Goa

The legendary Goa…  Recommended by friends, and fellow travelers, it seemed the hippy scene and beach trance parties are one of those overdone-but-have-to-experience-it stops on any serious backpacking journey around India, much like Thailand’s full moon parties.

The verdict: really??

After the craziness of Mumbai we picked a pretty chilled beach to start with, arriving in Vagator early in the morning after catching the overnight train. The train, let’s start with that… staying true to our backpacker budgets we booked the ‘non air-conditioned sleeper carriage’, which basically means you have a little bunk bed to yourself in a big open train with fans blowing round dust and cobwebs all night. Much better than the non-reserved seating though, which actually never sells out because an unlimited amount of people can squeeze into the carriage (we were to experience this later in our journey). On this occasion we managed to get the top bunks which are the best because you can hide away and sleep. Technically. In reality, once you get over the griminess of the bed, then recover from the terrifying experience of the toilets, and after the Indian teenagers below have finished playing cards and drinking but BEFORE the other Indian teenagers start singing at the top of their lungs ‘happy songs, because we are going on holiday’ (I asked) to the tinny background music of their phones, and the chai man starts yelling out Chaiiiiii chaiiiii chaiiii at 5am while walking up and down the aisle repeatedly- not much sleep actually gets achieved. But hey, after endless cups of chai we were both so high on sugar that somehow we made it through.

So we arrived at our chosen destination with excitement, found a room and headed off to check out the beach and hopefully meet some other travelers. Walking down to the beach we were surprised by how quiet it was and even more surprised when we reached it and found it was only 50m long and housed just one dilapidated restaurant (which served the most disgusting food), and a handful of beach chairs. The chairs were mostly inhabited by obese Russian package tourists in skimpy bikinis. One was receiving an oily massage from an Indian man in a safari suit. Strange we thought, but our eternal optimism meant that we persevered, thinking… well maybe everyone is still sleeping after those awesome parties. So we parked up on one of the chairs and got some sun action. After a while we started to get restless and something just didn’t feel right so we went for a walk and discovered that while we were on Vagator beach, just over the rocks was ‘Little Vagator’ which in true Indian irony was 10 times bigger than Vagator and housed all those little restaurants and beach chairs, aggressive fruit sellers, and even more aggressive sarong sellers, that we had been expecting. Unfortunately, the place was still crawling with package tourists but luckily the more obese ones hadn’t bothered to walk over the rocks. We parked up at one of the bars for the evening and entertained ourselves by watching a 40 year old Indian tourist, who had clearly regressed to childhood, rolling around in the shallows then throwing a tantrum when the lifeguard finally made him come in because it was getting dark. 

Despite having an awesome night we both felt there must be more to this place, so the next day we went for a massive walk around the rocks to nearby Anjuna beach, supposedly where all the parties are. As we walked along, to our left we had the unfriendly Russians sunbathing and to the right we had the over friendly Indian tourists who all wanted photos, all of them. This was serious paparazzi territory but considering the disappointment I had experienced when asking an interesting looking person for a photo on the street and being refused, I felt it necessary for my photo-karma to say  yes, despite considerably slowing down the journey and never mind the niggling thoughts over what these photos were actually going to be used for. After a while we noticed that the men, having likely been rejected when asking for photos before, started to employ some interesting tactics such as: A person coming to stand next to us for a normal photo then just before the snap, the phone makes a swift turn to the side and catches us instead, surely resulting in the most unflattering photo you can imagine. Ironically, this is also the tactic we use to get photos of people that may not appreciate having their photo taken, but just have to be snapped, like Russian men in loincloth thongs (I will restrain myself from posting the photo on here but seriously, do tanlines matter THAT much to you that you have to spend your entire holiday looking like a cross between Borat and a Kalahari tribesman?)

Anyway, as we climbed up onto a cliff we stumbled on the first of what we labelled ‘ancient trance ruins’: a nightclub, probably once beautiful, now empty and being slowly reclaimed by nature. As we sat there in awe a friendly security guard came to enlighten us about the fact that new noise restrictions have come into place and the famous Goa beach parties have now been curtailed. He clearly thought the information was sufficient enough to count as some sort of pick up line as he tried to kiss Anneke when we moved on. Luckily she managed to turn it into a cheek kiss at the last minute. Anjuna beach shacks were a lot funkier than Vagator and we settled on the busiest one to have another sunset drinking session and listen to a band. This time we entertained ourselves by remarking on how everyone in Goa is old. Even the band members looked about 60. We were about to write off the whole place as a has-been when we discovered that there was another bar down the beach that that actually had people in it as well. 

Before we noticed the bar we saw 21 strange glowing lights on the beach which turned out to be 21 identical stalls each selling imported chocolate, chai, cigarettes and omelettes. We wondered how the stalls actually made money considering there was a stall to customer ratio of 1 at the time but slowly people started coming into the bar, although it remained largely empty all night. The look was- laddered stockings, paired with fur vests and goggles with a shaved or partially shaved head and a few dreds. Or, knee-high roman sandals and a boob tube with fluro accessories.  How exciting we thought: INTERESTING YOUNG PEOPLE! - until we realised that everyone was in their own little world and completely unfriendly, and by then we were so tired, we didn’t even feel like dancing! So, then followed a confusing moment where we realised that although we had managed to find a trance scene of sorts, we didn’t even want what we had been searching for the entire time. This then forced the question of why we had actually come to Goa to listen to trance when we hadn’t been to a proper dance party since Anneke had bright red hair and I had dreds. Furthermore, what the hell were we doing at the beach in India with a bunch of Russian tourists when we live by the beach in Sydney?! Bewildered, we considered getting another drink and people watching before I suggested making use of the convenient chai stalls to consider our options. 

Feeling flat and disillusioned we sat down at the stall by the entrance, but as the caffeine and sugar hit us from the chai we suddenly remembered about that other reason we came to India: the cultural experience! So, noticing a group of guys at the chai stall (who also happened to be young people) we introduced ourselves and found that they were on a weekend holiday from Pune. In a relatively dry country the free flowing beer demanded by tourists and therefore provided through loopholes and backshish made Goa an excellent holiday destination for these guys too. From there, basically it turned out to be an excellent night all round as we spent the night discussing Indian life and culture and the world’s problems and all those interesting topics that are fun to talk about after a few drinks. Cultural experience, Check. 

In conclusion, we could have just read the Lonely Planet which retrospectively informs us that we are years too late for the trance scene in Goa, which we didn’t really want to see anyway, so I guess the conclusion is, well. Uh… let’s just forget about all this and move on… 

 

From the crowded train station waiting area...

To the beach!!

the lifeguard shack

 ancient trance ruins

Another beautiful sunset :)