Goa

• Landing in Goa after our goodbye to A.J. (1-hour flight), we made our way into the hot hot sun. Goa is something close to paradise if you love heat, relaxation, and Bob Marley. Patrick (our bed+breakfast owner’s son) picked us up in a car playing Casey Kasem top 20 list of American songs. It was refreshing to drive along beautiful beaches and hear The Killers et al.
• Our bed and breakfast was called Martha’s (after the proprietor), and the sign in front advertises the restaurant’s amazing waffles. The place was the smallest, quietest, and dantiest one we stayed at, and we quite enjoyed ourselves. Martha and her family ran the bed+breakfast, and so her two Daughters handled the restaurant and checkins, her son took care of taxi services and motorcycle rentals (I think?), and her husband helped with all sorts of odds-and-ends. They were warm people, and really tried to make us feel at home (next to their farm with pigs running around!). They said they would remember us if we ever contacted them again, since Meredith is such a unique name. We’ll see:).
• While Goa is one of the smallest Indian states, the beaches and spice plantations, which, aside from Panaji, its capital, are the only sights, are along a four-hour stretch of land.
• Almost everyone travels by motorcycle or scooter here, and not renting one put us at a great disadvantage, since taxis couldn’t be haggled with (they were called by the bed and breakfast, and knew we had no way to get to a place where we were in a position to haggle). Meredith and I were scaredycats, so we took the hit anyway.
• The beaches were amazing. I’ve never been to the bahamas, but I imagine that’s why people go to these places. Meredith and I burn easily, and so we avoided them for the most part except for to take pictures and watch the sun set.
• Since the Bahamas are so close to the US, it makes more sense for Americans to go there. As such, we saw three other Americans (in one group), and the rest of the folks where European. Mostly German and British folks.
• Since the place was more of a resort-like area, and the primary customers where “rich” foreigners, the food was vastly more expensive than it was elsewhere. This meant we spent $8-10 equivalent for two of us on a dinner or lunch. The meals were great though - we had a rice with fish curry dish, Xacuti, fish tandoori, all of which are in some way specialities of Goa.
• Everywhere else in India, it’s not uncommon to see a shrine set up by the side of the road by some religious group with flowers hanging around the diety. Since Goa has way more Christians, it was common to see a shrine to a crucifix by the side of the road, also with flowers hanging around it.
• Side note: the reason Goa has so many Christians is that until 1961 (formally before that), it was a trading colony of the Portuguese. Many more people spoke perfect English (I don’t know how one follows the other), and everyone we spoke with that spoke excellent english was Christian.
• Since we didn’t spend much time on the beach, we took a taxi into Panaji, the capital. We tried a walking tour around the city, and got lost a bit, but it was all through fun places to see. I had coconut juice (we really let loose here—we were no longer concerned for our health for some reason:)) out of a coconut. Coconuts are way more green and smooth on the outside, and the juice is very tart. The vendor charged 20 rupees (40 cents) for one, and I got the pleasure of seeing him hack the top off of it to make a sipping hole with a machette. Our walk brought us to many beautiful churches (some of the cleanest white buildings we saw in India). We also walked through smaller neighborhoods, crossed a river a few times, and found a humungous temple dedicated to the monkey god Hanuman. The building was either salmon pink or orange depending on the paint used (and the colorblindness). Meredith pointed out some flower-shaped relief sculptures at the entrance that had half of their petals broken off. The solution in this case was to paint the petals back on, meaning that half of the flower was a sculpture on a wall, and half of it was paint on the wall. Really interesting way to fix things that need to “just work.”
• To save money, we found an autorickshaw to take us back to our hotel. He was waaaay cheaper than the taxi (I’m embarrassed to say how much the taxi was, but the ballpark was $10, whereas the autorickshaw was ~$4). The ride each was to Anjuna beach (our hotel) was 30 highway minutes, so perhaps the cost was justified in petrol.
• Upon heading back to our hotel, we went down to the beach to see the sun set—beautiful! We then walked back and wondered why everything was so dark (made it hard to find restaurants). Finally, we walked into a completely pitch-black one. They explained that the power was out everywhere, but that they could still prepare dinner for us. We decided to give it a shot. This place was classy, and we were not dressed our part, but we were the only ones there, so no biggie. They made veggie Lasagna and veggie Musaka, both of which were Goan takes on the meals (unexpected vegetables, cumin seeds and the works). Afterward, we asked them for a candle (I had a flashlight, but we wanted to be protected from motorcycles in both directions walking home), and they fashioned us a candle holder our of a soda can. Rock!
• Since most of the visitors we saw were European (either college-age or burnt-out hippies in better shape than us), our Goan beaches catered to their likings: beach-front raves, and yogurt. The raves were an all-night thing (even though being caught with drugs can land you in jail for a long time), and even featured fireworks (how?!?!). A German bakery we visited (I swear it was hard to find a south Indian restaurant around here) let you sit on the ground, drink various expensive teas, and eat mounds of yogurt and fruit. While I won’t say Goa made me more enlightened, it was fun to witness the place.
• The train to Mumbai was the Konkan Kanya express, which goes along the Konkan coastline. This is supposed to be the most beautiful coastline in the world, but the train (in both directions) for the most part travels at night, so you don’t actually get to see anything. We had some great food on the train for 80 cents each. The first dish was a standard vegetarian dish with dal, rice, some vegetables, chapati, and pickle (mango in brine). The second and more interesting dish was veg manchurian (every vegetarian dish is called ‘veg’), which was some amazing sauce and hardly recognizable balls of something which I would say is doughy, but I can’t be sure. It ranks up there as one of the best dishes I had on the trip, but I honestly can’t put my finger on what it was.