Gokarna, India

By Monday morning Peggy had decided that riding motor scooters in India was the most important thing in her life, so Babu schlepped us up to Benaulim, a tiny seaside village that reputedly had the best deals on rental scooters. The guys at the beach had apparently not heard that there was a recession on and tourist visits were about half normal because they didn’t really want to bargain with us. We drove back inland a ways and found a scooter renter who was willing to part with his rides for $4 each for 2 hours. We got aboard and blasted off.

And blast was the operative word for the entire two hours that we cruised the back roads of Goa. The whole expedition was fun, but the opportunity to bleat out a lifetime’s worth of horn honks was the best part of the deal. I was honking at things that weren’t even on the road, and some things that weren’t even in the same county just because it was so much fun to do. Neither Jody nor I had any troubles keeping to the left as we tried to emulate the smooth ebb and flow of motor bike traffic that we’d been observing over the past few days.

We rode for nearly an hour, turned around, then stopped at an outdoor café called Sinatra for some cold sodas. We were the only customers in the whole place, emphasizing yet again what a terrible tourist season this was shaping up to be. The in-house music system was playing American country of a vintage old enough to actually be enjoyable, so we sat through some Willie Nelson, Jim Brown, Crystal Gayle, and one of our all time favorites “Forever and Ever, Amen” by Randy Travis. When I asked if they had any tunes by an unknown feller named Frank Sinatra, they just shrugged. How and why they took his name was a mystery to the young lads working the floor.

Finding our way back to Benaulim was much trickier than just going wherever the heck we wanted, so we had to resort to the Indian GPS system – stop and ask at every intersection. We still managed a few wrong turns, but got the bikes back within a reasonable grace period.

Jody proved an able bargainer at the souvenir shack that doubled as scooter rental headquarters. When I suggested that the way to get the best deal was to walk out of the store and have them come running after you with their final offer, he correctly reminded me that spending many minutes of your life to save 50 cents or a dollar was probably not a real good trade-off.

Next we ventured into Margao, a good size town that is grimy and industrial and not normally on the tourist trail. We had been told there was a market there where we could find Goa Dry Fruit. Having worked up an appetite on the motor bikes, we stopped first at Tato’s, a recommendation of Rough Guides. We were seated in a very warm room and given menus that read “Non A/C” on the front. Aha! Having already deduced that some restaurants have AC and non AC rooms, I asked for the A/C room, whereupon our menus were taken away to be replaced with the “A/C” menus. I never did get to look at the price difference, but when our total bill for 3 mains and 6 sodas came to 165 Rs (less than $3.50), I decided that whatever the savings would have been to swelter in the non-A/C room would not have been worth the discomfort.

And so began the great Goa Dry Fruit chase. We made our way to the outdoor market, then into the covered section, which was just boiling in the heat and humidity. I was drenched from head to toe within minutes. We asked at many shops that looked like good suspects, but nobody could tell us what Goa Dry Fruit was or where it could be had.

Back out on the street, where the 90/90 day seemed so much cooler, we were hustled by a very pretty, very petite young girl who claimed to be 17 years old. She wanted us to follow her to her shop, but we just wanted to get back to the A/C comfort in Babu’s car. Since she was herding us anyway, I asked her if she could tell us what Goa Dry Fruit was. She replied that she would take us to the right stall to get some.

Whereupon we re-entered the sweltering covered market again. She asked shopkeeper after shopkeeper where to find Goa Dry Fruit and each kept pointing further down the long aisle, further into the roasting bowels of the market. But we finally got to a shop where the clerk pointed back in the direction from which we had just come. So at that point I had a heart-to-heart with the young girl and said “You don’t know what Goa Dry Fruit is, do you?” To which she admitted she did not. And the shopkeeper shrugged at the same question. So it finally dawned on us that there was no such thing, that probably some time in the past one of Ashraf’s customers had brought him some dried dates or raisins from Goa and said “This is Goa Dry Fruit” causing Ashraf to think it was some special concoction.

I went to the closest stall, pointed at a bag of gorp-like stuff that seemed to contain a healthy dose of dried fruits and dried nuts and said “I’ll take that”, and marked Goa Dry Fruit off my to do list.

On the way back to Varca, Babu told us about a local type of moonshine liquor called “Penny” (according to him). He said it was strong and awful, but a lot of it was consumed in Goa. He also claimed that 60-70% of Hindus in India drink, a number that seemed shocking to us. But it did remind us of how many Mormons we’ve met who give lip service to both the stricture against alcohol and the distilled product itself.

Back at the hotel just before sunset, we rushed down to the beach to watch the sunset and have a glass of Feni (which is what the Goa moonshine was called there). Feni is basically Grappa made of either raw cashews or palm leaves. I’m a big fan of Grappa, but if you never get a chance to drink cashew-based Feni in your life you can die a happy soul. It’s nasty.

Our Russian friends were at the beach and greeted us glumly. It seems they had been waiting for us pretty much all day. We apologized, I offered Valery (masc) a taste of my Feni, which he wisely declined, then Valery (Fem) said they would meet us for dinner in half an hour. Peggy explained that we had eaten a very late lunch and would not be having dinner, so we agreed to meet later that night for a drink. I felt a little sorry for Valery (fem) because she seemed very sad and maybe a little hurt that we were not going to join them for dinner. Perhaps Peggy’s theory was correct and they were planning a massive, fully-paid feast for us, but the truth was that we were just plain not hungry.

When 8:00 pm came, we sought the Valerys out, but Valery (fem) told us they were very tired and sunburned from their long wait at the beach, so she just offered us a bottle of Russian Vodka and we exchanged email addresses, promising to stay in touch.

It had become clear that our resort was Russian-heavy. Not only did it appear that almost every paying guest was Russian, but we started noticing that many of the staff spoke enough Russian to communicate and many of the signs on the property were written in English and Cyrillic.

On Sunday afternoon I had been exuberant about our first few hours at the beach. The sand was beautiful, the water warm and clean. But during that afternoon I had proven good to my reputation as the number one goal of every stinging insect in the free world. Biting ants, followed by sand fleas, then later that night mosquitoes and more biting gnats, left my feet and ankles looking like the polka dot jersey at the Tour de France. Whereas I had earlier exclaimed that if I ever adopted a regular beach community it would be Goa, I began to revisit that thinking. Heat, humidity, drenching sweat, and the unbearable itch from multitudes of insect bites put me in a pretty cranky mood by the time I went to sleep Monday night.

Hope springs eternal and with a slight reduction in itching Tuesday morning I regained some hope that I would spend a day without increasing the welts on my body. We left Goa at the vacationly hour of 11:00 am and headed for Gokarna, somewhat further south on the coast

After an hour or so, we reached the border between the states of Goa and Karnataka and there was a police checkpoint there. Babu argued mildly with the uniformed officer standing outside before being invited into the guard hut. He reappeared a few minutes later with a wan smile on his face. He had been shaken down for 50Rs even though he had already paid his Goa tax (and had the receipt to prove it) when he arrived in Goa a few days earlier. Such is the nature of corruption in India, Should Babu decide to complain about this officer’s shake-down, he would have to talk to the guy’s superior who is getting some baksheesh from the officer so that would have no beneficial effect. Every step up the chain he would be faced with yet another official who was collecting graft from everyone below him so the prospects of any satisfaction whatsoever are very dim. And that is why Babu and every other Indian we’ve ever talked to about this issue complains mildly about the situation but expresses no belief that anything will ever change so resigned acceptance is the common response.

We made it through the Goa checkpoint and sped merrily on our way for a good 2 or 3 seconds before we got to another checkpoint. This one was the entry to Karnataka. And once again Babu had to fork over a small bribe, this time only 20 Rs because his car was obviously registered in the state of Karnataka. The bribery business is alive and well in India.

The day was mostly tedious. Even though the total distance between Goa and Gokarna is less than 170 K, we drove for 4 hours. Whereas in Rajasthan a month earlier we had participated in a small convoy that commandeered the wrong lane away from the rightful owners, on this segment we were the victims of the same type of activity. At one point we drove by a long line of stopped trucks in the approaching lane. The line of stopped vehicles was at least 2 kms long. A few oncoming trucks could not stand the gridlock and simply commandeered our lane, forcing us onto the shoulder or into the ditch in order to let them by.

We finally arrived at Gokarna and found our hotel, the Om Beach Resort, elevation at least 500 feet. You’re probably thinking the beach was on a hillside lake, but no, the beach was actually at sea level. Our strangely named hotel was a good 5 Km from Om Beach, with no view of it and no apologies for lying through their teeth when it came to naming the hotel.

The Om Beach Hotel is the second nicest hotel in town, but our room was grim, made even more so when a pounding rain started shortly after we arrived. The power went out, meaning the AC shut down and the stifling heat and humidity were not to be tolerated in the room, so we hopped in the car and Babu took us into the village of Gokarna where we were immediately transported to a dream world made up of equal parts “Midnight Express” and Leonardo Di Caprio’s “The Beach”. The rain stopped just as we arrived in the village, but the downpour had created a small stream down the middle of the street carrying all variety of trash and cow poop as it made its way to the beach.

The first thing we saw sitting smack in the middle of town was a parade float in the form of a Hindu temple. It was on a cart with wooden wheels and at least 30 feet high, decorated with flowers and colored cloth. As the rain was replaced with stifling humidity, the village came to life, and we were treated to the spectacle of many pujaris (Hindu pilgrims) bustling about town. Most were men, many had shaved heads with just a pug of hair remaining on the upper back side, and most were bare-chested, wearing saffron colored dhotis (skirts) with a like-colored sash thrown over one shoulder.

Gokarna has two temples dedicated to Rudra, who, as you know, is a reincarnation of Shiva, and because of its history (which is too boring to describe here) it attracts many pilgrims. Surprisingly, a fair number of the saffron-skirted men were light-skinned Europeans. Gokarna is still one of the go-to places for hippies looking for spiritual sustenance combined with a laid-back attitude and a relaxed perspective toward drugs.

The shops were reopening so we browsed a bit. Jody was drawn to a shop that sold very bad Indian-made guitars. They had a sitar for sale for $500 that did not look well made either. But Jody and the store clerk, who called himself Lucky, bonded due to their mutual interest in music and Jody ended up bargaining for a pair of small tabla drums.

We meandered down to the beach, the humidity now joined by even more stifling heat causing us to sweat like Niagara Falls. At the beach we watched local fishermen picking fish out of their gill nets and rerolling the same for the next day’s aquatic foray.

Despite our attempts to raise the sea level another foot by sweating, we were having fun strolling around town so we continued to do so until dark. Jody would later admit that he finally felt the culture shock of India by spending time in Gokarna town. As day turned into night, it became obvious that the power was still off, because many shops were open but dark. Occasionally we’d see one that was still lit and realize that said shop owner had been smart enough to invest in batteries and an inverter. Doing so seemed like a huge business advantage to me, but so many of the places were dark that it was obvious most local business men did not agree with me.

On the drive back to the hotel Babu lamented the fact that government entities in India had plenty of money (by his estimation), but they could not build adequate roads nor keep the electrical grid running. I sympathized with him completely while thanking my lucky stars that I did not have to put up with it for the rest of my life. There are a billion Indians who have no real choice in the matter.

Despite my sanguine feelings about my eventual ability to get away from the insanity of India, I was in a foul mood that evening because I was in a depressing hotel room, hot, sweaty and itchy to the max. The ant/mosquito/gnat bites on my feet, legs, arms and neck had really flared up and I wanted more than anything to be able to dive into a clear, crisp mountain stream to dowse the burning sensations. The closest I could get was a luke-warm shower and bucket of only slightly cool water that I stuck my most afflicted foot into. I set the AC at 17 (63F) and tried to think cool thoughts.

My meditation was interrupted shortly by a ringing telephone. The hotel restaurant was on the line, and in a page taken from the persistent street vendors, asked when we would be coming to dinner. We all agreed that our late lunch would see us through the night, so we begged off and went to bed, hoping against hope that at some point India would cool off.

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622821019857/