After approximately 24 hours combined on the road, we entered Goa, welcomed by warm and humid weather, lush vegetation, and, of course, the massive multilingual ‘WELCOME TO’ signs every Indian state has. We headed towards the Southern part of the state, often described as the ‘least touristy’ area in Goa. This is a bit of a misnomer- all of Goa is pretty much tourist saturated, but from what we heard the Southern part would be more of a rustic beach escape, as opposed to the beach cities which are more popular in the other areas. The plan was to head down to the beach for a night, pack up in the morning and head north, which would include catching Goa’s version of Carnival in Panaji.

After a long, uneventful drive to the Southern part of the state, we reached our destination. It was… interesting.

After getting just a little bit lost on the beach roads, we found the place the guide book mentioned. We had made reservations, but because we didn’t anticipate how long it would take to get there, it was for the night before. By the time we got there, the place we planned on staying turned out to be fully booked. It also turned out to be an LA yuppie’s dream. Beach huts, beach wood walkways, palm trees, cool ocean breezes, plentiful hammocks, leaf canopies- imagine Swiss Family Robinson opening a little resort on an Indian beach, complete with yoga classes and yogurt fruit bowl breakfasts, and you’ll get the general idea. (Well, the owner wasn’t Swiss, but they were European!)

We stopped for a quick lunch, and that’s when I saw that cat. This was to turn out to be the vibe Goa creates… it’s incredibly relaxing and laid back, almost ridiculously so. You could come here and literally do nothing for a week, and feel fantastic. There’s restaurant huts and bar huts dispersed down the beaches, lots of sun and warm water, and the food served is more typical of Southern California health cuisine than Indian food. There’s not much artificial lighting, but at night the lack of pollution lets the moonlight and starlight guide you around easily. It really feels like an escape from everything, which attracts al these Western tourists… we met people from all over Europe, and I even met a couple people from my old English hometown of Bristol.

(Oh, and I was reminded by this of how much working in the States sucks in terms of vacation. ‘You’re from the US? Oh, so let me guess… you only get two weeks vacation a year?’ The people we met all got at least six weeks, and the two I met from Bristol were nurses on a year long sabbatical to travel the world.)

And then there are the dogs.

The dogs of Goa are the luckiest dogs on earth. When good dogs die, I have no doubt that they go to Goa.

There’s feral dogs all over India. They roam around the cities sniffing around trash, run along the roads and highways in the countryside, and of course, the beaches of Goa. What sets apart the dogs of Goa are the people. Dogs in India, especially these feral dogs, are generally considered pests and completely ignored, left to wander but not given attention. In Goa, this all changes because of the Western tourists, who think these dogs are the coolest things in the world. (A bit scruffy maybe, but awesome.)

The dogs get to play with the tourists. They get fed by the tourists. They hang out with them at dinner tables on the beach, getting along nicely. They get all those benefits of being owned, but in the end are still their own masters. They live on the beach. They can play on the beach all day. And, being feral, they get to keep their balls/uteruses. How neat is that?

The place we wound up finding turned out to be a bit less heavy on the resort side of vacationing. It was kind of a communal beach area of different sets of beach huts, all pretty much on the beach and inexpensive. Those three huts you see at the top are where we stayed, all for about $8 for a night. At this point it was fairly late, so we went to the beach for beers at one of those bar huts, and turned in.

The next morning, Kalyan and I got up early to take photographs of the sunrise. Afterwards, I decided to go swimming in the Arabian sea. I don’t think my writing can do it justice, but… it was great. The warmth of the water along with the ambient temperature that morning was perfect, and I was content to just bob in the water and swim around for some time. This was the danger of Goa. I feel we could have been sucked in at this beach if we were less disciplined, content to lazily roam the beaches and enjoy the warm water. That, and I later learned the water has sharks and barracuda.

As it was though, our departure from Goa was rather bitter tasting… we got pulled over by a police officer checking cars for out-of-state-permits (as I’ve described before), but instead of the usual 100 Rupee bribe, we got hit with something like a 1200 Rupee fine/bribe. We aren’t quite sure what happened here… our driver and the officer argued, the officer claiming our driver didn’t get the proper permit and our driver claiming the officer was trying to screw us, but with the threat of getting our vehicle impounded, we had little choice but to pay. When we asked for documentation to make sure we didn’t have to pay another fine, we realised that it was dated with the current day only, leading us to believe the same thing would happen again the next day, and prompting us to leave the state.

It was an unfortunate way to have to leave the state, especially after we had to travel so far to get there. That being said, I’ll always remember that water.

Goa was about 500 miles away, which, in States time is about 6 to 7 hours of driving, or about half that if you’re my father. Because of this, we planned on a short detour to some Mosque ruins, and then a direct drive to Goa. Leaving around 6:30 am that day, it seemed we’d be in Goa in time for a late dinner.

Driving out of Hyderabad was incredibly slow. Traffic in the outer areas of the city was fairly intense, even early in the morning. As soon as you’re even a little out of the city, you can sense an immediate change: the level of poverty was far greater just a short distance away, the tall buildings completely disappearing and being replaced by huts and shacks of varying construction materials. The poor road conditions and many vehicles kept us for a couple of hours before we started to get a good speed going.

As I stated before, the rules of the Indian road change completely going from the city to the highway. Though the highway is one lane in either direction, it is in effect 5 lanes. You have the far side of the road, the middle part of each lane, and a center shared between the two. Typically you’ll stay as far to the left as possible. (In India, you drive in the left hand lane).

The trick is the size of the vehicle. You’ll basically have three sizes of vehicles on the road: very large TATA buses, small TATA cars, or tiny rickshaws or motorcycles. (The rickshaws were often crammed full of people. That did not look like a comfortable way to travel.) The large buses and trucks will take up at least two of these lanes, sometimes more. The cars take around one to one and a half. The smallest vehicles take up a bit less than one of these imaginary lanes.

Your position on this road will be dictated by how much you really want to pass the vehicle in front of you, versus how willing you are to get within inches of that oncoming monster bus. If you want to veer into the furthest right lane of the road in order to pass that passenger car that’s passing a bus, so be it.

Allow me to illustrate.

Stay on target.

There’s little room for manoeuvring in this situation. But I wouldn’t have been shocked if some daring motorcyclist tried to squeeze between the two. Such are the road rules of a nation that largely believes in reincarnation.

The lumbering behemoth buses were probably amongst the most daring vehicles. Buses won’t stop for pedestrians blocking the road in India. They’ll just honk louder. (Honks are a never ending sound on India’s roads.) And buses won’t hesitate to pass other buses, even though it often takes up slightly more space than the road has. They don’t care, and I’m not completely surprised. I’d imagine driving one of those festive road machines lends a certain sense of invincibility. They’re the largest vehicles on the road. They’re in a freaking bus.

I counted at least two bright and colourful buses, flipped completely upside down into a ditch on the side of the road, apparently long abandoned.

Complicating the matter is the interesting pedestrian traffic, which includes people, oxen-driven carts, and flocks of various animals. We would have to stop every so often for cattle either crossing the lanes, or just ambling about with carefree whimsy on the road (ah, to be a Hindu cow). Shepherds were often walking a number of animals down the side of the roads, requiring everyone to slow down a little, and sometimes stopped traffic altogether to cross.

Between the frequent slowing down and speeding up to pass vehicles, the herds of animals, and the occasional transformation from paved road to dirt path, we were beginning to realise that our California estimates of travel time were way off the mark.

You’ll have to stop in various cities along the way while travelling the road in India as well. It can be a complicated affair… sometimes signs are hard to find, and not always that useful anyway because of the many different languages in India. Hindi is supposed to be a standard unifying language, but one state we travelled through, Maharashtra, had refused to put up signs in Hindi. Apparently this was partly out of fear that their local tongues would die out, and partly just pure, good old fashioned linguistic snobbery- they thought their language was better. As it would probably be impossible for the company’s drivers to have memorised every road in every city the passengers may have the whim of visiting, the driver basically makes his way through the cities by travelling straight down roads, stopping at any fork or intersection, and asking people on the side of the road which direction to go in order to reach whatever your next stop is. From this, I learned my only Hindi… ‘Sida, sida,’ meaning, ‘Straight, straight,’ accompanied by nods down the general direction of the road.

A final joy of Indian road travel we found had to do with state to state taxation of commercial vehicles. The vehicle we were in was registered to Andhra Pradesh, and being a commercial vehicle, we had to pay a state tax at each border. This didn’t amount to much- usually less than 200 Rs, about $4- but it was another stop to make. Also, we were frequently pulled over by police officers checking our paperwork, making sure it was all in order, and asking for a bribe for good measure. (Except in Karnataka. You freaking rule, Karnataka.)

Goa, at last. Goa was colonised by the Portuguese, leading to a strong presence of Catholic influences, including architecture.

When all was said and done, we spent about 24 hours total on the road to make it to Goa. Not in one sitting, of course… we stopped in a city called Kohlapur for a night, and finally entered Goa around noon the next day, and reached the area we were staying late in afternoon. The road trip was long, but had several advantages in the end. We saw tons of different scenery in India… it went from dusty areas around Hyderabad to grassy plains in the middle of the country, to lush tropical vegetation on the West coast of India. Seeing the random sites on the road was interesting as well… a lot of small towns on the way, as well as a variety of wildlife (including monkeys and wild peacocks).

Our stay in Goa would be interesting but incredibly brief, which will be described next time. Following that, we would travel to Bijapur (talked about in a previous entry where I was assaulted by mobs of excited children) and then back to Hyderabad. All in all, it wasn’t a bad view of South India.

I mentioned that we stopped at the ruins of a mosque. Here’s a couple of pictures.