Leaving Goa

I'm done with Goa. It was a beautiful place and my last week has been full of party, good food and interesting people. I'm ready to move on now. My body is strained by over-eating and to much beer and most of the other people I stayed with at the hostel have gone. It was time to move on. I've got a new volunteering project starting in two days in Varkala.

I'm now in Mangalore, a coastal city with a long history in the state of Karnataka. I chose to come here simply because I wanted to avoid doing another twenty hour train trip. I really might have chosen a different stop if I had bothered reading about Mangalore first. There's nothing much special to see and do here it seems, but I might still find some interesting things today. Very early tomorrow morning I'll continue down south towards Varkala.

But there are still a few stories untold about my week in Goa. In my last post I told you that I rented a scooter. Well, on Friday we decided to take a ride to Old Goa. We had been warned of the police controls in Panjim, the capital of Goa, on the way and we wore our helmets to avoid trouble. That and carrying a valid driver's license was supposed to be enough, but when we got pulled over and gave our licenses over, the faces of the officers turned into a wide grin. They told us that we need international driver's licenses and that they would take our bikes, charge us 1 250 and the bike rental agency 700 rupees. We were lucky to have an Indian guy from the hostel with us. He talked and talked and after about half an hour of convincing talking, he managed to bring the total sum down to 1 200 rupees per person with no other consequences for us. We considered for a while, but since we were pretty sure the officer was telling the truth about the international permit and since this was the only way to keep our bikes we ended up paying. We knew of course that we wouldn't get any official ticket stating our crime and that the money would surely end up going straight into the officers' own pockets, but we didn't have much choice really. On our way back we got pulled over by another group of cops, but as we were told by the first group, we told them the license plate number of the police vehicle that belonged to the first group and that we'd already paid, they let us go without trouble. But not after first asking how much we paid and blurting out loud "that means 900 for us and 1 500 for them" (two people paid 1 200). Not much ashamed of taking bribes it seems. Now I've experienced this (essential) part of Indian culture as well. Bakhshees, a "tip" or more clearly stated, a bribe.

Well, Old Goa was worth seeing, even after all that trouble getting there in the first place. The UNESCO world heritage site hosts three impressive churches and a couple of museums. One of the churches, the Jesuit Basilica of Bom Jesus, holds the mummified remains of Saint Francis Xavier, one of the founders of the Jesuit order, who is also called the Apostle to the far east, because of his "brave" work in converting Asians. The body is said to be miraculously well preserved, but unfortunately the next time the corpse is being brought down for show is in one year from now. I guess I'll just have to believe that's how it is without seeing...

Other than our tour to Old Goa, the already mentioned activities of drinking beer, eating well and simply having fun is what happened the last days in Goa. On Friday we went to a free concert sponsored by Red Bull. The music was very loud and strange (I'm getting old, I know), but otherwise I enjoyed it.

On Friday I'm going to start working in a cafe in Varkala. Three meals a day and free accommodation for five to six hours of working seems like a good deal to me. I hope I'm right, but I'll let you know how things are when I get there.