Going to Goa

So I stumble, bleary eyed, off the bus after only four hours of a fourteen hour ride. It is midnight and drizzling rain. I see a sign for the restroom and head that way only to be yelled at by some guy in a uniform. Aparrently that is not the way to go. So I head to the attached building which is some sort of resturaunt and wander around in a daze for a bit, semi oblivious to the attempts of a person behind the counter to sit me at a table. Finally I find the entrance to the restroom and do my business. Later I go outside and although I would love to eat at the resturaunt I do not know if we are stopping for long enough so instead i buy some snacks from a nearby stand an wait, with Dimitar and Aoi, to herded back onto the bus. We slowly realize that the purpose of the stop was to eat at the resturaunt but by that time it is too late we have to be content with our measley snacks. As I notice the stares of my fellow Indian travelers (something I have gotten used to) I am struck by how wierd they must think we are. Having almost no frame of reference for how I should act or behave in this totally foriegn culture I realize that I have gradually just given up trying to act in a culturally "normal" way. I suddenly have a possible picture of myself through thier eyes. I am wearing a dirty t shirt and shorts( most Indian men do not wear shorts), I am eating snacks when I should be eating a meal, and I have not shaven in a few days. I must look like this crazed dirty giant of a forienger to these small polite and clean middleclass Indians who are going to Goa for the Independence Day weekend.

This is only the beginning of the scariest and most painfull of busrides. I still have ten hours to go and they are mostly spent frantically gripping the armrest next to me so I don't go flying off of my seat. We booked the bus last minute so we sat in the back where we feel every bump. Like any bus there are two isles going down the right and left sides of the bus making rows of four seats. The back row is the exception as it has five seats with one directly in the middle of the bus. I foolishly choose this one so that I will have leg room. As a result every time the bus slams on the brakes, and this does happen quite often, I don't have a seat in front of me to brace agains so unless I am holding onto the armrest I will go flying into the aisle.

The roads in India are already narrow and treacherous but during the monsoon season they get worse. We go up and down what seems like an endless mountain pass filled with the most brutal switch backs which the driver takes at full speed causing the passengers to get thrown, first to the left, then to the right, every ten or fifteen seconds. Needless to say I get hardly any sleep and by the time we arrive in Margao I am a broken mess. Towards the end of the trip I seemed to have developed nausea and a fever so when I get off the bus all I want to do is find a place to lie down. But nobody has eaten, aside from snacks, since lunchtime the day before so we go get some food then find our way to the railway station so we can book our return ticket to Panvel and then travel to Vasco De Gama which is on the coast and where we will meet some friends. We find out that, in the words of the ticket agent, we have, "No chance" of booking a ticket and so have to again ride in a bus to get home. However we are able to book a ticket to Vasco and wait for about an hour for the train to come. We board our train and ride for another hour before getting to the coast and our final destination. Luckily the hotel we are staying at is only a few blocks from the railway station and it is sooo much luxury. I promptly lay down and pass out for a few hours.

The next day I am feeling much better and we are able to go a beach which is very nice even though it is cloudy. We get to swim in the ocean for a bit which is nice except for the few peices of floating garbage that we have to share it with. Aferward we go to a resturaunt with a view of the beach and just relax for a few hours before heading back to the hotel. I wish that we could spend more time in Goa, it is a very beatiful state with many old buildings left over from when it was a Portugese colony. Vasco is a very nice city as far as Indian cities go and we were pretty much the only foriegners around. Goa is a very small state but I think a person could spend months here just discovering different places.

Today is our last day here and we leave by bus at 5:00 pm hopefully reaching Panvel by 7:00 am and then taking the bus to Pen where we will start work at 10:00. This time at least we have a sleeper car and I am equipped with sleeping pills so hopefully the return journey will not be so bad.