Goa-The Beginning....

I have always heard how amazing Goa is. Everyone who went there, especially around the 90’s, when the trance party scene was at its peak, raved about it after they returned from raving in it. Later I heard about what a cultural Mecca it was, the Goan cuisine was unique to India, the beaches were largely beautiful and unspoiled, and spirituality, peace and free love still infused the air from the huge hippy influx in the 70’s. In fact it was the one place in India I have ever heard much of anything about really.

So of course when we got to India I had to go there. Sunny and I booked a hostel the second week we were in Bombay. We were thrilled because it was only 7 euro a night. This was not even the cheapest one there. I found one for 1.20 euro a night, but concerns regarding its cleanliness were expressed on some online reviews, and anyway I don’t trust anything that cheap. Robin’s helper, Cecelia, procured us some train tickets-sleeper coach with air conditioning. This too we found to be very cheap-40 something euro for both of us return.

So we got up at 5:30am the day we had to leave. Robin’s driver, Sanjay, kindly called for us early on, at 6:30, and brought us to the train station. Cecelia also very kindly met us at the train station to show us the right train to get on, as the train stations in India can be chaotic and seem incomprehensible to Westerners.

The train station was scary. It was filthy, everything, including the one small shop stall type thing, was brown with dirt, dusty and crowded. Within ten minutes I was inundated with people begging. Sunny was relatively spared, both because he is male and because he is tall, but first women and then children were coming up to me, touching my arms to get attention when I didn’t hear them. Cecelia began shooing them away. Before we got onto the train, when we moved down the track a little, small stunted children who were so emaciated that their actual heads were thin began to come up begging. One of them, a boy of about 8 or 9 maybe, had a small skinny listless baby wrapped in rags in his arms. I have been warned about giving them money, there are warnings also in a lot of the travel books such as the Lonely Planet not to give them money as some of them are harmed by adults to elicit your sympathies, as unbelievable as that sounds, and giving them money only encourages this. You are supposed to give them food only, and then direct them to an El Shaddai feeding programme. Well, I was a foreigner in the depths of culture shock and I had no idea where the nearest feeding programme would be. I felt like an evil shit not giving them anything though. Everyone says “Just don’t think about it”. I’m still not sure how that one works.

The train arrived. Late. Cecelia began running and yelling over her shoulder to us pointing out our carriage. She told us to get on quickly. Everyone was scrambling on in total chaos, people stepping over people and on parts of people. I got on first, and was swept up in a sea of pushing, hurrying men. Sunny was a few people behind me. I heard him yelling “ This isn’t ours. Cecelia says it’s the next one”. I quite literally would have been swept into the train in a tsunami of people if I hadn’t turned around, reached out and grabbed onto Sunny’s rucksack and held on like a crab as he jumped off the train. We got onto the correct train carriage as directed by Cecelia. The carriage hall smelled of urine.

When we got into our train cabin I felt a wave of panic. It was claustrophobic and quite dirty. The reason we had gotten the train was so that we could see some scenery as we travelled. The window was completely covered over with an opaque yellow plastic film on the outside that you could just about make out shapes through. The cabin was tiny, and it was quite obviously old and not clean. Ten minutes after we sat down I was bitten by some type of insect on my elbow which I killed before even thinking. My whole elbow stung and pain began shooting down my arm to my last two fingers. I started to freak out completely as I thought I had been bitten by a poisonous spider or something and scrambled around trying to find the corpse so I could identify the culprit. I finally found its crumpled up bug body on the seat and had a good close look at it. It appeared to be a largish yellow ant.


The train journey was terrifying. I normally like trains and have never actually feared them for any reason. However, in recent years there have been several bombings of trains in India, and for reasons best known only to strange people who bomb trains to pass the time, they tend to favor the Bombay to Goa route. Hundreds of people were killed every time and the last one was as recent as 2006. Knowing all this naturally made me slightly edgier than normal, and I am not generally noted for my lack of edginess. Also the doors on the train were wide open all the time the train was moving-indeed they could not be closed. To go to the bathrooms, which incidentally were unspeakably horrific, one had to pass the open doors on both sides while the train was moving at speed and risk getting flung out if one accidentally stumbled or the train changed course suddenly. The bathrooms were filthy and smelly, but I kind of expected that, so, while they were disgusting, they didn’t shock me. But this next thing did.

A short time after the journey commenced a staff member came around to all the first class cabins to see if anyone wanted to order food. We didn’t understand him at first, but we picked up the word “eggs” and finally copped on. We had packed sandwiches and crisps for the journey as we were pretty sure that Indian train food was potentially lethal. We managed to refuse breakfast but the man really wanted us to have something and he started barking words at us, one of which I understood to be “chicken”. Sunny didn’t understand what he was saying at all and ended up nodding his head and saying “Yes’, the way you do when you have no idea what someone is saying to you but you want to humour them so that they will go away. Delighted, the little man whipped out a notepad and pencil, wrote down our “order”, and departed. I turned to Sunny, grimacing. “You know we’ve just inadvertently ordered Salmonella for lunch, don’t you?”
A while later I realized I needed to use the “bathroom”. I tried my best to not think about it, but it was two hours into a twelve hour train journey, and I had drunk a cup of coffee, a Coke and about 750mls of water already. I went out into the rolling hallway, avoided being flung out the train doors at high speed and just outside the bathroom looked down and got a nasty surprise. Placed neatly in a row on the urine soaked, faeces smeared and thoroughly unhygienic floor, just outside two of the worst bathrooms I have ever seen, were the dinners for this section of the train, complete with little boxes of rice awaiting distribution.
We had had no intention of eating it anyway, but the shock for me was that someone had seen fit to put food intended for human consumption on that floor, in this place, at all. Another wave of pure culture shock washed over me. I hurried off to report my findings to Sunny.

The little man came around shortly afterwards with metal dishes of some type of chicken in a red sauce and boxes of rice. Under normal circumstances it actually probably would have smelled quite nice, but after seeing where it had been, the smell made me feel sick. We had been in India long enough to know if he came back and saw them untouched he would badger us and demand to know why we hadn’t eaten. Sunny carefully mixed up some of the rice into the mix and then scraped both containers out into the bin and tied a double knot in the top of the bin bag. Our food dishes were collected without incident, and thankfully, we weren’t tricked into ordering supper. I couldn’t help but feel guilty though; starving children begging from us at the start of the journey and here we were throwing away food. It would take more than guilt to make me eat it though. It would take semiautomatic weapons pressed to my temple, in fact.

The train kept going through the longest tunnels I had ever been through in my life, and the blackest. There didn’t seem to be any track lights or signs or anything. It was vaguely reminiscent of Space Mountain in Disneyworld. We would plunge downwards sometimes so quickly that our ears would pop, and not infrequently we could hear what sounded like showers of rocks and pebbles hitting the train roof. Sunny kept insisting it was just water, but it very distinctly sounded like stones. I started to wonder about the structural integrity of the tunnels and became acutely claustrophobic thinking of all those tonnes of tall Indian mountain pressing down on us. Then I began to think about how Indians drive, and began to panic a bit. We were probably not even going to survive long enough for the psychos to detonate all the bombs that were on board. We were either going to crash and die in a blazing inferno trapped in a tunnel under a mountain, or the tunnel was going to collapse on us and everyone would die but me because I would be trapped in an air pocket and die slowly and painfully over a period of about a week. A cockroach the size of my big toe sauntered past me in a leisurely fashion. I cried for a few minutes and then decided to take half a Valium. I normally only take these on flights as I hate to fly but if ever a situation warranted tranks, then this did. Sunny found it amazing that I was so freaked out on a train, because usually I reserve my travel related hysterics for turbulent airplane journeys, but did his best to try and chill me out a bit, and killed a fair few bugs in the cabin too.

At one point when Sunny had disappeared somewhere, I sat up and blew my nose, and was rewarded with laughter from the open doorway of our cabin. I turned to look at my bestower of applause. It was one of the cleaning staff on the train. He had a bucket and a mop with him. I wondered what he actually did with them as the place was filth incarnate. He seemed very excited to see a Western woman expelling nasal mucus into a tissue and started talking to me in Indian while smiling and laughing a lot and gesturing. I smiled back nervously. He then began to sing to me. I laughed in a sort of “what the fuck is going on?” kind of way but he didn’t stop. Eventually he didn’t get the response he was looking for, whatever that may have been, and abruptly shut my cabin door with a bang. I waited till I was sure he was gone and went in search of my husband.

Sunny thought the best thing ever was to try and take photos of the Indian landscape by hanging out of the open train doors while the train was blasting along at 100km/hr. Once I found out what he was up to, I insisted on coming along and held onto his back pocket with one hand and a handrail near the bathroom door with the other. I really wished he would stop, especially when he jerked back in quite suddenly once. “What?” I inquired as the carriage abruptly darkened and the view outside became black. “Tunnel” was the reply, as cool as a breeze even though he had almost been decapitated. There is such a thing as too relaxed, you know?

After about eleven hours we started to wonder if we were there yet or if we were long since past our stop and heading down to the tip of the country or what. The name of our stop was Thivim, but since none of the stops seemed to employ electric lighting, we couldn’t see where we were when we did stop. Since we had our delightful opaque yellow coating over our window, we had to utilize the good old-fashioned technique of hanging out of the train doors as we approached a stop and peering out into the gloom for a clue as to our whereabouts. I was wearing a reasonably low-cut top as it had been a hot day, once, as I hung out of the train door staring into a darkened little train station, a couple of Indian men that were sitting there got up quickly and began advancing towards the train door talking loudly and staring at my white chest. I made a hasty retreat back into the cabin and pulled the door closed.

A German man in the cabin next to us called in once or twice to check where we thought we were. He had been tracking where we were by means of times between stations. He showed us on a map he had with him the names of the stops and he had carefully pencilled in the exact times to the second that it had taken to get from one to the next. Germans always seem to do stuff like this when they’re abroad. Unfortunately he was missing a few and wasn’t sure what the last stop had been, but he was pretty sure that we were either past Goa or running late. He eventually hunted down a staff member and managed to find out that there were three stops to go until Thivim. Eventually we reached Thivim and the same staff member kindly went down the carriage yelling “Thivim! Thivim!” and yanking open all our doors so we knew we were to get off. The train stopped for about 8 milliseconds and we hopped off as it began to move away again. I looked back and saw the Germans jump off it while it was still moving.

Thivim was pitch black, no lighting anywhere and we all had to walk through dust and grass and plants along the train track in darkness for a bit before reaching a dimly lit tiny little station. Cecelia had told us to go to the stationmaster as soon as we arrived and find out when our return journey was as it had not been printed on our ticket. We did this, and an unfriendly looking stationmaster barked loudly at us that it was a one way ticket only and there was no return journey on this ticket. When we protested that we had paid for a return, he just said “No! no!” really loudly. This discouraged further protests and we left. I was secretly thrilled because that meant we wouldn’t have to get the Train O’ Terror back to Bombay.

Out the front of Thivim station was a lot of taxis, rickshaws and not a whole lot else. We soon found that we were about 20km from anywhere in Goa. We bumped into the Germans again, who suggested that we share a taxi since we were all bound for Anjuna. There were three of them however, and no taxi was big enough for five people, so we had to go in two rickshaws.

A rickshaw in India is a tiny three wheeled vehicle with a roof. One wheel is in the front and two in the back. It looks a little like the offspring that would result if a car and a motorbike mated and the petrol fuelled union was fruitful. The mule of motor vehicles. The motor makes a sound like a rabid lawnmower. It’s very bouncy with hard seats and not well balanced and it goes without saying that there are no seatbelts or airbags or safety features in general.. Safety does not appear to be a huge priority in India; I guess if there are that many people somewhere there isn’t as big an outcry when someone falls off the perch a little early. I don’t know. It was quite fun to ride in one though, and I’m not being sarcastic. There were absolutely no streetlights and we bounced all over the dark, uneven road and several times into the path of oncoming cars who made no effort to avoid us whatsoever and honked their horns as if to say “Don’t make me kill you”. We always managed to swerve away again at the last second and continue. The rickshaw driver kept up a steady stream of cheerful conversation with an accent like Apu from the Simpsons. Brilliant.

We arrived at our hostel which was called The Orange House. Because it was orange. It was built in a Portuguese style and had a large pile of sand in front with five or six dogs lying in it. The proprietors were very friendly, nice people and our room was ok as well, although I noted with some dismay that we didn’t have air conditioning. We had a ceiling fan instead which did reasonably well. We also had a fair sized balcony to ourselves with some wrought iron benches and tables. Since we had only eaten sandwiches that day we decided we should go and get some food. Sunny managed to pick up a few Kingfishers (the local beer) and some bottled water at the shop next to the hostel, but though we could now be watered, we still needed feeding. We asked the hostel owner where we could get some grub and found out the only thing open this time of night was a Domino’s pizza down the road somewhere which he assured us delivered until midnight. We decided we’d like to see a little bit of the place we’d been through all the circles of Hell to get to. He looked a bit dubious when we said we wanted to walk.

In retrospect I can see why. We were actually in the middle of nowhere once we left the small cluster of shop, hostel, church and internet café where we were staying. The roads were dirt tracks with no streetlights and everywhere there were packs of dogs barking loudly at us. One pack numbered about twenty. I’m not afraid of dogs. But I am afraid of rabies and we hadn’t had rabies shots before we left. Some of the dogs had open sores from infected patches of mange on their backs that could be seen when you got close enough. I scanned them fearfully in the gloom to see if I could detect any frothing at the mouth. We kept walking and turned several times at darkened crossroads in the middle of nowhere, and I began to silently panic a bit. When the hounds weren’t baying all you could hear were tropical insects like cicadas creaking and cricking and sometimes screeching at each other. At one stage we were walking down a long dirt road in the pitch blackness of the night, no light anywhere so that we kept bumping into each other, and I had to say it. “Are we lost in the middle of India, Sunny?” Sunny assured me that he probably knew the way back although Domino’s Pizza was looking a little unlikely, and agreed to ask directions if we chanced upon another human being out here. I knew then we must be pretty fucked, because men in general, and Sunny in particular, don’t ask directions unless in extremis.

We came to another crossroads and in the darkness I could make out the shape of a wagon stacked with bags and various vegetables to one side of the road. It seemed like a strange thing to be at a dirt track crossroads in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. We got a little closer and Sunny exclaimed “Oh look, we can ask him!”
“Him” was the most terrified looking man I’d ever seen, a very dark skinned Indian man wearing some light coloured clothes, a sort of strange hat, and a look of frozen dread on his face as he stared at us, completely horror stricken at seeing two of the palest creatures he’d probably ever seen loom up to his stall out of nowhere at midnight and start gibbering at him in a foreign language as the starlight glinted off our bluish white Irish skin. When Sunny asked him for directions I actually think the man wet his pants. He kept shaking his head and stammering and backing up until he was actually against the hedge and starting to mash himself into it a little. The man’s desperate prayers to be delivered from this terror were answered shortly, as a motorbike suddenly zig-zagged up to us and a voice yelled “You want TAXI?”.
Depending on what situation you happen to be in, this can be the most beautiful phrase in any language in the world.

After a brief discussion concerning our desire to find Domino’s Pizza and our complete failure to do so thus far, we hopped on the back of this enterprising young man’s motorbike and began zipping back through the barking, snarling darkness. This time though, I was much happier, as even the twenty-strong dog pack scattered when it saw a motorbike hurtling towards it. We were deposited at a Domino’s Pizza place just sitting there in the middle of Indian darkness with absolutely nothing else around it, as though America mistakenly dropped it here out of a spaceship when they were seeding the world with K-Marts and Starbucks’. Surreal didn’t begin to describe it. The young guy on the motorbike, who was patently not a taximan, charged us 100 rupees for the ten minute ride. We were glad to give it to him, even though, when we saw him face to face in the light, we realized he was flaming drunk. However, even if I had known this I still would have gotten on that bike.

We managed to find our way back again with no trouble, and after a beer to cope with the trauma, went to bed. Sunny flopped onto the bed and yelped in pain. “Be warned. It’s extremely…firm”, he muttered, and turned over. “Ow”, and turned back again, looking upset. I got in-well technically I got on as it was so hard it didn’t give at all under my weight. I supposed it would be good for my back. I had to get off again to put the ceiling fan on high and close the windows to keep out the mosquitos, and then clambered on again, and hoped for sleep. Tomorrow we’d hopefully find the ivory white beaches and the hippy markets and the authentic local restaurants specializing in Goan cuisine and it would all be worth it.