Travel Diaries: India pt.2

After saying goodbye to our Kiwi friends, we spent the rest of the evening drinking with Toni, our mate from Frankfurt. The common room bar had now switched the music up a little bit - they were no longer playing the Bollywood tunes we had heard everywhere else, and were now spinning a Western pop playlist. Initially exciting, it started to feel a little bit torturous when we realised it was just the same four songs by The Weeknd on repeat for nearly two hours. Toni was a great guy, with his thick German accent making everything he said sound that little bit funnier, and we were disappointed to learn that tonight was his last night, before he ventured south to Kochi.

We’d struggled to get much sleep, as we had Darth Vader in our dorm room, and we had woken up covered in suspicious looking mosquito bites. Mia apologised in advance for her bad temper, which was already near boiling point at 10am. We had planned to visit Old Goa with Anass, an inland city dating back to the 16th century, with Portuguese-inspired architecture said to be breathtaking. Anass had sold us the idea that it would be myself, Mia, Eden and Toni going with him, but one of us would have to drive as he doesn’t have a licence. I was shocked to learn that a drivers licence was even a requirement in India, given I’d struggled to spot any other road rules being adhered to so far. I volunteered to drive, but having only been driving in the UK for a few months, nobody else shared my enthusiasm. Mia didn’t like being a front seat passenger with me driving at the best of times, and that’s when we’ve got the Highway Code on our side. We found out Old Goa was an hour’s drive away from Anjuna, and the prospect of me having the freedom to drive as lawlessly as the Goan roads would let me soon didn’t sound too appealing to anyone, myself included. Neither of the girls wanted to drive either, and Toni flat out refused. We were stuck, as a scooter would be just as idiotic, and being as tight as our Yorkshire roots have made us, combined with the fact we’d worked out we’d majorly overspent so far, we didn’t want to pay for a “Taxi!”.

Anass opened up the invitation to the rest of the hostel, in the hope that a couple of people with rental cars would want to come and offer to car share. His idea worked, and he now had the responsibility of allocating hostel guests to each car. Mia has a hardened way of shooting down bad ideas instantaneously in an abrupt, scary-like fashion. I have the privilege of living with her, so I experience it all the time. But, when Anass tried to split us up and put us in separate cars for an hour, he was taken aback by how resolute she was in saying “NO”. Normally I’d poke the fire a little bit, by asking her to see both sides and actually consider it before rejecting the idea completely. After all, we would only be apart for an hour, but I remembered she’d already pre-apologised for any unpleasant behaviour, so I let her off and kept quiet.

After almost twenty minutes of planning this logistical nightmare, we were all starting to get a bit frustrated. The deliberation had confirmed our inkling that Anass couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, but he had finally met everyone’s requirements - Toni had room for his luggage, Eden had air-conditioning, and Mia had a seatbelt in a vehicle with the correct amount of passengers. Myself, Mia and Eden jumped into the back of an Indian couple’s brand new rented Hyundai SUV and were ready for departure. It was at this point Anass awoke the dragon that was sleeping inside Mia’s soul. He opened our door, and instructed the three of us to unclip our seatbelts and budge up in the back to make room for him. In doing so, he may as well have unclipped the grenade that was Mia’s temper. My stomach dropped as she let out her battle cry of “Absolutely not!”. Even Eden fuelled the fire by shouting at him too. I tried to calm the situation by offering him to sit on my knee for the journey. This only made things worse, as Mia had already raised concerns regarding Anass, and his frequent use of addressing me as Mr. Shagger, and Mr. Handsome. As she stormed out of the car, I had to laugh as she resembled the Grinch by announcing “That’s it! I’m not going!”. The rest of the gang went on to Old Goa without us, and we said “auf wiedersehen” to Toni.

With tensions still high, we migrated to sit around the hostel pool which can only be compared to Shrek’s swamp. It was here where we began to investigate our mosquito bites a bit closer. Despite £650 worth of vaccinations, travelling to the other side of the world with two hypochondriacs was still always going to be difficult. The queens of self diagnosis had concluded that our red dots were actually as a result of bed bugs. We naturally kicked up a fuss and pursued every refund option available on a complete whim, having not stopped and considered any consequences, or the fact that it might not actually be bed bugs. Myself excited at the prospect of getting the hell out of this cesspit and going back to the Marriott, I went along with it and summoned Anass to put him on trial. He was helpful beyond description, talked us through our options in detail and advised us of the appropriate channels to try and get some money back. Another hostel worker approached us and asked us if we’d actually seen any bed bugs, or if we’d even bothered to check properly. The answer to both questions was obviously no, and she made us look foolish when checking for the bugs herself, with me and Eden in attendance. It was a little bit embarrassing, even the cockroach in the bathroom was sniggering. Nevertheless, they kindly let us change rooms and, to our relief, the more comfortable 6-bed dorm had a much cleaner bathroom area, with a non-existent cockroach population.

The next day we ventured down to Anjuna beach and got stared at for a few hours. In all honesty, it was starting to get a bit annoying. I felt responsible for the girls’ safety, and was a bit tired of playing bodyguard - rejecting selfie requests and standing in front of them when blokes were pretending to be talking on the phone, but slyly filming. God only knows what would have happened if I’d been called into actual physical action and had to use my almighty strength.

We headed back up to the hostel to make amends after our outbursts. Anass invited us to go with him to get some golgappe (or “panipuri”) from one of his pals. We jumped back into the same SUV from the previous day, this time with the correct amount of passengers, and listened to “Tunak Tunak Tun” by Daler Mehndi on repeat the whole way - an Indian banger. We got to the stall, and the owner served us some deep fried, hollow, cracker balls filled with potato and an Indian-style broth. We were instructed to put the whole ball in our mouths, and when bitten down upon they explode full of flavour. One could choose between sweet and spicy, and of course we all opted for sweet, given that an Indian person’s idea of spicy is very different to ours. Anass played a little prank on me and gave me a spicy one, and he’s lucky he left with all his teeth still intact. I’m a soft lad normally, but if someone tries to set my mouth on fire again, it’s just instinct to seek some sort of vengeance. Remarkably, I easily extinguished the flames with another sweet golgappe, and I was back to being his best friend again. We’ve slagged Madpackers off, but I think it’s important to highlight how brilliant Anass has been. Without him, our time in India wouldn’t have been half as exciting and authentic. He really took us under his wing and planned out various activities for us, which really outweighed any of the bad experiences we had at the hostel.

We ventured back to the hostel to the sound of Daler Mehndi, and got some more drinks in us, because all the guests were making the short journey to the local nightclub. Around 20 of us jumped on mopeds and flew through the dark streets of Anjuna like a pathetic version of the Hell’s Angels, to Vagalumme Nightclub. Amongst the clubbers was Caleb, a big sound lad from Minnesota who was here to meet his younger brother, who had sadly been detained in Bangalore for having a Garmin satellite phone. He’d had to pay 300 USD to be freed, and was on his way to be reunited with his brother. Caleb was celebrating his 29th birthday, and would wholeheartedly agree it was a birthday to remember. The hostel had got us on the guest list so thankfully we didn’t have to pay the entry fee, but I’d never experienced such a rigorous pat-down when entering an event or venue. They confiscated an open pack of cigarettes and a strip of Imodium tablets, the thought of losing either one was equally as upsetting.

We got through security to discover that the price of a beer was four times the amount we’d been paying everywhere else, so collectively agreed to take it steady and have a quiet one. Twenty minutes later, we were on the dance floor giving it our all, our limbs flying around like Catherine wheels to the sound of Bollywood anthems. So much so, that the DJ even had to point it out,

“Yo guys… huge shoutout to the four white people really getting involved! You’re killing it!”

The following day we woke up with sore heads, and made the hour-long, uphill trek back to Vagator beach, and spent the day basking in the sun. When we got back to the hostel, Anass had a little trip planned for us. He invited Mia and Eden to get on the back of his scooter, and instructed me to get on the back of another scooter, ridden by a bloke called Parnav. Parnav was a musician with a Morrissey-style whiff, and never didn’t have a cigarette in his mouth. He had a tendency to ride the scooter one-handed, and we rode for 10 minutes and pulled up to a street food van called Backstreet Bites. We’d been skeptical of street food until this point, but this van was state of the art, and looked better than the average food van you’d find at an English racecourse or football ground. I even broke my meat sobriety and went for a crispy chicken burger, lathered with Indian-style mayonnaise, while the girls had a Paneer Poie, a traditional burger in Goan bread. The food was divine, and I’d never considered that an Indian flavoured burger could be so incredible until now. We washed it down with some tamarind juice, which was a savoury drink packed with chia seeds, said to cleanse the pallet and diffuse any heat from the food. Again, divine.

On the scooter ride back to the hostel me and Parnav got to know each other. I was thrilled to hear he was a Beatles fan, and he told me a remarkable story about how he got into music…

“I was going through a hard time in my life, I felt like I was going nowhere and knew I wanted to go into music. A few years ago, I went to Rishikesh in Northern India, where The Beatles took part in transcendental meditation back in 1968. There’s a shrine there dedicated to the band, and I smoked a joint packed with DMT. I started hallucinating and The Beatles literally started talking to me! They told me everything I wanted to hear. Paul was at the front doing most of the talking, he was saying “you can do this”, and John was at the back agreeing. That’s when I changed my life and became a musician. It was great because they were talking to me in an Indian accent. They were the Indian Beatles - The Flies!”

Parnav now produces soundtracks for some of Bollywood’s biggest movies, and is in the process of recording his own EP. We rode the rest of the way home singing Flourescent Adolescent by Arctic Monkeys and chatting about Richard Ashcroft.

The next day we had arranged to go to an open mic night with Parnav and his friends in the northern village of Arambol. Arambol was nicknamed the “Russian Village” by locals. I was excited to see statues of Lenin, Soviet mosaics and non-descript communist architecture, but in reality it’s only called the Russian Village because there’s loads of Russians there. Genuinely, they outnumber the locals.

We took a 40-minute rollercoaster taxi and somehow made it there alive, despite our driver’s best efforts to get us killed. We walked onto the beach and an old man approached me, gesturing towards my right ear. Before I could gather what was going on, he had a sharp utensil in my lug hole, and pulled it out with some fake ear wax on it and demanded payment for cleaning my ears. A bizarre experience, and our first real encounter with a scammer, but we told him where to go. In the melee, Mia thought he was going to pierce my ears, to which I asked “surely he wouldn’t do that without a gun?”. Eden then said that nobody should use piercing guns, because they can “shatter your cartridge”. I think she may have meant cartilage.

We found a little beach bar and flicked through the English menu, baffled at the Russian translations just below each item. We watched the sunset over three beers each and then set course for a bar called Twice In Nature, where we were meeting Parnav. We walked through the main strip in Arambol, each sign with a Russian translation, and money exchanges offering best rates for the Ruble. We got to the venue to find a huge wooden teepee with sofas but most people, the majority with dreadlocks, sat on the floor barefoot. The atmosphere was difficult to describe… it was hippie central, and got even weirder when the music started, particularly when each singer began commanding us how to breathe, to the sound of bongos and sitars.

“Let’s all feel the grooves now, man. Eight seconds in… eight seconds out… can you feel that? Set it free… release what’s inside you…”

We felt like we were in a different dimension and got a bit freaked out, so asked Anass to send someone to pick us up before we got offered any more psychedelic drugs. On the way home, Goa Guts really got the better of Mia, and we had to pull over so she could “let it out” and “release what was inside of her”. Perhaps she’d taken the open mic night host’s instructions too literally…