An evening stroll with David and Anan

In the evening, when the day had begun to cool, I decided to take a stroll along the beach. As I walked I was approached by the usual array of trilby-wearing local drug dealers, restaurateurs gently plying for trade and the odd fisherman asking the most frequently asked question: ‘Hello! Where you from?’.

I then got chatting to Anan and David. Initially, I was slightly suspicious and curt with them, but it soon became clear that they were genuinely nice guys who just wanted to chat. David asked about Flintoff: ‘How is Flintoff? Is he a good guy? Is he got good character?’. I had to admit that I neither knew Flintoff personally nor did I know that much about cricket.

It turned out that Anan and David were actors who worked in Bangalore. They explained that it was hard work with 12-hour days. They’d been given 10-days leave and had come to Palolem for a break. After that they were off to Malaysia with work.

When I explained that I worked in advertising, Anan explained his sister worked in media also. She took jobs out in the countryside and was paid 50,000Rs a month which was extremely well paid for India.

I asked them whether they’d been into the sea to which they shook their heads and said no – they don’t swim in the sea because a lot of people get rashes. I couldn’t determine what these rashes were but they were adamant that they only swim in ‘fresh’ water. I decided at that moment that maybe I wouldn’t be swimming in Palolem!

The subject soon turned to why I ‘had no friend’. They were fascinated that I was 29, travelling on my own and not married. I explained that my boyfriend was in New Zealand and, with genuine concern for my age, they asked when we were getting married. I had to explain that in England, marriage wasn’t necessarily a given when you have a boyfriend and that I had to wait until my boyfriend proposed. Confusion washed over their faces…I think they found it all a little overwhelming. Anan explained that he had four sisters and no brothers; ‘They’re hard work’, he explained. They both laughed and said they were happy being bachelors.

Having walked to the end of the beach and back, and found a suitable restaurant with tables right out by the sea, I decided to say my goodbyes. They said goodbye and headed off down the beach.

It’s always refreshing when you travel to meet genuine people who demand nothing of you. Often, you’ll meet people and they’re after something: a relationship, your business, your money, your business for ‘my cousin who owns the best hotel/restaurant around’, to be ‘your friend’, to ‘learn English’, or the plethora of other ways people attempt to derive money or a marriage visa out of you. Whenever you’re chatting to someone, you’re always slightly on edge waiting for the conversation to turn to what it is they want. To be able to have an amiable chat with people and to be able to walk away not feeling done out of something is a truly great experience!

A very touristy Palolem

Palolem is touted as the best beach in Goa; for some, it’s one of the best beaches in the world. I must admit that I’ve been incredibly spoilt in life and spent time on beaches in the Caribbean, and Palolem, in my mind, just doesn’t quite compare.

When I arrived on the main road of the street leading down to the beach, the first thing I noticed was the usual rubbish strewn about the place. There were small piles hidden between buildings and an array of plastic bags and bottles carelessly flung out among the palm trees. The beach itself (given the sheer number of beach huts lining it) is reasonably clean and is given a once over every morning during peak season, but during the rest of the year it is often left accumulate rubbish (according to the LP). It’s a real shame that a state so dependent on tourism as Goa is, hasn’t got round to cleaning up its act.

In fact, sat in one of the restaurants on the beach edge, I watched as the Indian man sat next to me proceeded to wipe away the sweat from his face, arms and legs with napkins and, without a second thought, throw the napkins onto the beach. My anger got the better of me and I turned to stare at him and loudly said ‘Do you have no pride in your country? It’s disgusting that you throw rubbish onto the beach.’ One of his friends translated and they all burst out laughing – such is the maturity of some of the guys here. It is blindingly obvious that there is a real need for education to alter the habits of people here in order to protect the environment. Palolem has the potential to be stunning but the rubbish issue clearly lets it down.

On a positive note, Palolem does offer some much needed respite for weary travelers, especially for those heading down from frenetic north India. It is completely westernized with bars selling burgers and chips, roast dinners, pizza and pasta. If you’ve been eating curry three times a day for a month, it can provide a much needed break.

Whilst Palolem is the most expensive place I’ve been to in India, it’s still cheap compared to anywhere else in the world and offers people sun, sea and sand at a fraction of the cost of, for example, the Spanish coast.

Palolem also seems to attract yoga/hippie types so the place has a very relaxed feel about it – partly because many people are stoned for much of the day. Get up early and you see people walking with their yoga mats under their arms as they return from an early morning yoga/meditation session.

In fact, where I’m staying you can have introductory Hatha yoga lessons. I watched as a couple took part in the square of sand in front of our huts. Laying their towels out and placing incense sticks in the ground at four corners, they began their yoga stretches led by an overweight, white guy. There was something rather amusing watching a flabby, white, middle-aged, British guy with no top on lead a yoga class: for some reason, I’d always expected yoga teachers to have svelte, vegan-esque type bodies.

Onion bhajis, very little sleep and a rickshaw full of weed-smoking Israelis

At 2pm I found my seat in Tier 2A of the sleeper train to Goa. It was a 15-hour journey but I had my blog, a handful of postcards and a very big book (Shantaram – the cheesy choice of book to read whilst travelling round India!) to keep me occupied.

Plying the corridors of the train were chai wallahs, coffee wallahs and a range of different food wallahs – employees of the train company – who walked up and down calling out and selling their wares. It’s a very effective system. Unlike the UK where you either walk to the buffet carriage or see one person whizz past you with a snack trolley, here you could literally eat and drink your way through 15-hours straight. Coffee, tea, onion bhajis, cheese sandwiches, cold drinks are available to you constantly throughout the journey up until about 9pm when the wallahs leave you in peace to sleep.

At about 5pm, a man comes through the carriage asking whether you'd like dinner and offers you the choice of three or four dishes for 50Rs. A couple of hours later, and your meal arrives in a small takeaway container. I had hot chapattis and a vegetable and paneer dish to go with it. The food was piping hot and arrived at your seat for you to get stuck in to. A damn good service – Network Rail take note!

After the 15-hour journey, I stood bleary eyed outside Madgoan station. It was 5.30am. Taxi drivers, rickshaw drivers and motorbike drivers were all touting for business. I saw the pre-paid taxi rank – it was going to cost me 600Rs to get to Palolem. I wasn’t too keen to pay that much so I decided to think about it. There were a few other small groups of tourists hanging about so it was pretty safe so I did what anyone would do: I put my bags down and bought chai whilst I pondered my options.

Whilst taking my time drinking my chai, I'd noticed a group of guys who looked like Israelis stood in a small group. (It wasn’t that much of a guess – thousands of Israelis travel through India each year as it’s one of the few places they can travel easily on an Israeli passport. Chatting to one of the guys later on, he put the number at 20,000 at any one time).

I headed over and asked whether they too were heading to Palolem and whether they’d be keen to share a taxi. I was in luck! They were, and whilst they were considering taking a bus, my offer to add an extra body into the equation of the cost of a taxi perked their interest. One of them jogged over to a rickshaw van driver and came back to announce that we could get to Palolem for 100Rs each.

The rickshaw van was like a small van: it was fully enclosed with two benches facing one another. Piling up our large rucksacks into the passenger seat next to the driver, we hopped in the back with some of our day sacks. Surprisingly, it managed to fit the five of us in the back quite comfortably, which was just as well as we had a 1 hour drive ahead of us. The guys were very friendly (we did exchange names but for the life of me I can only remember Raff) and we chatted for a little while before the tiredness took over and I busied myself looking out the window as they chatted in Hebrew.

No sooner had we got started (by now it was 6am) than out of a day sack came a piece of paper, a little sachet of weed, a cigarette and a roll up. By the light of a mobile phone, with one of them holding the folded paper in a v-shape, I watched one of the guys adeptly roll up a spliff. Given that we were in a rickshaw and it was dark, it was an admirable feat!

Opening one of the windows – despite there being a breeze rushing through the van anyway – they sat and smoked their breakfast spliff, kindly offering me some in the process. I declined as, even if I was a smoker, I felt 6am was a tad early to be getting stoned!

After a long one-hour journey, punctuated by our driver clearing his throat and gobbing out of the window at regular intervals, we arrived at the beach resort of Palolem. I didn’t have any accommodation booked and hadn’t been looking forward to trailing up and down the beach with my large rucksack. The Israelis were great though, two of them offering to look after my bag with theirs, whilst I went with the other two to find rooms.

It was just as well they did look after my bag as it took us a good hour walking up and down the beach to find anywhere with room. The beach is a long strand of yellowy sand with a palm-fringed boarder in which wooden huts of varying size, colour and quality had been built. The few places we found were charging 1,000Rs a night – double what I’d been paying for accommodation elsewhere. The boys finally found a place that suited them housing all four of them for 600Rs. I didn’t particularly like the beach hut set up there (the huts looked particularly shoddy) so I decided to carry on. The boys very kindly offered to continue to help me look, which was very kind of them and very much above the call of duty. Shortly after, we came across Presleys – a restaurant and bar with a few beach huts set out in a small, sandy square. The area was clean, the hut was clean, there were a few piglets and chickens running around and they were only charging 500Rs: I went for it.

On our way back to the others looking after our bags, the two guys who were with me stopped to read a sign in Hebrew. I asked what it said and they explained that in most towns or touristy areas in India, there’s a Jew House and the sign was welcoming them to the house in Palolem. The house is not a synagogue but a place where Jews can meet, get to know one another and enjoy a Friday evening meal together. They explained that when they had travelled to one town and couldn’t find accommodation anywhere, all four of them had stayed in the Jew house overnight. It seemed like a pretty good idea to me! Unfortunately, the closest sense of community us Brits have in Palolem is The Smugglers – an English pub serving everything from Yorkshire puds to bangers and mash!

An introduction to the Indian postal service

I finally arrived at Prem’s a little bedraggled after my bus journey from Munnar. I’d decided that that afternoon I’d pick up a few souvenirs and lighten the load of my rucksack slightly, by sending a box of stuff home. I spent the next few hours doing deals with various stores selling a massive array of silk items and carpets. I was in a touristy area so it was obviously overpriced but as I had a window of opportunity to send stuff home, I thought I might as well take it and pay over the odds. After a lot of haggling I managed to come away with various silk table placemats, some cushion covers and a random patchwork piece that I’ve yet to decide what to do with.

The following morning I picked up some spices, packed my box and joined the hustle and bustle of the Indian post office system. Fortunately, Prem had forewarned me that I needed to get my parcel covered in material by a tailor beforehand, which I’d duly arranged. The tailor sewed material around the box and then placed a wax seal all down the seams to ensure no one tampered with it.

I arrived at the Post Office and stood in the parcel / speed posting queue. The man behind of the counter had decided long ago that life wasn’t worth rushing so he took his time with every item. The other ladies behind the counter sat twiddling their thumbs and directed everyone who came in towards the parcel queue. In front of me was a tourist who was also sending a box. As I stood behind him in typical Brit style, a couple of local guys came in and just walked to the front of the queue hanging over the tourist’s shoulders to try and get served. The tourist turned to one guy who was being particularly persistent and broadcast loudly that I was next in line.

As the tourist was about to finish being served, I positioned myself in such a way that as soon as he moved I had my box on the counter blocking the persistent queue jumper. I was about to be served when Mr Persistent started trying to wave paperwork in front of the counter guy. A very loud ‘Excuse me. Do you mind? It’s my turned to be served’ soon put him in his place and he shrunk away and stood and waited in line with everyone else.

Whilst I appreciate that queuing is not part of Indian culture, it can be infuriatingly annoying – especially as a female travelling alone as people feel they can get away with brushing you to one side. Rule number 1 in India: always stand your ground!

Silly trousers

When tourists arrive in India, it appears that instinct draws them immediately towards oversized, garishy patterned, hippy-esque trousers with the crotch down by the knees. It would be understandable if they were trying to fit in with local Indian style but, no, locals most definitely don’t wear them. The result is a bunch of tourists wandering about India looking like complete and utter wallies. I wonder what the locals must think of us!

A little too much vomit for my liking

It was time to leave Munnar behind and head back down to Fort Cochin for the evening before getting a train to Goa. A four-hour bus ride down through the mountains cost me 75Rs – about £1.

The bus was virtually empty when I got on. With the help of the conducter I managed to manoevre my oversized rucksack down into a little area next to the driver. From there I took a place next to the window on one of the bench seats that seats three people. Behind me was an Indian lady who was also sat on her own.

The windows had metal shutters that could be pulled down or released to expose a windowless window if that makes any sense. Basically, if your shutter was up, you were exposed to the elements. It was pretty chilly so I had my shutter down.

We started to make our way down through the mountains at the usual breakneck speed, the only conciliation being that the size of bus meant that physics wouldn’t allow two buses to pass by one another on the narrow mountain roads so our driver was forced to slow down to a near stop, giving passengers some much needed respite from the constant weaving and swerving along hairpin bends.

I occupied myself by acquainting myself with bus politics. Whenever men got on the bus (and it was mostly men travelling) they would sit anywhere except next to me or the one lady sat behind me. As the bus filled up, I began to feel a bit like a leper. The bus was full to the brim and I had a three-seater bench to myself or, if one or two men did sit on the bench they were very careful to be seen to be sitting as far at the other end away from me as possible. As soon as a seat became free they were up and away from my bench as quickly as they could be. Part way through the journey, a man and his wife boarded. Seating his wife carefully between me and him, I finally had some company on the bench.

My conclusion was that it was obviously deemed impolite for a man to sit next to a woman who wasn’t his better half. Looking around the bus, women naturally sat with one another; it wasn’t anything sinister, that’s just how it happens here…an unspoken rule!

The bus was soon full: not to cattle market standards but every seat was taken and there were a few people standing. Most people had their window shutters open, and for no other reason than for being a tad cold, I still had mine closed. I’d taken my jacket off but had it covering me up to my ck to keep warm as I was still a bit chilly. And what a fortunate thing that was too!

Three guys were sat in front of me and in my daydreams of life, love, the universe I hadn’t really noticed them. Suddenly, as we turned a particularly brutal corner, the guy sat in front of me who was obviously feeling more than a little travel sick, without warning jumped out of his seat and threw up out of the window. This act in itself would not have caused me much distress…had the bus not been moving at full pelt around a corner at the time. As the person sat directly behind him, I was to receive the brunt of what can only be described as ‘splash back’ – the unfortunate result of the vomit + wind equation. Fortunately, I had my shutter down so it was literally just splash back and not complete immersion.

The poor lad, who was clearly looking very green, received a lot verbal heckling from other passengers and a clip round the ear from the guy sat on my bench who stood up for me and his wife who also received a few bits of sick on her sari. My trusty wet wipes were soon out of my bag and the speckles of sick on my jacket (fortunately not on my clothes!) were soon wiped up and balance was once again restored.

No sooner had I got back to daydreaming when the sick guy's mate who was in the middle of the row in front of me jumped up, leant over his sick mate and proceeded to projectile vomit out of the window. I was prepared this time and with the speed of a ninja had my jacket over my face to protect it. And yes, I was the receiver of splash back number two. Again the bus erupted in uproar and the poor lad was grabbed by the scruff of the neck and dragged to the far back corner of the bus where he could vomit without causing anyone any problems.

Meanwhile, sick boy number one was still having a torrid time of it. He continued to throw up, receiving abuse and smacks from all angles. I had my sick shield action down to a tea and all I can say is thank God for wet wipes!!

Once we were off the mountains peace was restored and the boys’ stomachs obviously calmed down. The husband and wife got off the bus and a woman with a young child got on and promptly sat next to me. Whilst the bus was going full pelt, stopping and starting erratically, this woman was able to breastfeed her child. I was absolutely astounded at how she managed to feed whilst gripping onto the back of the chair in front as we swung violently around corners. Talk about feeding on demand! India will never cease to amaze me.

TV India style

The couple of times I’ve had TV in my room I’ve had a good look and I’ve decided that Indian TV is truly fascinating. Bar the news channels and the Discovery channel (which became my TV saviour), the majority of Indian TV takes the form of loud musical romance films with flamboyant, overweight, mustachioed male leads who sporadically burst into song and dance routines mid-conversation surrounded by beautiful women in glitzy saris. There is usually a couple of arguments to be had, some making up to do and then, inevitably, part way through the film, someone dies, resulting in copious melodramatic crying and wailing before balance is restored and everyone sings and dances once more.

The advertising – something I check out wherever I go – is also interesting. In the UK the likes of Dove and Garnier sell fake tan; in India, they sell skin lightening products. Every other ad on TV is focused on skin lightening – pale skin being a status symbol over here. The premise is that the lighter your skin, the less likely it is that you work out in the fields in the blazing sun thus you must be relatively wealthy either not needing to work at all or working in a higher-paid office environment.

Private medical insurance also makes up a large proportion of ads. Either there is no public health system or the ads reflect the inadequacies in such a system. Those who can afford it obviously opt to go private, thus private medical insurance becomes a heavily marketed product with companies competing hard for business. On a single channel (Discovery Channel!), I must have seen at least 10 different companies touting their medical insurance policies.

Other than that, it’s hair oil or shampoo containing hair oil and paint containing Teflon. :).