Goa Goa Dancer

Ah, yes. We wake up one morning and find ourselves magically transported to Panjim, in Goa. After shaking our magic fairy dust encrusted heads, and taking a shower to ensure my Tet is completely clean, we realize how we came here. It was by train, bus, autorickshaw, legs, and your basic traveller's ingenuity.



In turns out many people are using the Lonely Planet as a travel guide book. This is a natural, ecological, process that slowly, and happily, transforms us all into slightly stupider, and more cow like, versions of ourselves. Not that there's anything wrong with cows. We have come to love them very dearly. Oh so dearly. But there's time to talk about that later. I made the Lonely Planet endorsed trek from guesthouse to guesthouse, to find them all, naturally, totally full. Along the way I made friends with two Tres Terrific Travellers from Belgique, Nathalie, and her daughter Marie. We join forces, forming a powerful robot less two, and take a well priced room for five travellers, in anticipation of Alex and Yotam's arrival. We also play games with tense and plurality. It's only natural that we go royal, and then revert to the proper usage.

We have arrived in Panjim just in time to meet Alex the next morning, a new character on the exotic roadshow that is Phases Crossed, who will be spending two months with us in India. He arrives in sunny Goa after 1.5 days or so of travel from Oakland's perma-autumn. The meet point is the west end of Panjim's footbridge.



Depicted above in an illustration that clearly shows the artist's understanding of expression and color, is Marie, 11, and Alex, n/a. Marie speaks un petit English, stretching our French language skills to their tenuous limits, along with our pantomime repertoire. Marie takes to the game Go quickly, and she is a wicked Uno player.



Alex and I explore the colorful market, and then go in search of food.



Above we have Alex, doing what Alex does, which is draw. We have just finished our meal, cross breeze included at no extra cost. Alex asked me if there was an implicit zero on the menu -- no! Everything really is that cheap here. Chai is 4 or 5 Rupees -- about 12 cents.

Goa is a former Portugese colony on the west coast of India. It is quite different from the rest of India which we have seen. Architecturally, for one thing, there is less dust. In Panjim, the paved road comes right up to the paved sidewalk, which touches the buildings directly. Feels more European. Unlike other Indian cities we have visited, which have paved roads, lined with a dusty, earthy lanes filled with everything, and architectural structures set further back. This feels more like Europe. And it's much more Roman Catholic than the rest of India. They eat more meat here. Portugal left Goa in the 60's, and Panjim does feels a bit like an underpowered, but nonetheless transformative, time machine.



We head to Old Goa, inland a bit, to see the sights and smell the smells. Old Goa was the original Portuguese colony in Goa, and is filled with huge churches. Huge. Big. Large.



Along the way we meet this man, pictured above, who will be having his 100th birthday in March. Invited to the party, we are. He is from Goa, and lived in Pakistan before the partition, after which he moved to Delhi. We inquire how one can live to be so old, but are refused a response, perhaps because of certain language barriers. He used to play Western music in clubs. He sings a song in English for us. We infer that singing perhaps, is the true secret to longevity.



What we have here is a work process that feels like some sort of cellular machinery. This is a handful of what is actually about 30 women moving dirt out of an archaeological dig of an old church. Each woman only walks about 5 feet, and hands, or heads, her bucket to the next woman in the line. The full buckets travel down, and the empty ones up. It is, amazing.

Yotam magically appears, as foretold by the prophecy, at the west end of the very same footbridge two days later. This is not long after the SIGGRAPH paper due date, also, perhaps not coincidentally, just in time for Goa's big carnival.



He comes bearing this bag, redefining the word small in the context of travel bags, for me and everyone in a 100 foot radius. What we have here is a bag made of ultralight nano-wool fibers, harvested from a sizable contingent of nano-sheep. He is clearly ready to go Pro. Perhaps next time I will be so efficient.

This should come as no surprise to me, or any of our readers, but the Brazilian President was in attendance for the upcoming Goa carnival, along with a Brazilian delegation of dancers, floats, clowns, and other carnival paraphernalia.



The carnival is too much for our tired travelers. After waiting hours and hours for a good seat, then hours and hours for the late start, we are overcome with fatigue. But it is fun. Maggi chicken cubes are distributed to the audience by the Maggi float. Excellent.



Above is a hard core biker chick from Europe. She looks to be in her early 60s and has bicycled from Turkey to India. Oh yeah, she went around Iran and Pakistan. She's going to Thailand and China.

After separating from our European travel companions, we head south to Agonda, a sleepy village on Goa's coast. We meet many interesting characters and learn a great many life lessons here.



Can you spot the two out of place elements in the above photograph? We love the public buses. They have so much style.



Above is Alex at breakfast in our guest house. Every day our routine is to get up at around 7:30, bathe and play in the ocean from 8:30-9:30, shower, and have a royal breakfast at our guest house. Masala omelet, butter toast, fruit salad, and chai, for those who imbibe upon the addictive substance. We meant to provide some visual evidence, but were consumed in a culinary trance each and every morning the food appeared. The cost of the breakfast, once we do all the accounting, is the same as the cost of our room.



Above, at left, we have Yotam taking a beach breakdancing lesson from some Norwegian travelers. He's pretty good, eh? Judo is good practice, apparently. At right we have one of the many highly friendly locals who frequent our beach showing off his magical powers of plant summoning.



The family who runs our guest house, Eldfra, is super sweet. The rooms are simple and clean, and we aren't far from the beach. It feels like staying with your grandparents, they are so kind. They have two nice boys.



Here is some documentation of an important historical moment. The first time any of us have set foot in this sea. We're not sure if it's the Indian or Arabian sea, but either way, it's a first.

Palolem is the nearest super touristy beach, from which the cows below are sampled. Apparently in the 80s it was very relaxed, but has become a fully fleshed out town, with a complete tourist ecosystem, with the foreigners as some kind of basic algae upon which everything else feeds. It feels a little bit like paradise crossed with Haight Street, Burning Man, and an Indian city. It's a Scene with a lovely backdrop, but we're really glad we aren't staying there.



Completing the pastoral scene at Agonda is the exotic wildlife. Pigs. Cows. I love cows. The cows I come to adore more and more each day. I think, maybe, it is their simple existence. They just are. The cows simply are everywhere. In the road. On the beach. Sleeping. Eating. Looking. Not doing much. Chewing. They are so peaceful and calm, no matter where they are. It is an ultimate carefree, relaxed, existence. We find it very inspiring.



The pigs are really nice, too. They are so expressive and busy. Wandering around, emerging from some bushes, and then wandering off on a footpath, just as quickly as they arrive. Always looking. The pigs notice you a bit more. I think they are the cutest things ever. Perhaps it is their industriousness and expressiveness. They just look so strange, and so smart, and so cute -- they always appear to me to be small people wearing super expressive pig masks. I can't help it, it's just what I see every time I look at one.

With a sample size of n=3, I have come to an important conclusion that medical scientists will no doubt find invaluable. After arriving in India, I was quite congested for about a week. Not really sick, just a bit of a cold for a few days, but some serious congestion. Now I am clear as the Agonda sky, and Yotam and Alex are suffering their first week of congestion, as all the indigenous flora sets up shop in their bodies. This process, however, makes us strong and able to consume some curries that would otherwise rout our digestive flora, avoiding some strange gastronomical and digestive side effects whose details are best not entertained here.

Taking advantage of our time here, we go to a nearby nature preserve. Lots of animals are advertised. We are told though that mostly what we'll see is trees, which we do. The trees are pretty neat, though. We do see some monkeys. We also walk about one thousand kilometers. We are hard core.



Above, you can see Yotam standing under a really curious tree. Curious? Next to this picture is another one. In that picture, you can see Yotam on a very tall ladder on a very tall tree. At top, is a tiny tree house for observing more trees.



We also visit a pepper plantation. Pepper is a vine, actually. Above you can see it growing up a beetle nut tree. That's how they grow it here. This is actually a really quiet budget resort we are visiting in the above two pics that is near Agonda.

Now we are off to Kerala, which we understand to be a land of great natural beauty, snake worship, delicious food, and some of the oldest naval trading posts in the world.