Travels with V

India: Mumbai & Goa

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To beaches where the hippies joyed

Goa part one

It feels good to leave the polluted thick air in Mumbai. It’s easier to breathe in Goa. We are staying in Palolem, in the far south of the former Portuguese colony. It’s supposed to be a little more calm and relaxed than the northern beaches.

But Palolem is no pristine paradise either. While not exactly like Phuket or the Canaries, it’s still a lot of the same, shacks with expensive tourist crap is sold, cheap bars open almost 24/7 and sloppy restaurants. And here we also have the tailors and the hairdressers “in the street”.

In fact the whole village seems temporary and provisional, which is exactly what it is. Because of the summer monsoons with heavy rain and storm winds, the entire village must be torn down in May, and rebuilt again in September. But this is a good thing, it helps the nature to recover.

THE GARBAGE MAN OF PALOLEM

A big, or at least very loud part of the tourist community in Palolem seem to be a British group, with a peculiar accent (midlands?). Most of them elderly, always drunk and doing as little as possible. They are extremely loud at night, being joined by even louder younger men and women. Shouting and smoking.

Daily life is centered around the beach, dominated by beach restaurants and simple B&B’s. If You buy a drink you get a free deckchair for the day. Here and there young men plonk away on badly tuned guitars while young tattooed girls with drinks and big sunglasses watch.

The time we arrive in Palolem is actually the afternoon on New Year’s Eve. We have via Internet reserved a table at what we think is a fancy restaurant at a golf and spa resort a few kilometers to the south. So all dressed up we take a tuk-tuk and are left in front of majestic gates, opened by a servant in livery. We walk up to the castle-like main building, but are directed outside again, through an enormous park and down to the beach.

There hundreds of tables are set in the sand on the beach and there’s a grand stage with lights throwing spears of light all around.

All the guests in line to be seated have small black invitation cards. We don’t. We explain to the ticket controllers that we have made a reservation by mail, and are resolutely pushed aside. Several men look at the short mail conversation in V’s mobile phone. They read them over and over again, trying hard to find a reason to kick us out, no doubt.

Then suddenly someone asks the crucial question: – Are you willing to pay for the dinner? – Yes, of course! And the spell is broken. We are led down to a table near the stage.

The buffet table is a hundred meters long. No kidding. Asian food of every kind. Bars with free beer and wine, and some spirits. Waiters keep on approaching, asking if everything is ok. The general mood is generous. Some women dance in a folky kind of way on the stage, but no one cares.

But after a short break the next act is presented as “Top Storey”, a band whose singer has “special talents”. On a big screen rolls some short clips of a kind of India’s Idol type TV show. A female singer called Raimi does her number and is met with cheers and applause. Soon we understand that Top Storey has a shemale singer. He walks on the stage in a silvery dress and high heel shoes. The audience on the beach go bananas.

And he’s actually very good at singing with the kind of nasal high-pitched voice that Indian female singers have. The band is not above average, but together they do all sorts of pop, Michael Jackson-covers, ABBA and Gloria Gaynor, as well as the repetitive Punjabi pop, and they do it well, whipping up the temperature for two hours.

THE NEW YEAR’S CIGAR

Then there is half an hour with booming Hindi disco, until the clock strikes twelve, which it actually does twice. Once from the PA, and ten seconds later on the big screen on the stage. That can happen in India.

Back in Palolem the beach is a boiling pot of dance-craze, fireworks madness and drunk people. Fires are lit in the sand and thai light balloons are flying in the night sky. Everybody smiles and wish us a Happy New Year! It’s the most extreme new Year’s celebration we have ever experienced.

Resebloggar finns det gott om men vi har en lite annan tanke med våra berättelser. Vi vill främst beskriva våra upplevelser av udda platser, människorna vi möter och miljöer som är rätt annorlunda mot vad vi möter hemma.

Därför hamnar vi ibland i avlägsna indianbyar i Guatemalas berg eller bland andetroende bybor på en ö i Indonesien. Men också på mer kända platser som Machu Picchu i Peru eller sandstränderna i Goa. Allt sett genom våra ögon och kameror.

Den som vill ha restips får också sitt - varje resmål har en avdelning med sånt vi kan rekommendera. Eller undvika. Vårt fokus är framför allt att sporra er läsare att göra som vi - resa rätt ut i den vida världen.