Gokarna and Goa, part. 2

Last time I wrote I had just arrived in Gokarna and was planning to stay there for a while. Well, after spending five week there, it is probably fair to say that the prophecy has been fulfilled! I even got to think that the OM symbol shape of the beach gives the place some sort of power that makes people stay longer than they initially intended…

First, let me describe the place where I stayed: it is called Dolphin Bay Café because there actually are dolphins swimming around in the bay! And yes, I could see some of them… once in a while. The place is a shack in the middle of OM beach, with a restaurant area in the front, and some bamboo and coconut tree huts in the back. When I say huts, I mean it: sandy floor, a bed, a mosquito net and a fan on the ceiling. Obviously, you get to share the space with the local wildlife: the place’s dogs and cats, but also rats, mice, cockroaches, mosquitoes, geckos and, I have heard, the occasional snake (apparently, there are king cobras in the area and Shanka, the owner of the Dolphin Bay Café, has even been bitten by one of them a few years ago… and survived!). For the bathroom, it is bucket shower (with cold water from a tank that is filled twice a day, so be quick…) and squat toilets. Anyway, this is the best you can get for Rs 150 per night… and I must say I enjoyed the experience (damn, I hate this word…) very much, especially falling asleep every night with the sound of the waves, and having breakfast every morning feet in the sand and eyes on the ocean. It seems that I am not the only one as many people seem to stay for a long time (ranging from one to six months).

On my first day there, I decided to walk to the next beach, Kudle beach, about 20 minutes from OM beach. As I was getting a bit lost in the hills separating the two beaches, I came across an Indian guy named Abhilash, who seemed as lost as I was. We decided to walk together and ended up drinking beers on Kudle beach. This is how I found my drinking buddy for the following three weeks… (Abi, if you read this, sorry, but I had to explain how we became friends!). Abi, my friend Sandra, and I even decided to spend Christmas Eve together in Goa, and had one of those crazy nights that cannot be described in writing (let’s just say that it took me a few days to recover). After Christmas, my friends had to leave Gokarna, but I decided to go back and spend a few more weeks there.

The Dolphin Bay Café is also a place where people from a lot of different horizons gather: young and older, from a lot of different countries, some of them with amazing/crazy lives, and all very interesting to talk to. I must say I had lots of good conversations and, above all, lots of fun. Since it would take too much time to describe everyone here, I will just thank those people without whom my stay there would not have been the same: Patrick, John, Sarah, Sandra1, Sandra2, Aad, Marcel, Joost, Sean, Valdis, Lorena, James, Clifton, Roberto, Alyssa, Diego, Peter, David, Erwan, Olivier, Nicole, Beno, Sami, Daniel1, Daniel2, Perry, Shaloo, David, Agnes, Myriam1, Myriam2, Miki, Katia, Ajay, Julien, Manu, Ioanis, Nuria, Jan, Xavier, Ninou, Shanka, Rama, Gyanam… and the ones I forget. Guys, it was fun!

During my stay in Gokarna, on a nearby beach called Paradise Beach, there was also a Rainbow Gathering. I still have not fully understood was this is all about, but it seems that this is some sort of hippie gathering over several days, in communion with nature. I went to the said Paradise Beach to see what this was all about, but it only seemed to be a bunch of people camping on that beach and leaving in some sort of community where you seat all together to eat and sing around a campfire, that for a couple of weeks. Exactly the type of thing I love… not.

New Year’s Eve was also a special day, with hundreds of Indian tourists coming to the normally quiet OM beach, and overcrowding the shacks (even though they did not sleep in the huts, as every place was full…). This ended up in tears, with a girl being groped in the Dolphin Bay Café, a fight starting thereafter between the owner and the aggressor, and the said aggressor being carried out of the café by the kitchen boys to meet his fate… whatever that means. After that, I do not remember everything I said (not that I remember everything I said before either…), but I know it really upset the English girl I was doing so well with until that point, and I ended sleeping by myself instead of having a well-deserved happy ending.

My time spent in OM beach was also the opportunity to do some serious reading of India-related literature. I therefore read two books by Herman Hesse: Siddhartha and Steppenwolf (one of my new favourites in the genre), and one very cool novel called Shantaram: the factional story of an Australian convict who escaped from jail and came to Mumbai in the 1980’s to try to disappear. This is the book equivalent of a very good blockbuster movie, mixing crime, adventure, love, hate, philosophy, fun, etc. and I must say I really enjoyed it. The descriptions of Indian life are very accurate which was a big part of the fun, but also showed me that this country has not really changed over the last 30 years. In any case, I highly recommend it, even though it is 1,000 pages long.

Finally, I managed to leave OM beach and Gokarna. It was really nice, but with less than a month left before going back home, I needed to start heading north. I started this slow journey towards Mumbai with a stop in… Goa. Yes, I have already spent more than a week there before Gokarna, but I had not done many things due to the events of last time. Anyway, this time, I decided I would go and see what’s around. Well, North Goa is definitely the coolest place, where the young people and the best parties are. Central Goa is just spoiled by mass tourism (I thought Anjuna was, but it is nothing compared to Candolim), with fat English and Russians frying in the sun and getting drunk over dozens of kilometres. South Goa is split between high end resorts and nice beaches like Gokarna, but five times more expensive and more crowded: no point. I also met with one of my fellow former Trouville-Deauville-Touques men, who owns restaurants in the area, which gave me the chance to drink my first glass of Calvados in a long time. Finally, I had my first unsolicited encounter with the Indian police: as I was heading back to Anjuna on my rented scooter after spending the afternoon in a nearby town, I was arrested (along with some Russians that were riding their bike in front of me) and asked to provide my driving license, which I did. Then the problems started: my license does not state that I am allowed to drive a scooter (I am wondering which country’s license does since you don’t need a license to drive a scooter… and also how many Indians actually have a license for this!). Therefore, I was breaking the law and had to pay a fine. I tried to argue a little bit (couldn’t help it…), but soon noticed that there was no point and had to pay the Rs 3,500 that they requested (official price of the fine). The beauty of it is that, as good Indian touts that they are, they finally made me a discount of Rs 500 on the baksheesh… sorry “fine”, and they let me go on the scooter I was not supposed to drive (with a smile, of course)! MOTHERFUCKERS!!!! In Hindi, I think it is “Mudachukh” (or something close, and they also have “sister fucker”, but I am not sure of what it is… “Badachukh” maybe), and it took me a lot of mental strength not to tell them what I thought… and probably saved me some quality time in the jail of some Indian police station! In any case, this certainly does not brighten the image of the Indian police (and of the police in general for that matter). I hope they all rot in hell (or whatever they believe in) and if they could also rot a little bit on Earth that would actually be nice… MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!

It is now time for me to head to Mumbai. I have planned to spend a few days there to visit and to go and visit few places that are not too far (which in terms of Indian distance means less than 12 hours by train or bus), but this is for a future post.

Take care,

Matt 

And now, few pictures:

View of my hut 

 Another view of my hut

The "corridor" to the toilets 

This is where I had breakfast every morning 

A tanker that ran aground in Goa. It seems they thought it was nice to leave it there...

In Candolim, we are in Russian and British territory (look at the flags in the top right corner...) 

Yes, when I am not partying, it is easier to take pictures of the party (Shiva Valley, Anjuna) 

The flea market in Anjuna

A Banyan tree: branches become roots, which makes the tree look like there are several of them