To goa!

Day 12

Today we head to Goa but the train isn’t ‘til late – so we stash our bags at the hotel and head out for the day. We get some fruit for breakfast as I feel like I’m not getting enough and fuel up on cheap Mc-coffee. We walk around all day, down to the coastline again and then to the beach where we get sweet corn and play some tunes – it’s pretty cool. A posh Indian child chats to us, asking why were on the beach, I tell him just to chill in the sun and he is bemused, saying that it’s such a cold day!
We stop in a well decorated restaurant and get some top quality biriyani and gin and lemonades; meanwhile some Indian couple are absolutely smashed, inhibited they start knoodling and a bit of a ruck breaks out – leading to them being swiftly evacuated from the premises. What a turn up for the books, the Indians act up while the Brits are sitting civilised in the corner!
I decide to waste the evening trying to get to the highest building on the skyline, this proves more difficult than anticipated and takes ages, when we finally get there it’s a militarily controlled no go zone. We get mobbed by ghetto children at the bottom of the building and have to make a move. Although we can’t go up the building for a view it’s worthwhile as we get a stark view of how the have and the have-nots co-exist. The skyscraper is an amazing feat of engineering, two perfectly identical towers of crisp blue and white glass, inhabited by the Mumbai elite, but it emerges from crumbling shacks and temporary dwellings inhabited by the poorest of the poor.
We head back to our hotel region stopping about 5 taxis who try to charge us double before we get the right price. We stop to use the internet and then head for dinner – half way down the street I realise I’ve left my wallet where I was changing my shirt – SHIT!! I run down the street at full sprint thinking I have no chance of getting it back. I arrive in the shop sweating and panicking, however the guy in the shop reaches under the counter and produces my wallet, all the contents intact. I offer him a note as a thank you but he refuses and my faith in humanity is restored. I only had a few hundred in it and all my bank cards are stashed away but the train ticket for tonight’s travel was tucked in the back – mental note: never put your wallet anywhere but your pocket ever again.
Feeling lucky and flush with our re-found cash we go to an expensive looking bar called Macado’s and enjoy some Italian food, it’s still cheap by U.K standards and olive oil and pasta make a welcome change from curry and roti. Then it’s back to the hotel and onto the 11pm train.

The train

Victorian Terminus is the most grandiose and impressive transport hub I have ever seen. It is massive and ornate in a classic British style – putting Westminster to shame. We frantically look for the platform; and as always it’s the furthest one away. Finding the carriage is difficult, the trains have about 40 cars and the platforms are seriously long. When we get on I thinks we might have the wrong carriage, it has several compartments with bunk beds lined up In rows – wow – and people told us the trains were crap. We get clean linen and make the beds up; it’s so cosy and comfortable and we sit up chatting for a little while.
When all the lights are off all you can hear is the rhythmic ticking and clunking as the tracks grind against heavy wheels – the carriage sways gently from side to side and in your narrow bunk you feel like a baby rocking gently in a claustrophobic crib. I sleep poorly, in intermittent fits, waking to focus on the monotonous sound which is somehow strangely relaxing. In the morning Kath continues to doze while I begin writing, enjoying many teas and coffees and an omelette – as sellers travel up and down the train with a range of quality stuff at dirt cheap prices. As I drink a tea for 7p and eat a samosa for 10, sat in my deluxe sleeper cabin; I realise just how shit virgin trains are in comparison. For the final stint of the journey, enjoying the freedom from Britain’s nanny state, I defy health and safety warnings to lean out of the door and watch the passing scenery. The views are stunning, palm trees and tall grasses break out into inviting green lagoons and clear rivers, an old steam boat paddles from one shore of a wide lake perhaps taking happy tourists to a prospective paradise on the other bank. The measure of difference in what we see here from what has gone before is indescribable: It’s hard to believe Goa is India at all, and I start to get excited about arriving on the beach.