Bombay India

When we arrived at the airport in Bombay after our grueling flight we were too tired to think straight. We arranged a hotel from the airport and took a taxi to the hotel. We had to drive past a lot of slums on the ride from the airport to downtown Bombay. We knew we were in India when we saw the poverty of the shanty towns scraped together along the roads. We could barely talk about anything though so we just continued on to the hotel where we went straight to our room and just flat out crashed on the bed to recover our strength. The hotel was a step above where we would normally stay but we just wanted a hassle free experience and sometimes you just have to pay for that.

That evening after pretty much sleeping all day and getting cleaned up we went for a walk around the Hotel Taj Mahal and the Gateway of India monument. There were a lot of touristy street performers around the streets in front of the hotel and Gateway. We watched snake charmers, magicians, dancers and you name it. They were all there and trying to get money out of all the tourists around. This is not my favorite part of traveling. I normally avoid any place considered a tourist trap like this was. It was in walking distance from our hotel and we got our first taste of India out of the way. The only bad thing we encountered other than a ton of street hustlers were the stupid aggressive monkeys all over the place that were literally thieves and thugs. About thirty of them surrounded us at one point until we gave up some food in our bag. I did not like the aggression of the large toothed beasts. They were not cute monkeys.

We went to some restaurants over the next few days that other travelers gave us the names of. I love Indian foods. I pigged out big time. The curries were so frigging hot and tasty that I was dripping with sweat every time I ate. I was still trying to gain weight. It had been almost a year since I was sick in Ethiopia and I was still underweight and weaker than I was before I got sick. I wanted to get healthy enough to go up to Nepal and do some trekking in the mountains. Almost everybody I talked to about going there told me not to go unless I was healthy because it is a very easy place to get really sick and die. We decided to go down south of Bombay to an ex Portuguese colony called Goa to hang out at the beach and fatten up some more before going to Nepal.

We took a bus to Goa because to hitch hike out of Bombay was just too difficult to attempt it. It was a few hours to get to Goa. The ride down was very interesting for us as newcomers to India. We saw abject poverty and obscene wealth along the way. The disparity in India appalled me a bit. The haves did not seem to care at all about the have-nots and they all seemed to just accept their place in the castes of the social structure of India. It was difficult to accept for both Kirsten and myself. The scenery was flat and tropical with green fields of rice lining the road. I enjoyed the colors and the constant different and interesting things along the way like an oxcart next to a new shiny Mercedes truck and the people carrying huge loads on their backs or just on their heads. Labor was clearly cheap here.

When we arrived at Goa we took a taxi out to the beach from the bus station because it was getting late in the day. We were dropped off at a beautiful white sand beach with fishing boats and fishing nets on the beach and a large group of fishermen sorting out their catch on the beach. I fell in love from that very first glimpse of this palm tree lined tropical paradise. No more gray drizzling skies around this place. There was a small restaurant right on the beach where we were dropped off by the taxi and we sat down to eat. I asked for some fresh fish and the restaurant made me a fantastic meal of lobster and fish with rice and vegies. We met some of the local hippies that lived on the beach here. They were very friendly with us. Goa was known as a naked hippy beach. We set up out tent right on the beach after eating and sitting around talking for hours with the hippies at the restaurant. We got a great nights sleep listening to the waves washing ashore which is my idea of perfect white noise.

The next morning we were awakened by laughing naked people swimming in the waves. We quickly stripped and joined in on the fun. I love naked beaches. We sat on the beach most of the morning talking and swimming then went over to the restaurant for another perfect lunch of fresh seafood. I could not believe this place. I never wanted to leave. This was my kind of place. We did make a bit of a mistake that first day. We were still pasty white newbies at the naked beach and we both got some serious sunburn. I had some base tan from living in California but my ass was snow white. Both of us blistered our newly exposed skin that first day. We learned our lesson that is for sure. About a week later I was able to peel a piece of skin off my butt that was several inches square. I had to laugh about that. Over the next month we developed the same dark overall tans that we saw on the first hippies we saw when we arrived.

We ended up renting a small thatched hut right on the beach to live in because our tent attracted too much attention. We swam and played all day every day. The Indians came to the beach in tour buses on a daily basis to gawk at the naked hippies on the beach. Some of the people were major exhibitionist for the tourist cameras. Myself I didn't mind being naked and having people look but I did not like the pictures so I tended to keep a low profile when the tourists were around. I met some English travelers that liked to play bridge and I ended up being their fourth to get a real game going. We played every day during the hottest part of the day right after lunch. We became great friends. All the hippies stuck together and took turns acting as guards for our lodging and possessions. It worked out fine and we had almost no problems with anything negative. We got into some interesting sexual relationships but since this is a pg13 blog I can't talk about that. I will just say that we were practicing the standard hippy philosophy of free love with enthusiasm. I am going to do an X rated blog later and I will leave a link on this blog to that one when I get it going.

We went into the town which was a short bus ride when we needed some change in our routine. The town had some more choices for foods and supplies for our living needs on the beach like toilet paper and things. There was one toilet at the beach that did not require any toilet paper. It was a toilet seat with a trough that led to pigs. The pigs would start squealing in anticipation when anyone went in and sat down on the toilet. They would stick their tongues up and try to lick your butt clean. I did not like it much and it made me never want to order pork in India after watching these pigs gobble down so much human waste.

We spent several months living this perfect life before we started to get the itch to continue traveling some more. We really had no motivation to leave Goa. I have found out recently that some of the people we met there in 1973 are still living on the beach 35 plus years later! That could just as easily have been me if I did not have this uncontrollable urge to travel driving me to keep on rolling all the time.

We were planning our next travel when we ran into our first real problem in our paradise. One night we were partying like usual and one of the girls went for a walk. She was grabbed by some of the local men and they were going to rape her when she broke free and ran back to where we all were. There were about thirty males in our group and we went looking to see if we could find the perps that attacked her. We walked a short way down the beach and she immediately pointed out some of the local men as her attackers. We confronted them and before any violence broke out well over a hundred local men gathered with bats and rocks for weapons. They circled around us. We were out numbered and there was really nothing we could do. A police officer showed up and we all told him our sides of what happened. It was getting ready to erupt into a major brawl when he ordered everybody to disperse or be arrested on the spot. Of course the cop was also out numbered and in reality he could have done nothing if this became a fight. In the end we all dispersed without any violence.

It left a bad taste in our minds after that. The Indian men during our "discussions" had talked about why was it ok for the girls to have sex with us but not with them. It is not an easy question to answer other than it is their choice to have sex with partners of their choosing and not by forcible rape. We left soon after this incident to go back on the road. I had gained some weight from all the great food we ate and I was stronger from all the daily swimming but I was still very skinny and weaker than I wanted to be. Ethiopia had really kicked my ass and I could not believe that I was still recovering this long afterward. We decided to go south instead of north to Nepal.