Well, here I am in south India, enjoying the VACATION part of my vacation. What I am not enjoying is this keyboard, however, sorry about any typos that I don't catch while slamming my fingers like hammers in to every key. And I am going to- yet again- attempt to upload my last Varanasi shots from this internet cafe. I lost patience, time, and money (OK, so like $1.45, but still...) last go 'round, so we'll see how this does.
So
... Leaving Varanasi was hard. I cried like a five year old girl (again... it's getting old, as am I) just before I left- holding my cool while saying goodbye to the boys, and then losing it entirely when I got back to my room to collect my shit before meeting Marcela for the cab to the airport. At least I was cool in front of the kids.
Babu has been calling almost daily since I left, and since I don't carry my phone around with me on the beach (sunnies, sunscreen, book, about 100 rps for water and ?, and nothing else make the "worth carrying to the beach, leaving while swimming, and possibly getting stolen" list) I usually try calling him back in the evening. I've only been able to reach him back once, but that's OK. He's monkeying around varanasi as always, I'm sure. Chottu is taking photos, I hope. When Marcela gets back, she's got money from me and an eye on him to make sure he keeps taking great photos. OK... So... The road to Goa.
Marcela and I shared our taxi that Krrish lined up for us (and joined us and our tremendous baggage for a portion of the ride) to the airport on the 17th
. It was cheaper for me to fly back to Delhi and then get a flight the following day to Goa than to fly "directly" from Varanasi, which would have run me through Bombay, and I made enough promises to the family that I wouldn't touch Bombay... So the plan was to go to Delhi on the 17th, then I'd have an overnight layover, and scoot to Goa the next (early) afternoon. Marcela happened to be on the same flight to Delhi out of Varanasi, as she was headed to Paris late that night and then Berlin after a few days to visit her kids for a couple of weeks before returning, so we arranged to have a taxi together and then neighboring seats on the plane. We had a great time, natch. And, Kunal had arranged to pick me up at the airport, and also had a back-pocket plan to steal Marcela away from the airport and waiting for her connection for most of the night, so we ended up taking Marcela from the main domestic terminal (THERE ARE TWO, a fact that seems many, many Indian taxi drivers are blissfully unaware of...) took her to Gem Bar in Paharganj for some excellent Tandoori (she's been living in Varanasi for the better part of 18 months, and didn't know Tandoori, because there really isn't any in Varanasi. Which. Is. Interesting. And. Ironic. Considering. The. Amount. Of. Oven. And. BBQ. Cooking. That. Goes. On. In. Varanasi.)
Anyway
... Marcela and I were picked up in a taxi that Kunal accompanied to the airport. He packed a couple of roadies for us and we made our way, the three of us stuffed in the back of the taxi with our crap, in through Delhi traffic to Paharganj's main bazaar. We were laughing our butts off, to the point that the taxi driver (in Hindi- I'm going to understand next year without a translator... I swear) said that if we needed to go anywhere else, please to call him because we were cracking him up. I have a fabulous video of Marcela- who, understandably (and understanding India) refused to be parted from her luggage for even a minute, was rickshawed off in to the night, laughing our most recent punchline in to the sky as I ran behind the cycle, dodging shit (the kind that's on the ground stinking, as well as the kind that can slangily be called rickshaws, animals, stands with various things for sale, and groups of people) and trying to make a video: "Iiii LOoooOvee DELLHIII...!!" I will try to upload it, but I have had zero luck with the whole data transfer thing down here in Goa so far.
So
... Goa. I was going get around to this place, right?
First.. Eventually, after losing first Marcela and then my cell phone along with Kunal in to the warm and cacophanous Delhi night, I found them both (I'll be at the bar. There is only one on this road. ..They will find me). We had a fab tandoori dinner, as I mentioned. I have a VERY soft spot for tandoori gobi (Gobi = cauliflower, try 'cauliflower' in a restaurant here, though, and tell me what you wind up with) along with tandoori paneer. In fact, the soft spot I have for Indian food in general is getting softer. What the hell- this is year II where I went in to this trip expecting a lucky bout with some kind of amoebic dysentary in order to return model-thin to the States, and no, I get screwed. ..Actually, I just get fat. Sunned, well-fed, and smiling. I guess I can't really complain.
Yeah... So, Goa- right.
We drove (the driver drove) Marcela back to the airport, with us squeezed in together again in back, complete with her luggage despite her certainty that it would disappear in to some hoodlum's inventory (I totally trust Kunal and know enough about the 'hood to know that anyone would have to answer to a Greater Power if anything happened to our shit while under his direction, but totally, completely understand that Marcela does not)
. It was another tearful goodbye, but somehow seeing her two years in a row (as well as everyone else, now, this has not been a singular experience by any means) sort of lends understanding to me that life really DOES go on, and even if I don't see her next year, or in ten years, it's still okay, you know? Control over the uncontrollable does not exist. I am a control freak, I get that, even in my sort of organized-chaos way of being... But this reassurance somewhere in my experience here, of seeing those boys again at the bakery, and of (I'm really quite positive) seeing that little black dog again- just a little grayer around her face; of seeing life go on after a year's time packs grateful reassurance in to my heart. Goodbye might actually just mean that I won't see you again, not that anything ceases to actually exist. ..Which is obvious, unless you are really saying goodbye (forever) at some point to someone that you really don't want to be saying goodbye to. If you ever have, maybe you know what I'm talking about. Maybe it's only me.
Anyway
. Goa.
So, Marcela got back on a plane, Kunal and I went back to Paharganj in Delhi, and I spent the next morning sleeping and lazing til I knew the errands that I had to do in Delhi had to be done in order to get to the plane on time, HA, HA. In other words, I should have called the airline. I know THAT. ..Damn. Got the stuff done, though. I've left two bags of silks, tea, incense, and clothes that are like sooo totally 2008 Northern India- and too heavy for Goa- with Kunal now. Also ditched the sneakers; the sweeper boy at Kunal's hotel now owns a pretty well-worn pair of gore-tex Nikes, but he's not minding the fact that they are worn at all. Good. So. Ran around, went to the chemist (which sounds a lot more "Dr. Robert" than it was), bought another freaking sarong to use as a towel- I swear have like 50 of them now. I pack one for a towel, and always pick another one up because I don't want to pack more than one around, and then find one or two I think look cool, and then bring them back
. Another bad two-dollar habit. OK, dollar fifty habit. Whatever. So.. Wrapped up the Delhi business and then Kunal took me in a taxi to the airport. He wanted to take me by motorcycle, but I just wasn't feelin' the highway traffic, heavy backpack, eating-exhaust-and-bugs, death-defying kind of vibe, so taxi it was. A hug, the correct domestic terminal (a FIRST), and I was off to check in. Did so, and then found out the plane was about three hours late. Then, in about another hour, five hours late. Due to the Mumbai bombings, they won't let you out of the checked in area and back in again... So I sat in the airport for like five - six hours with NOTHING to do. There aren't... Restaurants, shops, bars, TVs, magazines, you know.. Things to waste your money on in the Delhi terminal. There was an ice cream stand, however, and I had some "Delhi Delight" which was actually really good, and I ignored the cockroach I saw creeping along the storage shelf in back of the server. (I also shrugged one off that I saw inching it's way along the mosquito netting over my bed here, which wasn't easy to do, but
.. What can you do except for say.. go, you, nasty laster of nuclear blasts; please, please go away...)
The plane finally got there and was ready to be boarded, and then was being boarded, with no passenger notification, anywhere, whatsoever. It's India. Glad I asked. I'd spent some time talking to an Indian man, a Sikh who did not don a turban, who was also going to Goa (he spends some X months a year there, in his 2nd/3rd home kind of thing) who apparently has shitloads of cash, and, I found out from Gautam and Malesh, lives in a notoriously mob-affilated neighborhood in north Goa. He's invited me up to his "property" for some spa days and to (I QUOTE) be "spoiled", and meet his group of friends- he extended the same invitation to a Brazilian woman we both ended up talking to, as well... He'll send a car and driver down here for me, blah, blah- but I'm reminded of a day/night that Marni, Sage and I spent in Mexico one year, many years ago... It was really, really fun (right, girls?), but I would never recommend that one did it without her two best friends at her side (right, girls??!!)
. Thanks, but no f*ing way. I've done some time with Mexican mobsters, and that was enough. So- I'll stay here. In south Goa, on rickety, bamboo-hut-electricity-free-no-flushing-fishing-village Patnem beach.
I've finally gotten around to getting here, haven't I?
It's been good. I got here two, or three, days ago (what day is it?) and I've spent time swimming, in the sun, walking up and down the beach, and now here in an internet cafe. I am going to spend some time in the family kitchen tomorrow and the next day- I just found out how one gets a free and excellent cooking class to learn (only) what they want to learn- become friends of everyone working at your Indian guest house for a couple of years. The cook there is looking forward to teaching me a few dishes. On my list: Palak Paneer, Paneer Butter Masala, some gobi dish (they don't have a tandoor oven; then again, neither do I, so what's the point of learning..) and definitely a dal and a biryani
. This morning, I woke up with a neck that i couldn't turn, so I was "forced" to have a massage; that's the good news. The bad news is that it was with Pinky, who I adore (she is Gautam's sister and a sweet, sweet girl) but has not been trained, really, and due to my screwed up shoulders and my lack of being able to translate sweetly in to Hindi that I can literally become unhinged very easily, and the fact that somewhere along the line she learned that hammering in to a body was the way to relax it... It wasn't very relaxing. Mostly I was just cringing in fear, waiting for her to land on a spot that sprung my arm free from my shoulder. I spent the hour constantly trying to adjust my shoulder joints into comfortable and impenetrable positions. Maybe for people that are used to getting poked and yanked and don't have removable arms, it's a good and pleasurable thing. The head massage part of the massage, I think, got rid of a little extra hair- Christine won't have to work so hard to thin it out when I next catch her with her magic scissors, perhaps
. It hurt like hell, but I did not want to appear ungrateful. Since when did I adopt these puritanical personality traits..? It was Pinky, though, after all... On the plus side- I got a killer coconut oil hookup. I get to bring a litre of it home. It's handmade by the family- there are coconut trees that provide shade over the entire home / guest house- and it's only going to run me 100 rps, which is about $2. Don't remember if I wrote it down in my last Indian blog, but there was a night, last year, when we were all sitting in the main hut... A magnificent crack came from the sky, as if God was pretty pissed, and we all sort of stopped talking (and were waiting for the other three horsemen) when Gautam shrugged, and looking at our ashen faces, said: "It's just a leaf," ..And we all started crying in laughter. Meaning- a palm frond had fallen and presumably created the next Grand Canyon somewhere nearby. So, yeah, there are coconut trees. They have leaves- and those leaves are large.
Let's see
. I am not sunburned yet, but I do have tan lines. Woo hoo! I've been swimming lots. No shopping here. The first day I was here, Gautam invited me along to Chowdi (the "city" here) so that I could re-up my phone and basically go for a ride. We headed up to Agonda beach where his "cousin" is opening a guest house- Ajay- who I caught in a photo last year in a santa hat on the beach the morning after our Christmas party, if anyone recalls. Good to see a new area, I guess. I really haven't done much else since I got here except take the liberty of serving food to some tourists out of the kitchen there (they were a little confused, but assumed that I was indeed their waitress, and continued to ask for cold beers from me for the remainder of their meal), and I 'DJ'd' last night there, and... That's about it. There's a cool Norwegian couple that are staying in the room next to mine- they have not only a bathroom in their room, but a FRIDGE. Wow. They are here in Patnem til the 15th of January. She, as it turns out, is a freelance house manager and has tour managed in her past
. Up til now, explaining "ticketing" to everybody- Indian or anyone whose second language is English- has been challenging. All the way over here, and I run in to a Norwegian woman who speaks my tongue! We traded some event and uppity artist management horror stories this afternoon while I was waiting for my massage. (The five minutes that turns in to two hours, I know it well, no complaining... It's India.) In fact- tonight, while I was trying some tandoori gobi down the beach here, some 'live music' started happening in a beachside restaurant nearby- they all are like little huts propped up, so they become stages naturally if you clear away the tables. It was just jambay drumming for a while, until some English guy finally came up to the mic and said, "Thank you for coming about tonight. Sorry we're late, but it's not our fault... It's India." ..He chuckles, and everybody understands.
Oh- I almost forgot! "Mix Fruit Sexy Cream" is available on the menu where I am staying. That's what that's from. The menu. ..Anyone? ..Anyone? I had to write that shit down. You can't make this stuff up, I'm telling you. Any of it.
So.. That's about it. I am hopeful that some pictures will upload. If not, I guess I'll just try again, another time.
It's not my fault, it's India...
Mix Fruit Sexy Cream
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Patnem Beach, GOA, India
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