MUMBAI AND GOA

19:25 31^st October 2012- Garden Villa, Vagator

Turns out in India they speak a different form of foreign so my work in the airport was a ruddy waste of time.

Sitting in my DOUBLE bedroom in Vatagor in Goa, 400 rupees (Indian Rupee seems to be worth a lot less then the Hyrulean Rupee) ballin’. Tipsy off a large bottle of Kingfisher. I won’t hold it up as a paragon of luxurious beach breaks but its cheap, hot and 5 minutes away from the beach where the sea is warm but not as clean as the Cornish coast. I have not met anybody who speaks English but there seems to be a large Russian presence, perhaps coming to the konkan coast to exploit the wide natural ports convenient for exporting spices from India, as the Portuguese did in the 16^th century. Staying here for 3 days just so I can get De-jetlagged and have a look around at some of the Portuguese forts etc.

 I will probably hire a scooter or a bicycle tomorrow as the roads are no where near as crazy as Mumbai where it was a Game Theory applied to the road, in that there is no giving way, everyone looks after themselves and the assumption is you will be cut up, yet there is some kind of order because no one trusts each other. If you do trust someone you will end up dead it seems.  

Mumbai is just crazy, immediately and for the rest of the time there you are completely immersed by its soundtrack. The most disorganised and warped horn section constantly pounding your eardrums. Then the smell and taste hits you, a relelentless, acrid, thick smog that sits at the back of your throat the whole time you are there. This is then punctuated by spicy and sweet smells of small curry and sugar cane stands. In looks it is not dissimilar to the image of a future London portrayed by ‘Children of Men’ particularly because of the decaying British buildings, but (for the time I was there) less bombs and less Clive Owen. Having got to the hostel I met a ‘dorm friend’ Juao portugese surfer fella who mentioned karma at least three times over the course of the 4 hours, apart from that he was a nice guy. Me, Juao and this Chilean guy think his name was Nathan went and looked around a few places marine drive, Malabar hill with parks looking over the peninsula and Baganga a lake with ghats surrounded by high rises.  The kids were playing marbles, cricket with a tennis ball around the lake then asking us to say their names then taking the piss out of each other when we inevitably pronounced it wrong. After that I was nackered so I went back to the hostel for a kip visiting haj ali’s mosque (Basically a mosque on pier) on the way. Woke up a bit later by another fella sorting his stuff out for the night David from Budapest, worked in finance back home but took 3 months out at a time to go travelling. We went and got dinner (he didn’t like spicy food.) then walked to the gateway of India. He kept on saying how he wanted to find some girls and that everyone seemed to be ‘pikeys’ turns out he same meaning as British meaning and he was a horrible man. Nonetheless I ignored him for most of the night and we walked through the fishing dock bit of Colaba where most families seemed to be listening to a band of a few drums a wind organ where we were told by a local man for ten rupees (donation to the Gods) they would sing your name and all about you. The local man shelled about 50 rupees for his whole family to have songs about them his children all seemingly very embaressed. Thought I’d give it a go the asked my name then whether I was north south east or west. They sung

‘Charles hindi words South England hindi words’ think I got mugged off, during the hindi bits locals seemed to laugh a bit. (should have asked for my money back)

I had a good last day overall in Mumbai, I got up around 8ish (pam makes me breakfast.) went to the train station got myself an AC3 sleeper ticket to Thivim station near Goa for 2300. Then I picked up a phone sim card and headed for the England warm up game with David in tow. We met a nice Indian chap name Rahul David said he wasn’t named after his close namesake. He showed us to Brabourne stadium and was tempted to head in with us but said his wife would kill him if he watched cricket all afternoon with us. It was free entry in and was pretty much empty despite a few groups of English fans and Indian children about. David left pretty quickly which was good I’m not sure if I could have coped with every over intersected with chat about the intricacies of female genitals from every country he’s visited.

 The Cricket was good fun, WATCHING ENGLAND PLAY IN INDIA. Had a great spot behind the wickets, pitch weren’t doing much had good a fair bit of bounce. India were on the ropes when subjected to a bit of the short stuff. Bresnan grafted as per. Indian fella next to me would taunt me every time India A hit a boundary. English lads on tour, got a few waves from Swann et al. The Indian children ran to the fence every time Anderson came to the boundary one child in particular shouting ‘JIIMMMMY JIMMMY’ every time he came over. Good fun some of the barmy army (shirts off England tattoos\shirts on 1993 England test shirt) there who I was sat next to had been on every tour in the last 20 years according to one worse for wear British Lady. Really want to watch the first test now, oh my days, it’ll be incredible.