Oh Goa

Most people reading this are in New England. Its December 18^th, and aside from a three day jaunt to Hampi (an umpteen hour bus ride in from the coast) I have spent about two weeks on the coast. I read that a snow storm threatened and grazed some parts of New England and my Floridian grown body surely has a piercing memory of the kind of cold that is descending upon what I call ‘home’ with a grudging love. For all my loved ones reading this, I’m so sorry, but right now I’m outside. I’m sitting in shorts and a tee-shirt, the sun set long ago and before me is a fine white sand extending off into the dark where a beautifully rhythmic surge of tumbling water sounds and rolls towards me.

This morning I was up early, before the girls and I was on the beach for a morning walk before the sun had risen high enough over the land to hit the water.

Please remember that I love all of you, and don’t hate me… too much.

The food is spectacular here on the coast. My favorite being a locally caught kingfish that I picked from an array brought before our table. Consistency is fairly absent when it comes to anything on the menu that is not strictly Indian, but this has led to some tasty and pleasantly surprising discoveries. Though, if anything food related is to be said about India, surely anyone in my position would say it must be the juice.

No one does juice like the Indians do. When the three of us had found Goa’s northern most beach and ordered some pineapple juice, we watched as the man who took our order walked back towards the kitchen and grabbed a couple of pineapples on his way. All juice is juiced fresh, on the spot and orange juice is made from mandarin oranges, nothing like home, but perhaps far better.

We decided to hunt down the quieter, more out of the way beaches of Goa as opposed to the drunken party beaches that are more characteristic of its core. The time has been spent well, if simply, and everything that I dreamed of while starving, sick, exhausted and cold in the Himalaya has come true. The heat of the sun and the roll and sway of the ocean is a comfort that is only paralleled by the comforts of home after having been long deprived. My sense of reality has done a gleeful 180. In the Himalaya, I was so thankful to go to sleep, not just from exhaustion but because of what I knew I would dream. Here, I awake from dreams to find that actually, I’m somewhere better.

From the Rajasthan desert through the smog, slum, and glitz of Mumbai to the powdered sand of Goa’s palmed coast, India is quickly living up to its reputation of truly having everything.