Big Ol’ India

Sir fish, Baracuda, Golden Prawns, Old Monk Rum, Reggae Music. Goa’s the shit!

I came to Mumbai approx three weeks ago. The eftpos at the airport tax free store didn’t work, so I couldn’t bring my good friends Nithin and Christian the Johnnie Red greeting I had hoped for. But hell, they were right there waiting outside with two priceless smiles of happy cries. Our driver was waiting by, and so was the beer. We drove through Bombay for about two hours, with Nithin’s mother sleeping in the back with us. She had arrived the same day from Chennai. We stopped off to get some food on our way to Nithin’s dad’s house. Had some bonito garlicish potatoes called something. Nithin’s father, Colonel John Britto lives in the craziest place. Amby Valley in Sahara Lake City, Mr. Britto is head of security in this new city being built far up in the mountains outside Mumbai and Lonavla. Amby Valley is a weird place. Very few people live there, but there’s a hell of a lotta places for rent and sale. Mr. Sahara who is one of India’s richest men, has spent an obscene amount of money building this place. It has got a full 18 hole golf course, a hotel, restaurants, cinema, everything. And people are working in all these places as well, but we were the only ones there. Felt strange having personal drivers, waiters, cleaners and all. But it was a good meeting point, because we all arrived Bombay at different days. Liz and Tina showed up two days later and the journey of India started for real.
We had a horrible incident happening in Bombay on our way to the airport picking up Liz and Tina. Some beggars came to our car window and asked for some coins while we were in a traffic jam. A note appeared out the window and two kids freaked out watching this. A girl and a boy, not ten, ran for their lives after the car in this traffic mayhem of hell. 200 metres further through the smog, we stopped again. And the kids still hanging on. Just standing outside our car reaching out their hands. I’ve never felt so little before.
I wanted to help, but we were afraid they would run after us again and getting killed.
We stood there for a good 3 minutes and the driver eventually opened his window and said something that sounded like get the fuck out of here before I kick your ass. He gave the some coins and I couldn’t help but slippin out a twenty note (less $1 AUD) to the girl. She looked like she’d seen a huge lump of gold. And I felt smaller.
It’s a fact of life. It seems like the overall look on India’s poverty here is like, “hell there are so many of us, so some are bound to be shit poor”. I feel I can’t come to this country for the first time and after three weeks tell people how to solve their human sufferings here. That’s just stupid. But so does a place like Amby Valley feel as well.

We traveled by bus with Nithin’s lovely mother, Caroline, from Lonavla to Bangalore. There we stayed for two days meeting Nithin’s sister and her son. We booked unreserved train tickets from Bangalore to Trivandrum, where we were hookin up with Nithin’s old time friend Vikram. The train trip was hella cool. We arrived the unreserved wagon a bit late and it was packed. People were sitting and sleeping everywhere. We found some space in the hallway, but Nithin went on a mission. Twenty minutes later, he came back saying he’d cut a deal. Hey cool man. We got to sit in one of the reserved wagon’s hallway. We slept, or at least tried to, on our backpacks leaning towards the train wagon door, just next to the wash place. The wash place was fucked and was leaking hella every time someone used it, so we had to put newspapers all over the place to keep close to dry.
A few hours later, one of the ticket men tipped us about some seats soon to be free at the next stop. We rocked up with our shit and had a good rest the remains of the trip trippin.

Vikram picked us up in Trivandrum and drove us to a place called Kovalam. A family friend of his was running a beach resort. We got good prices living in cabins in the mountain leading down to a beautiful beach. We had good food and drinks, and funny about the place was the service. It’s the most chilled out place I’ve ever been to. You ordered a bottle of water and you got it twenty minutes later. Dinner normally came whenever it wanted to. A funny place it was. Every morning the fishermen did their morning routines of stretching and dropping what needed flexed or dropped. So it was a beautiful beach full of crap. The waves were amazing. Way fiercer than I’m used to on the east coast of Aussie land. If you didn’t avoid the hittin waves they picked you up and threw you onto the beach. Hella fun!
We enjoyed three days of trippin around in Kovalam also meeting Vikram’s beautiful wife Ann. We also went on a boat trip on the river close to Kovalam beach. We saw villagers chillin, workin, doin their shit. The boat man suddenly parked and jumped off and said: “Come!” He said not where or why… A bit freaky yeah, but we followed. He took us far into the forest and we met his wife and three daughters. They showed us how they made rope. It was pretty cool how they twined that shit together. Christian bought some rope and all were more or less happy.
We decided we deserved a reserved train from Trivandrum to Goa. We needed a good rest. We arrived at Anjuna beach, in the Bardez area, approx 30 hours later if I’m not mistaking way off…
The place was crazy as hell. We went straight into “From Dusk Till Dawn”. Cheech served us lunch and beers before we found a small room in the forest. The place went nuts during night time. There were people from everywhere. Mainstream age was mid thirties to mid fifties, and they were all completely trippin on drugs. Dancing like hella! We had some food and a lot of drinks. I met an Israeli, an Iranian, and a third dude. They sounded like they were discussing village warfare and shit, but they seemed pretty messed up, but still, very nice guys.
We left the next day. There were many cool cliffs and a small beach at Anjuna, but we were looking for else. Palolem beach in the Cancona (Cancun) area where we landed, and landed well we did. A bonito beach of lattis is what we found there. We’ve been here for two days just laxin the beach and eating fresh sea food. I went on a motorcycle morning trip with Nithin and Christian this morning to have breakfast at a new place.
We just loving it here, and might go out on a boat trip later with a fisherman we’ve met. He might be taking us to meet some dolphins.
But tomorrow we leave this beach paradise. Our beautiful coconut tree huts, and the seafood.
We’re going to the state of Gujarat to a city called Mehsana. We’re meeting Nithin’s “guru”, Father Peter, who runs an orphanage and a monastery. We’re gonna get him drunk and maybe help him out and do some work if needed.
The plan from thereon is Rajistan to check out some temples and we hope to reach the foot of the Himalayas in the north. But we have return tickets to Brisbane from Bombay on the 5th or 6th of March, so we’ll see how far we get… It’s bound to be interesting...