Baga beaches and changed hotels to "Johnny's Hotel" where Johnny and his wife and son have given me a good room with a view of the ocean and tons of palm trees out my window and hot water! I moved from Anjuna because it was very quiet (which is nice in theory or when you have friends) and very spread out (which is fine if you are on a scooter, which a zillion people are, a lot of them foreigners and you don't even have to show a license..... seriously. So there are all these people driving around trying to remember to stay to the left of the road... I chose to pass on that. But I did ride on the back of my friends' scooters this week, and it was fine... except one time trying to park we rolled over... but only a big old scrape on my leg (and my friend is an ER doctor so it was all good! haha) but im done with the scooters now, so don't be worried.

Yeah, so I've been hanging out with 2 guys who live in Australia, one from Perth, Rob, and one from the States living in Alice springs and working as an ER doctor... Steve. These guys were just superb guys. Awesome... met them the frist night I came to goa, which was a total bout of good luck, because I had taken a train from fort Kochin in Kerala overnight to  Gokarna, a peaceful beachtown, and in the morning there I was talking to some old indian guys on the train when i asked the conductor how much longer to gokarna, and he said we'd just passed it! For the first time in India's history, the train was 1 hour early!! what?! so i decided just to forget it, i didn't want to backtrack, so i just moved right on to goa. I think it was a fine move, I really can't be bothered moving every day now I have just too much stuff and my energy is lower, and the pace of life slows down considerably when all you do every day is sample Goan curries, swim in the tranquil waves, and have a kingfisher pint by the sea every day. Yeah, life continues to be sweet. The three of us really just had the greatest time, hitting the super huge flea market on wednesday in Anjuna beach.  I helped my friends find some souveniers and yes, maybe picked up a couple more textiles for myself.  Steve and i sent some stuff home yesterday in the post, i really ran out of room! (and he is from NH and was wearing a newton south baseball hat cuz his bro used to be a guidance counselor there! what? such a small world!!)
Every day we went to Vagator, the neighboring village/beach and went swimming by the cliffside, on top of which is a fort overlooking the beach. Every day we bought a coconut from a fruit seller woman named Lotus, every day we'd rate the coconuts as being better or worse than the day before. Really important topics I have to deal with now, gotta say. 
Every morning I am compiling creative breakfast choices, ive gotten in the habit of doing a 2 fried eggs with vegetable curry combo, with an avocado shake and a cup of chai to top it off. Another favorite for dinner is tikka calamari, oh my god you are in heaven. There are some really trippy looking restaurants, one we were eating in a little hut with these weird globe lights, and these giant mushroom statues, kinda like eating in alice in wonderland, you can see how the place both attracts and was furthered on by aging hippies, or maybe some new hippies too. There are a lot of middle aged foreigners looking like they live here at least semi permanently, going to the grocery store on their scooters, etc... part of the society here, it is interesting. 

so i said goodbye to steve and rob today, they took a train to mumbai and might be staying in his girlfriends' uncles' palace out there... hey hey, nice work if you can get it, and we are thinking i might meet them up there for a good thanksgiving dinner, and i'll be with a fellow american! So im thinking i might roll into mumbai on the 27th, would be nice to not be alone for thanksgiving dinner. Though i wonder what we'll eat, i m thinking a tandoori chicken and maybe some weird fruit chutney instead of cranberry sauce? we'll see. 

The last time that I wrote, I was on my way to Allepey for the houseboat. Wow that was fun, it was a real deluxe boat. unfortunately most of our people were coming from the ashram and didn't arrive till 4 so we only had limited time to really cruise along the water, but it was basically a party of 13 people on a beautiful boat, sound system and everything! we danced on it, talked, had amazing keralan food made by our own chefs, and they even balanced 4 cups n the tops of their heads for us after we gave them a rum or 2, was pretty funny. The next couple of days, I headed up to fort kochin, where I went to a martial arts performance of special keralan martial arts, and i saw another katakhali show like i did in kumily, complete with the natural green facepaint and the live music, pretty cool, and kochi was really interesting. portuguese influence from the days of the spice trade, it reminded me a little of the french quarter of pondicherry, it was very quiet and semi european. There were huge chinese fishing nets hanging over the pier, and there is a quarter called jewtown, though only 18 jews still live there! There I saw a beautiful synogogue, and couldn't resist buying a wooded "malabar box" like my mother bought on her trip 35 years ago, its gorgeous but totally huge and heavy, and the hanging candleholder i bought didn't help matters either! but they are totally unique and I swear my apartment is going to rock. I happened to bump into Sarah, a londoner I met briefly in the ocean in varkala, and we moved right in to the same room together! it was great to get to know her as well, man all of these great people i'll tell you, you really meet some great ones while travelling. i've really enjoyed the company of so many of these people, in fact tonight my friend Lea from the ashram is in goa with her husband, about an hour away statying at a really nice hotel, so i'm going to join them for dinner there tonight! how nice! love it. 

Anyway sarah and I spent a couple of days together, having amazing dinners at this place right on the boat jetty, and one day i took another cruise through the backwaters which i was really glad i did because i got to see so much more than on the houseboat. It was a small boat, and there were 4 of us, 3 germans and myself, and two guys rowing us around. we got to float through the smallest of the canals, surrounded as far as the eye could sea in a flourish or green foliage, palm leaves, and the sound of crickets, and the occaional cow standing in the swamplike marshes, so surreal. And we got to see how they use the coconuts to make rope, etc. kerala means land of the coconuts and you can see why. the little villages on the waters edge were tranquil, and people would be washing their clothes or even taking a bath in the water, everything was very quiet. that was a great day. 

I will share some tremendously bad news though, waited till the end of the email because i wanted to stress how great everything has been but when i left kochi, i went to the train station, and in the time of less than 5 minutes on the platform, someone stole my camera. 500 pictures, some videos, all my pics of kerala and my friends, i was just gutted. i still don't konw how it happened, it is mind boggling, and i discovered it as soon as i got on the train. oh my god was i sad. but what can you do? i have to remind myself it is a material item, and though i like to take pics, we never look at them every day anyway and no one can take away my memories. its still mad dissapointing though. so now i have purchased a seriously ghetto old school film camera for 10 bucks, and 8 rols of film and free batteries, totalling 30 bucks. i'll get it all put on disks in mumbai so they'll be digital files, but the insurance deductable is more than the cost of the camera, so i'll probably be buying yet another new one when i get home. terrible.And im using an old school nokia phone from 2001 that barely holds charge! me and technology. im just lucky nothing else was stolen, i had all my important papers/iphone under my shirt, thankfully!

Train platforms haven't really brought me much luck... one time Camille and I (forgot to put this in an old blog, cant' believe it) were trying to get on a womans compartment of a train, and we were riding general calss, and the train pulled up after we'd waited for 2 hours, and we had asked where the compartment was going to be, and he said all the way to the left. well, when it pulled up it was all the way to the right! and we had all of our bags on us and so we started to run all the way down the platform when the train started moving! so camille jumped on the first car we could, and then it was moving faster and faster and i screamed for this guy to help me, and i had to take off al lmy bags cuz the weight was pulling me back, and my magazine fell into the ample space between the tracks and the platform, and i was worried my leg would follow suit. but the guy got my stuff in, and then i realized i had no choice but to make a flying leap into the train, grabbing his arm with one hand and the rail on the side of the train with the other i hoisted myself in, hanging on the side of the train i brought myself in on my stomach. i shook for about an hour, it was absolutely terrifying. i am never going without a designated seat/car again!!! ever on this trip! it was enough for me. 

ok i have to go walk a couple of kilometers back to my beach house and get ready to go to my friends for dinner, hope i will get to writing in a couple of days again! miss you all getting to the end kind of excited but it will be weird at the same time. xxx arj