Early Morning

It was a 5:30am wake up, but I was feeling better than the day before. Our tuk tuk driver was waiting out front at 6:00am and we headed to the train station in the dark. It was amazing to see all the activity going on that early before the sun came up. Everyone rushing to beat the heat. As we rode through the darkness we could see the glowing eyes of the cattle on the road, pulling carts filled with materials and workers, bells around their necks jingling like reindeer. I’ve never been a morning person but I’ve often wished I was for exactly this feeling and experience.

The train was scheduled to depart at 6:30am, but on the way there we found out that it was an hour behind. Our driver offered to stop somewhere so we could have some chai or a bite to eat but we were tired and decided to just carry on to the station and wait there. As we entered the station I looked back and saw Scott. He was also heading to Goa, so we hung out together waiting for the train. While we waited there were a lot of people who stopped to ask for photos. I knew I should have put a bit of effort into looking presentable that morning, but I had rolled out of bed, put my clothes on and clipped my hair up without so much as a comb through it. We took photos with young men, families, little girls and one family handed their baby off to me. I’m not a baby person, but it had been so long since I’d spent any time with kids that I kinda wanted to borrow their baby for a bit. Being a teacher, I was missing having kids around and thought about how nice it would be to visit my old school once we returned to Canada.

I believe the train ended up being more than an hour and a half late. Pretty standard. We took our seats down at the other end of the coach from Scott and some other young travelers and settled in for the long journey. The side seats convert into beds for the evening and they were still down when we boarded so we had a place to rest. Andre had a middle seat on a bench but there was no one else there so he could also stretch out. It’s not the smoothest ride so it was amusing to watch my body jiggling with the shimmying motion of the train. 

I dozed a bit but but spent most of the ride reading The Overstory by Richard Powers (highly recommend it). We drank a good number of chai teas which they serve to you in the tiniest paper cups. They served them in something like what you’d get your meds in when you’re in the hospital. You basically get a shooter of chai. It looks larger than it is in this photo because of Andre’s small hands. Hahahahahaha!

Actually, Andre drank a number of chai teas, I only had two because I try to avoid using train toilets when possible. But it was a long train ride so eventually I had go. I’m pretty good at the squatters but using them on a shaking train is next level. Plus I was wearing flowy pants with slits up the sides. Great for hot weather because they’re breezy, not so easy when using the squatter. Let me talk you through the process since my attempt at a video tutorial failed. There was nowhere safe to prop my phone. So ladies, imagine you’re camping and you have to go pee in the bush. It’s pretty much like that. The goal is essentially not to pee on yourself or get hit with splashback.

Before you head to the toilet you should make sure to bring some key items. You’ll need toilet paper for sure, hand sanitizer, and a plastic baggie in case there is no garbage to toss your tissue in. Antibacterial wet wipes are also nice. I always bring my purse with me because I have all my stuff stashed in there and I can wear it cross body in front of me and hold it along with my pants (chances are there are no hooks). First, you need to put your feet on the foot grooves on the sides. My process is then to gather my pant legs up to my knees and hold them there with one hand or keep the material in place by locking it my knees. Never pull your pants down first unless they are tight or short because you don’t want them touching the squatter! Then with your free hand pull your pants down to your knees so that all the material is gathered there and then squat as low as you can. Aim for the hole or you’ll likely get splashed. Some toilets have a flush button but others will have a bucket of water to rinse the the toilet with. It’s a good thing I have strong legs because it was a real balancing act using this toilet while holding up my pants and purse and not touching anything. All while holding my breath.

 

The Journey Continues

We booked a taxi from the controlled station terminal to take us to Palolem Beach which turned out to be a 45 minute near death experience. Our driver was a complete maniac and I do not say that lightly. We have been in over a hundred tuk tuks and taxis in all parts of the world and we both agreed that this was by far the most stressful ride we’d ever taken.

You name the offense, this guy was doing it. He drove way too fast, tailgated, passed vehicles going around blind corners on roads that barely fit two cars, his driving was jerky and unpredictable. We almost took out a cow. A baby cow. He saw it but didn’t feel the need to slow down even a little until right before it was about to kiss the hood. Then he slammed on the brake but didn’t fully stop and I’m pretty certain the cow made contact as it skidded out of the way. I don’t suffer from motion sickness but I started feeling unwell about halfway though and not just because I thought there was an excellent chance we were about to die. We looked at each other a few times wondering if we should ask him to pull over and try to find another ride. When we finally arrived at our destination and he drove off we both cursed a blue streak. Neither one of us was laughing. That also tells you how bad it was. We can almost always laugh stuff off but we both clearly traumatized.

So with the mood being as it was, we were shown to our room. A room we had booked with free cancellation. A room that was meant to have a mosquito net. The room was basically a circus tent that had a family of mosquitoes already living there. The place was literally staple gunned together and had gaping holes. There was no mosquito net. I immediately stated that I would not be staying in this room. Andre didn’t argue, we grabbed our packs, went online to cancel the booking and started walking the beach.

We walked up and down the beach in full gear. Backpacks, front day packs, and I also had my purse. So fun! We soon realized that all the accommodation on the beach was super shit and overpriced, but when we go to a beach destination we like to hang out on our patio and be able to see the beach so it was a matter of choosing the least shitty place with the nicest staff. Don’t be fooled by the exterior. These places look divine from the outside but they were built like a grade three science project using whatever materials were available in the classroom. If you’ve had a child in grade three they’ve likely brought home bridges and other structures they’ve designed at school and there is a fair to good chance they were built better than these huts.

We stayed in the hut third from the left and the stairs for all three were on our side. The coloured huts were grouped together as well and shared a staircase. You could feel every movement made in these wobbly structures and the place shook each time someone went up or down the stairs. We stayed for a week while the people next to us came and went and most of them walked like bloody elephants. My favorite was a couple that showed up at midday. They went into their room and about ten minutes later all three of the huts were shaking. It went on and on. I couldn’t wait until later and I seized my moment as soon as I could assuming a surfers stance in our room and swaying back and forth as hard as I could. Andre made me stop. He’s such a grown up. I just wished I could have seen their faces.

The bathroom was my favorite! The floor and ceiling were covered in a plastic material like something you would line your drawers with and it was roughly stapled in place. A hole was cut through the material in one corner to allow the water to drain out but it was small so eventually the water would pool around our feet. This floor/wall covering continued into the room but it wasn’t secured to the floor so we had to be careful how we moved around. That surfer stunt of mine could have ended badly in retrospect.

Sometimes there was running water, sometimes there wasn’t. We started keeping a bucket full just in case. Sometimes there was power, sometimes there wasn’t. We had an air conditioned room so when the power went off, which it did multiple times a day, you felt it.

The staff was awesome though. They were extremely friendly and very accommodating. So it was an enjoyable stay, even if nothing worked properly and the water would stop running while you were mid shampoo.

 

Deck Stories

The Lost Baby

I don’t know quite what to say about this one. While we were lounging on the deck one afternoon I heard crying and looked down at the beach. There in front of our place was a baby crawling on the sand, close enough to the water that the sand was hand packed and still wet. No adult in site. The baby was clearly distressed and its cries were terrible. I was about to go down when a women ran over and picked up the little thing. For a moment I thought she was the mother but by the way she started looking around I could tell it wasn’t her kiddo. I watched for a while as she walked up and down the beach talking to people. After about 15 minutes she walked out of site and I went back to reading. We learned a couple of hours later that it was a child from a family that was staying at our place. The server said it was not a “big problem, just a little problem”. Okay then.

No Photos Please

Up until this point in our trip I have never minded people asking to take photos with me. Enter our new neighbors. There were a lot of them. More than in the photo below. They were lovely. But… there are only so many photos you can take with people before it becomes tiring and a bit much. I can safely say that at some point during any given interaction they wanted to take yet another photo. And each time there were multiple phones and at least a dozen pictures. By the last day we were both trying to avoid them. It was early morning and they were checking out. As they were bringing their bags out of their room Andre and I were sitting out in our pajamas. There was probably still sleep in my eyes and I was just finishing my morning coffee so I wasn’t even able to form complete sentences yet. I somehow managed to politely declined one last photo.

Baby Mama

Another set of neighbors arrived several days after us and they were on the end unit. We starting discussing our middle neighbors – the hut shakers. We found the hut shakers very odd. We always made a point of saying hello and smiling at them and they barely acknowledged us and never smiled. They were also complete slobs. Our deck areas were all connected and they often had food ordered up to their room and ate outside. They also seemed to have brought some of their own food and when ever they ate they left a huge mess behind. One afternoon there were baggies of sauce spilled on their table and things had blown onto our deck. It was gross to look at. I found it so strange that people could contently leave such a mess in a common area. The guy happened to be out there at the time so I not so discretely pushed their garbage back toward their own little pig sty. Andre straight out told him to pick it up. 

When we got discussing this with our other neighbors they told us that they were definitely from a lower class and not educated. This was probably a big holiday for them so in their eyes they wanted to get their money’s worth and that meant not lifting a finger to clean up after themselves. I get it. Still don’t want to live next to it, but I get it.

Another interesting thing we found out through our conversation with them is that it is common for poor Indian women to be surrogates. For very little money you can go to India and pay a woman to carry your child. The lady told us that they could opt for IVF or the guy could simply sleep with the Indian woman and that was that. With extreme poverty in India, outsourcing pregnancy is a big business.

Everyone Is Equal

But not in the Indian caste system. One thing that has stood out throughout our time in India is the way people engage with one another. It’s one thing to know about the caste system and another to experience it. To be an observer in a place and to watch people completely ignore others because they were “lower” than themselves was deeply troubling. I can only compare it to people in the western world who walk by homeless people like they do not exist. Andre and I talk to everyone and it was interesting to see the reaction of some people as we greeted them and asked how they were. Of course so many people did not have any English, but even the simple exchange of attempting to talk with them and a smile was greeted with an ear to ear grin. It was clear that some people were simply not used to being acknowledged.

Recharging

I honestly felt really ordinary the entire time we were in Goa. Since the last excursion we had taken in Hampi in the blazing heat I had not recovered my appetite and was eating only because I knew I should. I was probably eating the minimum one would need to maintain the energy to take a bucket bath. Our days were lazy. We did zero exploring. We went into “town” only to buy Andre a new pair of glasses. His old ones had crapped out. The coating on the one lens had deteriorated and there was a visible hole were it had worn away which drove him mad. He ended up getting his lenses replaced and buying a second pair all for half the price he would have payed for one pair at home.

Our other big outing was just down the beach to buy credit for our phones and look at a clothing store that had caught my eye. We topped up our phones for roughly seven dollars each which gave us a month of phone calls and texts and 1.5 GB of data a day! The clothing store was a big score too. We had heard so much about all the amazing clothing and fabrics in India but we had yet to experience that so. All the markets looked like they carried the exact same things and the quality was low. It felt like walking through endless crappy garage sales. Perhaps you really have to dig to find good stuff at the places we had been but I am just not that kind of shopper. When goods are piled on top of each other in endless sliding mountains I just can’t do it. This store was different however. It was neatly organized and the style of clothing was unique. It had very modern and simple styles. It was owned by a British guy who sourced his product from overseas. I love all the beautiful traditional Indian clothing but realistically I wouldn’t wear it at home and this stuff was precisely my style. Andre bought a bunch of new t-shirts and I bought several tops and a romper. Other than our big shopping excitement all we did was hang out on our deck watching the waves and the action on the beach. It was an easy way to kill a week.

By the last day I started to feel quite a bit better. Unfortunately, Andre started feeling unwell. We seem to take turns getting sick. I was just hoping he wouldn’t have an issue getting on a plane. Luckily he had no temperature, it was only his stomach.

New Plan

There have been a hundred rewrites to our plans since leaving Canada. We didn’t book anything more than a few weeks out because we wanted flexibility, but in Goa we still felt we had run out of steam and we decided we wanted to plan the rest of our trip so we could stop thinking about the planning aspect of things and just enjoy the last four months. We crafted a new plan. We would head into the north of India as we had already planned, but with the Coronavirus becoming more intense we altered the last part of our journey. We still wanted to go into the Middle East but we would limit the stops to Jordan and Turkey. From Turkey we would go into Greece for a few weeks to see some other areas we didn’t go during our initial visit and then we would fly into Nova Scotia via England (see my friend Becca) to spend time with Andre’s parents and tour the East Coast of Canada. After that we would head back to Edmonton see some friends and then drive to Saskatchewan for a family gathering so I could finally meet Andre’s Grandma. We booked all our flights for the remainder of the trip and were really excited for this new plan which would bring us back into Canada May 22nd. This way we figured we be on home soil and in a better position is things continued to get worse with the virus situation.

We had been watching the reports on COVID19 since the news had first broke about the cases in China. Every day since then we had read the news, watched the cases, and had been trying our best to be diligent about keeping our hands clean. We always had hand sanitizer on us everywhere we traveled and had been doing things with only our right hands while in India because in India as in other parts of Asia the left hand is for cleaning your bottom and other dirty tasks, while the right is for eating, and shaking hands. Even though we had been careful for months, only one of us touching a menu and then washing our hands, using our sleeves and elbows etc, there is only so much you can do living out in the world. We were hoping that this would be enough as we watched the situation closely. There were 3 known cases in India and 34 known cases in Canada as we left Goa at the end of February. Italy was being hit hard, there were no known cases in Jordan or Turkey, and Greece had seven cases.

 

244 days in… Now to Mumbai!