A Goan Christmas

I had a fever and got no sleep the night before. I stumbled onto my early morning train anyway knowing I could lie down and sleep to Goa. I met a pretty cool, but similarly sorry looking crew of 4 on the train. We perked up by midday and I got off the train with them destined for Anjuna.

Kamal (Aus), Ross (Can), Ronan (Isr) and Becks (Eng) are all good sorts. We’ve rented a basic house, hired some scooters, and dropped some beer in the fridge. Sorted. Anjuna, an ex-Portugese colony, is an unashamed hippy hangout but a little quieter than some of the other nearby beaches where the parties bang on all night.

With the beach just a stones throw away we’re not doing a lot else in the daytime. And all of us still seem to have our health in the balance, a reason to take it easy on the brewskies. As the beaches here are a bit of tourist mecca I’ve reverted back to eating seafood - all you can eat seafood buffets for 200 rupee ($6nz) or the good Tandori Tuna I had the other night.

I wasn’t content just vegetating so on day 3 I took a day trip to Panaji and Old Goa, the capital and old capital of Goa. The crew all decided the fieldtrip was a good move and came along too. We unwittingly timed local buses to perfection and stood among the other armpits to Panaji. It was an interesting look around, if just to see a different India with Portugese styled architecture and Catholic chaples. Old Goa was different again, dominated by markets with all sorts of plastic religious paraphenalia and a number of European style Chapels.

By chance on display was St Francis Xaviers body (the patron saint of Goa), that is bought before the reverent masses once every ten years. He died in the 17th Century and supposedly his body would not decompose - a miracle. The miracle is over now- standing behold the body is one thing, watching believers kiss his decomposing feet (through the perspex) is quite another.

Anjuna is known in these parts for its Wednesday flea market, a big, colourful atmosphere with some cheap buys if you play it right. From the beach Ronan, Ross and I caught a boat over to Baga, a much more packed beach with more Indian tourists than Westerners. As the evening draws closer parties at the beach bars flair up and pump into the the small hours.

Christmas eve and the hilarious sight of Indian Christmas carolers stumblingly through ‘Stary Night’ inspired a Christmas spirit. Or Spirits. We headed out to a dance party at the Hill Top and took to the cheap vodka triples. The music was relentless, mindless, thumping trance crap but we stayed, met some cool people and shot the bull.

And when I woke up it was Christmas! Becks had bought us Santa hats filled with goodies and Christmas bindies. We gorged on a great improvised Christmas breakfast of Camenbert, Tomato, Salmon, Olives, Crackers and Pawpaw. The Vodka didn’t leave the fridge.

After some family phone calls around the world we chilled out on the beach and soaked up some sun until the pink disc sunk. To those of you who thought I’d be spartan and have a curry for Christmas dinner you couldnt have been more wrong. We tucked away the best seafood dishes in town - King Crabs and Giant Tiger Prawns. Yummo.

Boxing day is boxing day - eating leftovers. Im leaving Goa tomorrow for Hampi on a night bus, so really Im back on the road solo and back into the real India. This post stops here, I have to run to the Drop Dunny.

Merry Christmas to all, Rog

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 26th, 2004 at 12:39 am and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.