The next morning I decided to go down alone to buy myself something healthy to eat since there was absolutely nothing in our apartment. I asked a bunch of people where the local fruit market was, and armed with my wallet and cellphone, I headed out. It felt really strange at first, walking around in an unknown place all by myself. Although I’ve been traveling all my life, this was a bit of a first for me, so it was absolutely exhilarating.
The walk was long, and I had so many things to think about. But I was constantly flooded with phone calls from friends and family back home, asking me how I was holding up. So much love from so far away filled me with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. I could actually feel myself healing a little. Even though my health was far from improved.
I passed by a huge temple 2 minutes away from the market and, on a spur of the moment decision, I went inside. It was cool, empty and beautiful. I’m not a Hindu, and I dont believe in the concept of religion, but at that moment I wanted to make a little prayer. So I stood there in front of the idol of God, and prayed fervently for the rest of my trip to be ok. And so far away from home, alone in the dark, I prayed for the strength to get through it all.
After that I went to the mark
et. I was given instructions to buy only apples, pomegranates and bananas. And to get myself some nariyal paani if possible. But the strange thing about Goa, despite all the coconut trees, is that no one there seems to sell them anywhere. And believe me, I looked everywhere for it cause it was either that or electral water, which I absolutely despise from the swirly bottom of my heart.
So electral water it was…throughout the whole damn trip! Wretchedly disgustingly nasty stuff! The others had planned to go for water sports that day, and I went along with them to Brittos for lunch. Our car was supposed to pick me up in an hour, but due to unknown reasons that I think were connected to that Saturday night when I was put of commission, the car never came back from the garage again.
I had to trudge through the whole of the Baga beach road in the hot afternoon sun to look for a cab back to the apartment. Everywhere I went people would point in another direction and tell me I could get a cab from there. One helpful waiter from Anthonys even called a cab guy he knew to ask him where he was (his cab was standing right there). But no luck. Because it was off season, most cabs had started to wrap up business. Which means there were a whole bunch of cabs lying around at the side of the road, but no one to drive them. How strange…and how horribly inconvenient! I finall
y found ONE guy who was charging me an exorbitant rate of 100 bucks (it usually costed only 50-70 bucks) and he told me I could look elsewhere if I wanted something cheaper. He knew I had no choice, so after almost half an hour of cab (and soul) searching, I made my way back home.
I spent the rest of my alone time washing my sandy clothes, clearing up the room, talking on the phone to convince whoever called that I was ok (even though I wasn’t) and watching the news. Yes the news! CNN can be oddly comforting when you feel like crap. Oh and I slept as well. For hours on end. I wanted to be better again asap cause I wanted to go out that night.
The others came back in the evening exhausted and sleepy. So after many hours of wondering if we were going anywhere that night or not, we finally headed out at midnight for dinner and Titos (sans car of course).
At the midway point of Infantaria we bumped into people who would turn out to be our friends for many moons to come, although we didn’t know it at the time.
We’d met many different kinds of people in Goa, who had many different ways of saying hello or asking us to get them entry into Titos. Some were polite, some creepy, some arrogant and most were just ordinary Indians from other parts of India. But this particular lot of people just struck us all as really nice and decent people, all at the same time. All of us instinctively trusted them for some odd reason. Most of our friends that we spoke to after the trip thought it was weird that we did, and that we continued to stay in touch with them after. But its just one of those strange things about life that are just totally fated in their randomness. For eg I was visiting pune for a one day trip just last week, and I was debating about whether I should call them up or not. And on the very first day I ended up bumping into one of them on M G Road when, in all these many years since I left school (I did some of my schooling there) I had NEVER bumped into any of my batchmates EVER. I ended up meeting some of them later that night for a coffee.
We ended having dinner with them before Titos, that went on till 2 am because none of us could stop talking. And when we finally got to Titos there were only 5 minutes left till closing time. It was the same story in Mambos.
So all of us and 2 of them headed to this place in Calangute where we could just sit and talk. We headed of to Candolim beach at around 5 am on foot. The way to it was beautiful. The sand was cool and clean, the path was secluded and twisted every which way, and it was flanked with greenery and flowers around us and over us, making us feel like we were walking in a never ending maze, even though we could hear the sound of the sea the entire time.
We made a beeline for the water as soon as we saw it, the beach was empty and in those moments on that beach it felt like we were the only people left in the world.
I got my wish of being on a beach in Goa at sunrise. There was an entire line of ships and boats twinkling in the distance, cutting the horizon in two. Dawn crept up slowly behind us, and before we knew it, one of the most incredible and memorable nights of our life had come to an end.
We eventually made it back to our room by 9:30 am, that is after we spent over an hour talking about whatever happened in a secluded corner of our apartments compound because we were too keyed up and weren’t ready to have it all end yet. Eventually we showered and slept, exhausted but exhilarated as well.
The walk was long, and I had so many things to think about. But I was constantly flooded with phone calls from friends and family back home, asking me how I was holding up. So much love from so far away filled me with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. I could actually feel myself healing a little. Even though my health was far from improved.
I passed by a huge temple 2 minutes away from the market and, on a spur of the moment decision, I went inside. It was cool, empty and beautiful. I’m not a Hindu, and I dont believe in the concept of religion, but at that moment I wanted to make a little prayer. So I stood there in front of the idol of God, and prayed fervently for the rest of my trip to be ok. And so far away from home, alone in the dark, I prayed for the strength to get through it all.
After that I went to the mark
et. I was given instructions to buy only apples, pomegranates and bananas. And to get myself some nariyal paani if possible. But the strange thing about Goa, despite all the coconut trees, is that no one there seems to sell them anywhere. And believe me, I looked everywhere for it cause it was either that or electral water, which I absolutely despise from the swirly bottom of my heart.So electral water it was…throughout the whole damn trip! Wretchedly disgustingly nasty stuff! The others had planned to go for water sports that day, and I went along with them to Brittos for lunch. Our car was supposed to pick me up in an hour, but due to unknown reasons that I think were connected to that Saturday night when I was put of commission, the car never came back from the garage again.
I had to trudge through the whole of the Baga beach road in the hot afternoon sun to look for a cab back to the apartment. Everywhere I went people would point in another direction and tell me I could get a cab from there. One helpful waiter from Anthonys even called a cab guy he knew to ask him where he was (his cab was standing right there). But no luck. Because it was off season, most cabs had started to wrap up business. Which means there were a whole bunch of cabs lying around at the side of the road, but no one to drive them. How strange…and how horribly inconvenient! I finall
y found ONE guy who was charging me an exorbitant rate of 100 bucks (it usually costed only 50-70 bucks) and he told me I could look elsewhere if I wanted something cheaper. He knew I had no choice, so after almost half an hour of cab (and soul) searching, I made my way back home.I spent the rest of my alone time washing my sandy clothes, clearing up the room, talking on the phone to convince whoever called that I was ok (even though I wasn’t) and watching the news. Yes the news! CNN can be oddly comforting when you feel like crap. Oh and I slept as well. For hours on end. I wanted to be better again asap cause I wanted to go out that night.
The others came back in the evening exhausted and sleepy. So after many hours of wondering if we were going anywhere that night or not, we finally headed out at midnight for dinner and Titos (sans car of course).
At the midway point of Infantaria we bumped into people who would turn out to be our friends for many moons to come, although we didn’t know it at the time.
We’d met many different kinds of people in Goa, who had many different ways of saying hello or asking us to get them entry into Titos. Some were polite, some creepy, some arrogant and most were just ordinary Indians from other parts of India. But this particular lot of people just struck us all as really nice and decent people, all at the same time. All of us instinctively trusted them for some odd reason. Most of our friends that we spoke to after the trip thought it was weird that we did, and that we continued to stay in touch with them after. But its just one of those strange things about life that are just totally fated in their randomness. For eg I was visiting pune for a one day trip just last week, and I was debating about whether I should call them up or not. And on the very first day I ended up bumping into one of them on M G Road when, in all these many years since I left school (I did some of my schooling there) I had NEVER bumped into any of my batchmates EVER. I ended up meeting some of them later that night for a coffee.
We ended having dinner with them before Titos, that went on till 2 am because none of us could stop talking. And when we finally got to Titos there were only 5 minutes left till closing time. It was the same story in Mambos.
So all of us and 2 of them headed to this place in Calangute where we could just sit and talk. We headed of to Candolim beach at around 5 am on foot. The way to it was beautiful. The sand was cool and clean, the path was secluded and twisted every which way, and it was flanked with greenery and flowers around us and over us, making us feel like we were walking in a never ending maze, even though we could hear the sound of the sea the entire time.
We made a beeline for the water as soon as we saw it, the beach was empty and in those moments on that beach it felt like we were the only people left in the world.
I got my wish of being on a beach in Goa at sunrise. There was an entire line of ships and boats twinkling in the distance, cutting the horizon in two. Dawn crept up slowly behind us, and before we knew it, one of the most incredible and memorable nights of our life had come to an end.
We eventually made it back to our room by 9:30 am, that is after we spent over an hour talking about whatever happened in a secluded corner of our apartments compound because we were too keyed up and weren’t ready to have it all end yet. Eventually we showered and slept, exhausted but exhilarated as well.
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