Goa

The flight from Mumbai is a short one, under an hour. I had my journey all set up to get to Arambol, one of Goa's most northern beaches, and away from a lot of the touristy areas.

My plan had me taking a pre-paid taxi to Panaji (the closest big town) and then catching two busses, the second of which would drop me off about 1.5 km outside of town and I'd have to walk the last bit. Nevermind that I didn't have a place set up to stay- I figured I could find one when I got there. Once outside the airport, I thought about the odds of me screwing something up/getting screwed and how they would increase not linearly, but exponentially with two bus trips. So in an effort to hedge my bets I decided to pay the extra 150 rupees to get to the next city up, Mapusa where I would only have to catch one bus to my destination.

I found the bus to Arambol no problem; I just asked a couple people and they pointed me to the correct bus. At 3:48pm while waiting for the bus to depart I spotted my first hippie! For those of you that don't know, Goa became a proverbial Mecca for hippies in the 60's. Someone must have found the tranquil beaches here and sent word. While here I've gotten a look of disdain from a few of them, like a "I was here first" kind of look. But actually, it was the Indians who were here first, and then the Mughals for a short bit, and then the Portuguese set up shop before being
pushed out first by the British, an then finally by the Indians after independence. So really, the hippies were like 6th. And you could even make the argument that they have set the stage for another wave of colonization and have paved the way for all the tourists that now swamp the beaches here. That's what I have to say about that, man.

Besides being sweaty and cramped, the hour long ride wasn't so bad. Try to picture what a hot, rickety bus from a small town in India to an even smaller town is like and you'd probably be right. Both rows of two seats were full, sandwichimg the center isle full of standing passengers. If this were a sandwich, I would be somewhere near the mustard and the cheese.

I made it no problem and found a cheap-o place to crash for two nights before I return to Mumbai for my plane flight back to the good ol' U-S-and-A.