Traveler's Tips for Goa

--I stayed in Colva beach. . . but I wouldn't recommend it. A fairly dirty little town. That having been said, my hotel, the Star Beach Resort, was peopled with fantastically friendly staff and the food was truly fantastic. Get th.e wadas for breakfast -- sort of a savory donut-hole-like thing filled with the yummiest mashed potato mix.

-- The Kentuckee was a good time for dinner.

--Get thee a motorbike or a bycicle and just go exploring on your own. The beaches are all so different, it's worth it to figure out which area you like the best.

September 11: Partying in Goa

I spent my first day in Goa (the 9th), a wee bit shell-shocked. I arrived at the Goa train station at 5 AM, having not slept so well due to the whole roach thing. A rickshaw took me to a handful of hotels until I found one I liked in a town called Colva. I got a little cottage next to a pool, and fell asleep for a few hours before going for a walk on the beach.

The beach I was entirely unable to walk on.

It turns out that this was impossible.

Not only was I swamped by the prettiest, craftiest salesgirls you ever did see (I can't even talk about how much they fleeced me for) but every guy on the beach wanted to take their picture with me. The girls -- my new best friends, (you know like the kind who stick their knife in your back in junior high -- did I mention how they fleeced me?) -- told me not to let them take the pictures. "They will tell everyone back home that you are their girlfriend!" Since I am not concerned about my reputation back in Calcutta, I decided not to let this bother me. But it did make it hard to walk down the beach.

In the end, I went back to my hotel and lay down with a book next to the pool and let them soothe me with fresh coconuts, and I thought affirming thoughts to myself about how it is OK That I Just Hide In My Hotel If I Want To, Dammit. I also thought grumpy thoughts about how Goa's reputation for being a happy-go-lucky, party state was ill-deserved, and that it seemed to have turned into a sort of us-against-them, tourists vs the locals mentality.

The next day I met Rahul.

Rahul as it happens, felt the same way. He is a 23 year old banker, originally from Rajasthan, who now lives in Dubai. He came to Goa alone for a three week vacation because he'd heard it was beautiful. He really wanted to try weed for the first time, too. So far he had been disappointed on both scores.

"Dubai is CLEAN," he said. He was as alarmed by the litter everywhere as I was. And, due to his Indian coloring, everyone was looking at him blankly when he tried to buy pot. Like he was a narc or something.

I met him in a money changing store, and instantly claimed him as my beard. I walked down the beach with him -- and no one talked to me. They were probably whispering things like "Western slut!" behind my back. But no one approached me. Not even the girls. (Did I mention that while they were fleecing me, they started yelling at each other in -- Hindi? Kanada? -- about the prices they were charging me? And then, later, one came to my hotel crying and made me walk back to the beach and order the others to share the money equally? Junior high, I tell you.)

Rahul told me that he had been wanting to eat at a beachside restaurant called Kentuckee -- a nod towards Americans, apparently, in an attempt to conjure up Kentucky Frid Chicken. But, he said, it just didn't seem like the kind of place one went alone.

The cowboy-hat-wearing, Yamaha-playing, crowd-bantering singer.

So we went. And I got my taste of Goan partying. First, we ordered cocktails with cashew feni and coconut feni in it. Feni is the Goan prize liquor. Straight cachaca -- just so you know -- is infinitely more tasty and less alcoholic. Feni is scary scary stuff. It induced Rahul and me to start requesting songs from Emmanuel -- the cowboy-hat-wearing, electric-keyboard-playing singer. We also sang along. Loudly. We sang along to Summer of 69 (click here, if you want to hear a .wav file of the song), Hotel California, In the Air Tonight, Against All Odds. Rahul ordered us tequila shots, which I had sense enough not to drink, but by then we'd acquired a new friend and I passed my shot off to him. David from Australia, age 67, had sat down at our table. David is the kind of guy who sends in letters to magazines about how he has come up with a brand new, cheap way to power all space craft with only solar energy. I know this, because he told me that he has come up with a brand new, cheap way to power all space craft with only solar energy. He is also the kind of guy who thinks that he is all about peace and calm and that it is the rest of the world that is screwed up. I didn't believe him since he told us stories about how a) the Indian police had recently thrown him in jail b) the Cuban police had thrown him in jail c) he had ridden a motorcycle to the hotel he'd stayed at for a night and threatened the landlady who'd kicked him out and d) his daughter won't speak to him.

He also complained about India. I didn't like David much, but I felt priveleged to have met a genuine specimen of the kind I'd heard Goa was filled with. He was one of the old-time hippies who have made Goa their home but who do nothing but complain about the Indians.

Rahul and I kept right on singing, and occasionally rolled our eyes about David. I was planning on leaving the next day for Hampi, but Rahul had rented a motorbike and was trying to convince me to stay and drive around Goa with him the next day. He was as starved for good conversation and interesting company as I had been the day before. Part of me wanted to stay -- India is known for offering hidden gifts when it destroys your plans, and I had found out that day that a landslide had destroyed the railway bridge to Hampi. I was planning, instead, to leave on a bus the next day. Perhaps the cosmos was speaking to me and I was supposed to stay here, find some nicer beaches, experience the beauty that everyone claims can be found in Goa?

I looked at the umbrella in my feni drink. I looked at Emmanuel's cowboy hat. I looked at the anklet I'd bought from the girls on the beach. I looked at David.

I had to tell Rahul no.

September 10: Identities

Warning: these are ramblings. . . very little coherent thought here.

Nothing like the Melton Foundation to get you thinking about identity. What you consider yourself, does it matter, how can you be that thing and yet not be placed in some specific category, how can you learn about others' identities but not place THEM in some specific category, yada yada yada.

India, it turns out, is a good place for such thoughts too. Especially in the south of the country where every state has its own language, in addition to a whole host of other regional identities that I haven't quite been able to identify. The first thing anyone asks me is where I am from. This from anyone anywhere -- a rickshaw driver, a child on the street, a waiter, a well-to-do tourist. (They also then ask me "my good name" and whether I'm married.) Since I have regularly been the only Caucasian in sight -- much less the only young, female Caucasian -- in the last week, this kind of makes one self conscious about one's identity as well. I'm not used to being so obviously classified so quickly.

There are other themes here though.

The Cochin synagogue.

The usual big brush strokes not being enough, of course. Goa is known for being its own hodgepodge of cultures. With a strong Portuguese influence over the centuries, there is a strong Catholic culture, and also serious Jewish influences. Jews have been in India since the time of the second Temple as traders from Jerusalem, and several centuries thereafter as permanent residents. In the 16th and 17th centuries, more came from Portugal. What happened to Jews here mirrored what happened on the Iberian peninsula -- inquisitors came, many were killed, synagogues were destroyed. The Jewish town in Goa was so gorgeous, and the destruction so complete, that the Jews here liken it to the destruction of the temple.

I went and saw the synagogue in Cochin when I was there and was so moved, partially because it was familiar-- the sh'ma was written in Hebrew next to the ark, the gravestones looked like they could have come from Prague -- and partially because it was so different, so Indian, with colorful decorations, blue and white tiles on the floor. I loved the mix of the two. Love the glorious identity crosses that India presents.

The conquering Portuguese over the Indian native.

And so I was also affected by the fact that what happened here was the same in terms of anti-semitism too. And I can make that be broader. Today I went to Old Goa, the heart of what was Portuguese India. There is an archway into town showing a Portuguese man with his foot ontop of a native. It seems an odd thing to still have up. But Goans are simultaneously proud of their Indian identities and their Portuguese heritage, without seeing much contradiction. More than one Goan emphasized to me that he had a Portuguese passport. Most are Christian, and they show off the huge churches scattered throughout town.

I went to the cathedral of St. Francis Xavier. The Saint still lies there in a glass case, in a state of suspended animation. His bones don't disintegrate despite having been interred 400 years ago from a lime-filled grave. St. Francis Xavier is considered one of the greatest missionaries of all time. But he's also the one who called the Inquisitors to Portugal, leading to the torturous deaths of numerous Jews, Muslims, and Hindus. I'm just not sure how I feel about the man.

On the flip side, my identity comes packaged with the all girls' National Cathedral School high school I went to. I am well-versed in my cathedral architecture. I can't help but walk around such a place and think: "Wow, what fantastic curclicues on those flying buttresses" or "look at the colors on the tiles in that groin vaulting" or "you'd never see a semi-naked woman carved into the rood screen anywhere in the West."

And so I am back where I was with the Cochin temple. It's so wonderful that there is a mix here. Christianity suffused with an Indian sensibility.

I have been picked out of the crowd a lot in Goa. Swarmed by people who want to sell me things, to take me somewhere in their taxi, get me to eat in their restaurant. It is off-season and so I am fought over as one of the few tourists who might give them some business. I want so much to be able to understand these nuances, the religious mix, the cultural mix, but it seems impossible when I have to spend so much time being what they assume I am: a rich American who is snubbing them. Even though I am snubbing solely out of self-defense.

My last stop in Old Goa was at what's left of the cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi. It was built in the 16th century, and torn down by mobs after the Portuguese left about 50 years ago. You'd never know it had been standing complete so recently. Dark stone ruins are covered in moss. A lonely tower juts up in the East. The occasional bay still stands. It is a beautiful, beautiful spot. It is also, weirdly, schema-altering. I have never seen a church in that kind of state of ruin. When it comes to ruins, I am used to Greek columns and Roman marketplaces. It was a good Indian identity mix, this. A stunning spot, shown off by people who are proud of their Christianity and Portuguese heritage, who also tore it down when the Portuguese left.

I thought of the archway as I came into town. And I thought of the Jews of Goa. I felt strangely gratified that the place was in ruins.