The Wobble

The Night Bus From Panji (Goa) to Hampi
It took quite a mental effort to leave Goa behind. I have heard of people spending months on end in that place, time just slips by so easily. By the end of the week I was already in a routine of getting up at 12 to go for a swim, back to the house for a shower etc before heading back down to the beach for food, sit around, read a book before going for a few beers at the shack closest to where I was staying. To be honest Its hard to tell some of the days apart and to be honest I didn’t like that too much. That and the fact that Goa is full it seems of package tourists who are just into themselves so doesn’t really nurture the back packing fraternity the way someone travelling on their own needs, so the decision to leave was made.
Friday morning I grabbed a taxi from Arambol to the state capitol Panji - I even managed to negotiate a fare of 600 rupees down to 400 - very proud of that effort altogether. The trip over was nice, the taxi driver was cricket mad and pointed out a few places of interest. It was a good way to get to see what Goa really is like, its not just beaches and shacks. There is a very strong christian influence in goa that comes from when the portugese settled here and it is still very prevalent in the buildings and the imagery that surrounds the place and as a result (I am told) doesn’t represent true india.
I got the driver to drop me at the bus depot in panji - its was a fairly chaotic scene at first, that coupled with the heat made it a little disorientating but a quick consultation with the lonely planet got me to Pablos Travel agency. Here I booked the sleeper ticket to hampi via bus, they allowed me to store my backpack while I had about 6 hours or so to go off and explore panji and pretty much find out why it is such a hidden gem.
Hidden Gem is definitely not what I would call this town, while it was okay to walk around and the people didn’t hassle you on the scale of mumbai, 6 hours was definitely about 3 too long. I took time out to check up on the internet, grab a coffee and loosely plan the next month of my trip and grab a few extra medication things to keep me going till I got to another major town. I also managed to watch in on a game of cricket. At around 5 o’clock I reckoned it was about time to head back to the bus station but a funny thing happened, the city exploded with people, they seemed to come from nowhere like wasps getting smoked out of a hole - I figured it was the end of the working day and it was some sight. It was also very disoriented, I got lost with a sore pair of feet trapsing around the place
After about 40 minutes I managed to get my bearings once again, oh and I got to nimble on some tasty street food while I was at it. I’m not sure if I mentioned this before but I have decided to go vegitarian for this trip in india, I started off on the meat in everything but had a bit of a toilet episode after some dodgy chicken so touch wood on the veggies it has been fine. Eating lots of paneer food so that will do as a meat substitute until I can constitute the stuff a little better.
I sat outside the bus station for the guts of an hour, started a conversation with a few english chaps who seemed quite sound. Swapped stories about Goa, they were further south than me and had a ‘wicked time’ down there. Sounded like too much like hard work, staying up till 6 or 7 in the morning was not something I had planned to do on my relaxing week at the start of my trip. Next thing we know the bus turned up. Man you should have seen this bus, some effort. It looked like a bigger version of the bus out of scooby doo. Got my bag in first so it was less likely to be nicked and boarded the bus.
After being pointed to my bed/seat I noticed that it was shared with someone else. Can you imagine, a 13 hour trip across some bad excuse for tarmacadam sound corners and up mountains with some strange dude you never met before in the space that was barely bigger than a single bed back at home and about 1/10 as comfortable.

It was here that I started to make some friends with people. Finally… The guy sharing my berth is an amazing guy from peru called Adoni, he was very friendly and had a great sense of humour. On top of this he could speak 5 seperate languages flawlessly. He has travelled the world and has seemed to be in every country bar the emerald isle. Chatting away to him made the first part of the trip go by relatively quickly though to give some idea of the state of both the bus and the roads - Hampi is barely 200 kilometres from Panji and although we did take a small detour of maybe 50 km to south Goa it still took 13 hours to cover the entire trip. After about 4 hours we made a dinner stop, it was about 2 in the morning, dinner stop!!! Suppose the driver had to eat at some stage. We decided to head in and scope the place out. We had a few beers with the most boring chap ever from bath and met the funniest bar man I have met in years, he kept telling us about his conquests with travellers passing by which seems a little dodgy to read I’m sure but they way he told his stories was priceless and had us rolling around the place.
The beers made the rest of the journey almost unbearable. Man did I need to take a pee not 5 mins after getting back on the bloody thing. Didn’t get one seconds kip on this journey, between my tiny bladder and brutal roads it was impossible. Eventually Eventually we made it to Hampi. At this stage Adomi had almost adopted the entire bus - we got friendly with this fantastically cool girl from Holland called Marika who is on a round the world trip and is 1-2 months into her india trip and a couple of newlyweds from Israel called Homer and Danna. It was with these 4 people that I spent my time with in Hampi, wonderful wonderful Hampi. Its getting late now and the mosquitos are having a harvest on me so the story of Hampi will have to wait for a day or two.

The photos of hampi and Goa are all up on the photos site, again Hampi is amazing!!!

I am now at day 9 of the trip - time sure does fly when you are bumming around and doing nothing. I am still in that little village I landed in last monday off the train. It is pure hippyville around here, you could spent and I am pretty sure that I have spent hours watching these crusty 50 year old men with hair down to their nether region swan about the place complaining about the quality of german made sitar strings. The other day I was sitting in a beach shack enjoying a coconut milkshake (the place is full of nuts of every variety) when I noticed this dude who last saw the sharp end of a remmingtons back in the 67 talking to this bunch of south african girls - I could just about make out what they were saying - ‘Yeah man, you should check it out, we start playing at 8.30 in the shack 40 yards down the beach’ which was met with much enthusiasm from the girls. Out of pure curiosity and plain idleness I made sure I was in the vicinity at that time, My God they were shite!! 4 crusty year old hippies with the rythym of a drunken uncle at a wedding randomly beating/abusing/violating their respective instruments.
Arambol is really lovely, very pictureesque and a massive seachange from mumbai. Alot of the people who work here come from north india or inland where snow falls and its out of season with regard to tourism. At first they always seem to have something to sell and they drive a hard bargain at first its intimidating but gets kinda fun after a while. I’ve found that showing them pictures of ireland on my camera gets them to forget about their sell and talk more about where they come from which I find is a great way to find out which places are worth visiting. One guy who works in the shack where the south african girls were spent a full hour talking to me about places I should visit where he comes from right in the very north of india. Manali is the town where he is from and it certainly sounds lovely but with the snow falling at the moment he reckons its pointless visiting there until next march. Its right up beside kashmir but far away that there is no trouble. The Dali Lama lives in the next town so if its okay for him then it’ll certainly do for me.
I have found the people who have travelled here to be very insular and into themselves, there is a massive proportion of russians and israelis - they far outnumber anything else. I have met some cool people aswell, there is this guy from nepal who is always on the beach at 4 every day kicking a football around, tis always good to keep those skills sharpened up. Have met a good few people just from kicking a ball up and down the beach. There was even a 2 groups of indian guys who wanted their picture taken with me. One which I will post up later when I get a better computer played state cricket for Bihar - I was embarrased not to know him but he didn’t seem to mind. Their love for cricket is amazing, If you want to get one of them to smile instantly all I have to do is mention the 600 runs they got against pakistan in a 20 20 match at the weekend.

That about sums up Goa, there are so many little episodes everyday that its impossible to put them all up, that I know it would just bore the arse out of people. I am going to leave for the state capital in the morning where I hope to get an 8 hour bus to a place called Hampi which is meant to be pretty cool - its one of those UNESCO sites. I did plan to spend the guts of a month in goa but I think I should get out on the road and earn my weeks in the sun on a beach doing sweet feck all. At this stage it looks like I will be spending Xmas in Kerala.

Adios,
Phil

p.s. one of the computers here melted my memory card reader the other day so photos are going to become less frequent but in bulk - probably…