Cloudy sky on beach
When we woke up this morning and watched through our train
windows, we saw that the landscape here was quite different from that of
northern India. It looked more tropical with many palmtrees and ricefields. We
had finally reached Goa. We had been longing for a beach after all those hot
crowded cities of the past weeks.
Goa is former portugese colony with a mostly roman-catholic
population. It has nice beaches and a friendly climate. In the sixties it became
popular among hippie-travellers.
After leaving the train we took a riksha to Colva, a
village near the coast. It took us a while to find a room there. Our riksha
driver had recomended Hotel Colmar. This was a rather luxurious hotel close to
the beach with nice bungalows and a beautiful garden. We first thought that this
one would be too expensive, but the prices were down because it was low season.
On the beach near our hotel there were a lot of small dead
fish floating in the water and laying on the shore. Colva is an old fishermens
village. When we walked a bit further we found a clean beach. Just like
everywhere else in India, there were people selling things on the beach. Mostly
women and chldren selling fruit and hip clothes. But there were not that many,
and they were quite friendly. Sometimes we talked a bit with them.
Cloudy sky on beach
At the end of the afternoon big dark clouds appeared on the sky. The monsoon period was not yet finnished here. There usualy was a short but heavy shower at the end of the day. When we were back at our hotel it started raining. But we could still sit outside on the porch of our bungalow. The porch was covered and the temperature outside was still nice. This was a very nice place to hang around, listening to our walkman with little speakers and enjoying a beer. In Goa beer is much cheaper and easier to find than in the rest of India. After a while the rain stopped and then we went to the beach to see the beautiful sunset.
Today it was a bit cloudy, but that was no real problem
because I had got a bit of sunburn yesterday on the beach. Nervertheless we went
to the beach again. After all there is not much else to do in Colva. There are
no bars with pinball machines and video-games like in Renesse (a popular beach
near our hometown, which often suffers from bad weather).
In the evening there was a feast in the town. Some kind of
catholic feast called "noite de fama". Three bands would play there in a big
tent. We decided to check it out. It was funny to watch the local youth. The
girls all had beautiful dresses and the boys were wearing suits. And they were
dancing as if their feet were on fire. The bands played mostly hitparade covers,
even songs like "2 Unlimited". Only when they played an old Doors song we
stepped on the dancefloor for a few minutes.
Today we went to the beach again, together with a german guy we had met at the party yesterday. The weather was fine today. In the evening during the usual rainshower we sat on our porch again, enjoying the beer and music.
Just like the days before we went to the beach again. While I
was laying under a palmtree my friend suddenly shouted "Watch out! A snake!". At
the same moment I felt something sliding along my body. I scared and jumped up
and saw a green snake crawling away. The snake stopped near a palmtree. We
followed it and watched it from a distance. Then a couple of indians came by.
They told us that it was a very dangerous snake. They took a large bamboo stick
and clubbed the snake to death. Later I found out that this snake had been a
'green whip viper'.
In the evening, after the rainshower, we went to the beach
again to watch the sunset. This was probably the most beautiful sunset I had
ever seen in my life.
Beautiful sunset
Today we left Colva to go to Chapora, another beach village in
Goa. It was not easy to find a room there. There were quite a few rooms for rent
from local families, but most of them were ugly, primitive and dirty and also
rather expensive. Usualy these kind of rooms are cheaper if you take them for a
couple of weeks or months. Near the beach was a luxurious hotel called 'Vagator
Beach resort'. We went there to check it out, but as we already expected it was
much too expensive for us. At last we found a nice guesthouse not far from the
beach. There were many other travellers here. After looking around for a room
most of them ended up here.
In the afternoon we went to the beach. It was a bit cloudy
today. There were not many people on the beach. But at some moment a tourist bus
came by and for a short period the beach was flooded with indian tourists. One
of the highlights of such bus-tours seems to be watching western tourists on the
beach. Especially if they're hippies or girls in bikini.
In the evening we had dinner in a reastaurant near the
beach. There we met 2 germans that we knew from our bus- tour in Delhi.
This morning the sky was cloudy again. We decided to go visit
the old portugese fort which lay on a hill near the coast. The fort was very
decayed. Only the walls were left of it. But the fort was a good spot to view
the area.
In the afternoon we went to the beach again.
Souvenirs selling girl
Today we wanted to rent motorbikes to make a trip through the
area. We wanted to see some other beaches and also visit Old Goa, the former
colonial capital. But we could not make a good deal with the guy that had them
for rent. So we decided to travel by bus instead. We first went to Old Goa. It
is quite a small village, but it has many big old churches and cathedrals. Some
looked a bit decayed on the outside, but inside they looked splendourous. Later
we went to the beach of Calangute. This was once the main hippie beach, but
nowadays it's a very touristic place. At the end of the afternoon there was a
short rainshower again. We took shelter in a nearby restaurant.
This evening we had dinner in the same restaurant near the
beach as the previous days. Again the beach was deserted at this time of the
day. We had hoped that there would be something to do at saturday-night in
Chapora. For example some kind of beach party. We were a bit bored and each time
we saw somebody walking on the beach we laughed and said "Hey look! A freak! Wow
man, what a weird fellow! He must be in search for a wild beach party with sex
& drugs & rock&roll".
This morning we went to another beach in Chapora. There are a couple of different beaches seperated by rocks and hills. This other beach was a nicer one. It had palmtrees and a couple of restaurants with terraces and even a tiny waterfall which was used as a shower to wash off the salty seawater. There were also more people on this beach. Many young people but also some older people. Were this the old hippies of Goa? At the end of the afternoon some more hippies came to the beach. This time there were some real freaks among them. As if time here had stood still for the last 20 years.
Beach
After the sunset we went back to our guesthouse to rest and take a shower. Then we went back to the beach because we wanted to eat in one of the restaurants there. There had been a nice vivid atmosphere that afternoon. But when we got there they were all closed and all people had left. So we went back to the same old restaurant. Later that night we heard music coming from the village. A rather weird kind of music. We decided to check it out. We thought it could be some kind of hippie party. But we found out that the music came from a hindu temple. However, there was not much to see there. There was no ceremony going on. So decided to leave for a bar to enjoy a couple of beers.
Wooden hut on the beach
This was our last day in Goa. In the morning we went to the same beach as yesterday again. This would probably also be the last beach of our holiday. So we thought we had to take this opportunity. In the afternoon we took a bus to Mapusa. There we had dinner and rested a bit. In the evening we took the night-bus to Bombay. It was very hard to sleep in the bus. The road was often in a bad condition so the bus was shaking a lot.
Early in the morning we entered Bombay. The outskirts of the
city have some huge shantytowns. We left the bus at Victoria Station. We bought
tickets here for the nighttrain to Aurangabad. We wanted to stay there only 1
night so we also left most of our luggage at the station. We decided to spent
the day in Bombay with a bus-tour. The center of Bombay looked quite modern with
many big buildings and broad streets. Quite different from Delhi. The climate
was also much nicer here.
Our bus-tour started with a visit at the 'Gateway of
India', a monumental arch built by the brittish. Then we went to the Prince of
Wales-museum. It was an interresting museum, but he had very little time to
watch it. The next stop was at a parsi firetemple. The parsi's are an old sect
from Persia. Unfortunatly we were not allowed to enter the temple itself. Then
the bus went allong Chowpatty beach and Malabar Hill, the rich neigborhood of
Bombay. There we visited the Gandhi museum and the hanging gardens. These are
called this way because they are built on top of some big water reservoirs. But
it is not really that spectaculair. Then we visited the Nehru museum. This had
several technical exhibitions, which could often be operated by the visitors. It
was very interresting, but again we had little time for it.
After dinner we went back to the train station. We took a
shower in the waiting room. At the end of the evening we entered our train. We
travelled together with a dutch girl who worked in Hyderabad. She was also going
to the Ellora caves.
When we left our train at the station of Aurangabad, we first reserved a ticket for the next nighttrain back to Bombay. Then we took a bus to Ellora. There are 34 different caves which are carved out of the rocks. There are both buddhist, hindu and jain temples. Some are only one little room, but others are very big and complex. At one of the temples we met an indian school class. We talked a bit with them and later they all wanted to get on a picture together with us.
Ellora caves
Back to Aurangabad we hitched a ride with a truck because
there was no bus going back at that moment. We stopped halfway at Daulatabad to
visit a fortress which lay on top of a hill and which was very heavily
fortified. To access the fortress we had to go through a long dark tunnel. Back
in Aurangabad we visited the so called 'poor man's Taj Mahal'. A mausoleum
similar to the famous one in Agra, but much smaller and not as beautiful.
Nevertheless, this would still be a very impressive building if for example it
was located in Holland. But here in India there are just so many of these kind
of buildings.
We had dinner in an almost empty restaurant. When we wanted
to order a beer with our meal the waiter said there was a problem. He told us to
follow him. But we didn't understand why. When we came in the basement we saw
that there was a second room. This one was full of people and had a vivid
atmosphere. It turned out that this was the so called 'permit- room', the only
place where alcohol was allowed to be served.
When we took the train to Bombay we found out we had a
problem. Our seats were reserved twice and there were already other people
sitting there. We tried to find other seats, but the train was very full. Later
the train conductor found 2 seats for us in the corridor near the doors. It were
rather noisy places, but at least we were able to sleep.
This morning we reached Bombay again. This was the last place
of our tour through India. We were gonna stay here a couple of days and then fly
back to Holland.
In Bombay we took a room in the Carlton Hotel. This one was
however not as luxurious as the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, France. Then we walked
around in the neigbourhood. This is an area with many budget hotels and
guesthouses. The shopping street Colaba Causeway was also located very close to
our hotel. We visited a number of souvenir-shops. We hadn't bought any souvenirs
so far, because we didn't want to carry them all around India. In the afternoon
we also visited a big fruit market and the 'Gateway of India', which was located
close to our hotel.
Gateway of India
Later that afternoon we went to Colaba Causeway to look for a tailor. We knew that tailor-made suits were quite cheap in India. I usualy don't wear suits, but it might be handy for special events, like weddings or so. After looking around a bit we found a tailor who could do the job within the next 2 days that we had left in India. After dinner we went to the cinema, where we watched Oliver Stone's "JFK". The price of the tickets was less than 1 US$.
In the morning we visited the Prince of Wales museum again. Now we would have enough time to watch everything we wanted to see. After that we lost some time searching for an American Express office to change some money. Near that office we saw some 'dabbah-wallahs' on the street. These are people who deliver tin boxes with food to people who work in offices. This food is prepared in the morning hours by the wives at home. The dabbah-wallahs collect all those boxes and bring them to the husbands at lunch hour.
Small hindu statues on the street
We had our lunch in a small pizza-restaurant on Colaba Causeway. This place was very popular among travelers. In the afternoon we went shopping for souvenirs again. Apart from the usual kind of souvenirs we also went to a general department store to buy a few common indian things, like a thali-plate and lassi-bowls and several kinds of spices for cooking. These kind of department stores were rather hard to find. After dinner we went to the cinema again. This time we watched "The Fugative".
This was our last day in India. Our plane was about to leave at the end of the afternoon. My friend had got diarrhoea this morning, but he had medicines to keep things sort of under control for the next couple of days. We had to check out from our hotel before 12 o'clock, but we could leave our luggage there, and were also allowed to hang around the rest of the day and even to have a shower. For lunch we had pizza and beer in the same restaurant as yesterday. About halfway the afternoon we went to the tailor again to get our suits. They were ready in the nick of time. We took a taxi to the airport. On the airport we had just enough indian money left to buy ourselves a last meal. Our plane left at 9 o'clock. Also this time we had a stop in Abu Dhabi. For the first time in weeks I could sit on a really clean western style toilet. It was wonderfull! I felt like a king sitting on his throne!
At half past six our plane landed on Schiphol Airport. This
time the difference in time zones was in our advantage. The weather was quite
cold, but we had already put on our long trousers and coats at Bombay
Airport.
We took the train to Rotterdam. There we saw a couple of
people who at that time just returned from a saturdaynight house- party. From
Rotterdam we took a bus back to our hometown Zierikzee. An exciting holiday had
come to an end.
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