Goan Home

Today is my last full day in India — I leave for home in less than 18 hours.

My brief visit to Goa has been extremely relaxing; I’ve done practically nothing other than walk up and down the beach, eat, drink, read etc. (I’m currently reading a book called “A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Mistry, which my friend Johnny recommended — it’s about India, and paints a very grim picture of poverty and the caste system in the middle of the 20th Century).

I did have one brief moment of tension yesterday when a stray dog lightly nipped my calf as I was walking along the beach, prompting paranoid fears of an excruciating death by rabies, but it didn’t even scratch my skin and I washed immediately afterwards in the sea, so I think I’ll probably survive. I asked an ayurvedic massage guy to have a look at it (he was the closest I could find to a doctor nearby), and he said it wasn’t a problem.

After that excitement, the most strenuous thing I did was walk about a mile or so up the beach to Colva to use the ATM/cash machine, then two miles down to have dinner at a place called Domnick’s, which had a DJ and seemed like it would be the most lively place in Benaulim.

The food at Domnick’s was great — I had a fresh red snapper cooked tandoori-style — but the DJ was terrible. He used a PC to play wildly eclectic tunes with nothing in common other than general cheesiness, with train-wreck mixing at every transition. I wasn’t expecting (or even hoping) to find any remnants of the original Goa Trance scene, but this was truly the worst mixing I’ve ever heard!

Today I’m just relaxing at Camilson’s until it’s time to get my taxi to the airport at 3pm — they’ve saved me a lobster to have for lunch, which sounds like a good way to leave. I still have 12 hours in Mumbai between flights so I will have one last meal late tonight before getting on the plane to London and then JFK at 6am tomorrow morning.

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