Once I landed in Mumbai (+23 hrs), I had about 9 hours before my next flight to Goa, a beachy region south of Mumbai on the coast of the Arabian Sea. I wandered around the International Arrivals area in Mumbai Airport for a few hours (there is nothing to do there and it is very sketchy and uncomfortable) before A. D., a friend from college, drove up to say hi. We had a fantastic breakfast at the ITC Hotel and caught up, and then he dropped me back off at the Domestic Departures area of Mumbai Airport, which all things said is pretty great. I bummed around there for another few hours listening to Beatles songs on my iPod, and I was off on my fourth flight in 36 hours.
I arrived in Goa and got to the hostel, where I was to meet my friend N. T. from work. N was in India for a family wedding and had a few extra days, so we decided to meet up in Goa, a place he hadn't been but wanted to experience. Goa was a Portuguese colony until 1961 and for that reason is a bit culturally distinct from the rest of India. A third of the population is Catholic; there are many beautiful churches; and in general their attitude towards life and tourists is different.
Climate-wise, Goa is the most tropical place I'll be in India. There are palm trees everywhere; highs reliably in the 90s this time of year (much hotter later); humidity off the charts; and practically never any rain, including monsoons. The ride from the Goa Airport (which is actually a military defense airport) to the hostel was beautiful, following the coast for a while and passing by Panajim, the Goa region's capital.
I got to the hostel mid-afternoon and after getting my bearings got my first sleep lying down in two days. It felt good. Then in the evening, N arrived and we grabbed a late dinner near the hostel, hung out with a few other backpackers in the hostel restaurant, and collapsed.
The next day was really my first official day of sightseeing in India. Goa is undoubtedly known for its beaches, which were and still are a major attraction for hippies. However, we decided to start the day with a bit of cultural exploration, and took an auto-rickshaw from Calangute, the town / beach we were staying in Goa, to Old Goa, formerly the capital of the region during Portuguese rule. The main thing to see here is the old churches.
I consider it a good omen that the first thing I noticed when we walked up to the first (and most impressive) church in Old Goa was a facade with the following enormous letters carved into its front: IHS. A Jesuit church! How wonderful! Something about finding familiar iconography felt good, especially the more I examined the facade. There's the IHS, a symbol of the Jesuit order standing for the first three letters in Jesus's name in Greek; there's the baroque, tiered facade, looking like an imitation of the Church of the Gesu (the Jesuits' mother church) in Rome. There are the three orders of columns: doric, corinthian, and... ionic? That doesn't sound right; I'll remember later.
Seeing something so Western after a day of culture shock was cool. We paid a local tour guide $2 (half a day's wages to most locals) to show us around. This church, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, is also the final resting place of St. Francis Xavier, one of the co-founders of the Jesuit order and an early missionary in India and East Asia. His body is "miraculously" preserved and visible in the church in a glass coffin. Oh, so that's what a 400+-year-old cadaver looks like: question answered.
I won't go over too many other details of the trip to Old Goa. Suffice it to say we visited the local Archeological Museum, stumbled upon the derelict Chapel of St. Catherine, wandered through the Church of St. Cajetan, and took pity on the extremely uncared for Cathedral, which was literally becoming a ruin before our eyes.
From there we took another auto-rickshaw to Panajim, where we ate lunch. It was good.
From there we took a cab back to Calangute, where we changed for and wandered to the beach. I discovered that I had accidentally packed an old pair of swimtrunks that was far too large, so I threw it out and bought a new one on the way. Then we arrived at Calangute Beach just in time to catch the sunset and go for a quick, 30-minute swim before the lifeguards started shooing people out of the water.
Dinner, the first Internet access in days, socializing with other hostel-goers, and bed. An extremely satisfying day in Goa.
The next evening N and I were due to head back to Mumbai and Delhi respectively, so it was an abridged day that we planned to dedicate entirely to the beach. We got up early, had breakfast, headed to Calangute beach and the first item on our checklist was parasailing. For about $4.50 we got powerboated a couple hundred meters out into the Arabian Sea, hooked up to a parachute, and parasailed for a while. It was pretty fun, and an unexpected bonus was the view of the beaches from out on the water. Unfortunately we had stashed our cameras at the hostel so as not to worry about them on the beach, so no parasailing pictures.
After the "water sports", we wandered around the beach, swam while discussing extremely nerdy topics such as generational workforce shifts, and then had lunch. Not long after that it was time to head to the airport and back to Mumbai.
The airport was a bit of a nightmare, but I can write about that and travel in India later. I got back to Mumbai and headed for my first Mumbai hostel near the airport, which was fine. I crashed there and then this morning headed into downtown Mumbai for my second hostel, where I'm writing this now and which is also fine. I'll probably write more about Indian hostels and staying in Mumbai soon.
Today has been largely a day of catch-up and planning. I've got a week in Mumbai now, and met some fellow hostellers who are going to Elephanta Island tomorrow morning; I'm tagging along. I just got a call from A. D. asking me to grab drinks with him and some friends, so I'm off to Colaba Causeway and the southern tip of the Mumbai peninsula.
Cheers,
E
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