Go-Go Goa

First, as promised, a few pictures of the sleeping cars on the trains to and from Goa. I have ridden on many trains in my travels, and I can safely say that the trains in India are the trippiest. The "trip" factor is somewhat intensified after months of riding the hyper-clean, super-efficient-to-the-second, trains of Japan. These Indian trains feel as if they are about fifty years old, have chipped paint, and fairly primitive toilets. The cars have doors, but the doors are usually left open the whole ride, so you can stand in the doorway and watch the landscape speed by and feel the intense, but pleasurable fear that accompanies near death.

One interesting note: there was a poster with a list of rules and warnings for train passengers. This was written in Hindi and English and had simple drawings accompanying it. The rules were things like, don't indulge beggars, watch your belongings, etc. One of the warnings was not to accept food from anyone but the train food vendors as someone may try to drug and rob you. All of the pictures on the poster depicted rather anonymous looking Indians, but in the picture of the traveler offering suspect food to the other traveler the two figures were orthodox Jews. I still don't know what kind of message they were trying to send - that Jewish people are more likely to drug each other than other people? Who knows? It felt like anti-semitism, but a sort of unsuccessful attempt at anti-semitism. Had the recipient of the suspect food been represented by some other people group, I would have been horrified, but because they were both obviously Jewish, all I could muster was a somewhat confused smile. I tried to take a picture, but the train was too unsteady.

Here are a couple of pictures taken from the upper berth of the second-class reserved sleeper car I took:


These are just some random shots to show you just what the trains are like.


This is a pic I took of myself shortly after I found my seat - I'll admit I was a bit apprehensive at this point. But after a few hours on the train, you get used to it, and you realize that you are really having an adventure.

When I got to my hotel in Calangute and booked my return ticket, I immediately went to the sea to look at the waves. Here are the pictures. The waves on this day, were huge and hypnotic.




This is the view from the balcony of my hotel room.




This was about all you could do at the beach at this time of year - just wade and play in the waves along the shore - the undertow was too strong. It was interesting watching people on the beach because they all (myself included) behaved like small children. Because no one could surf or swim or display some sort of athletic prowess, they just did what kids do at the seashore - walked as close to the water's edge as they could and then screamed and laughed when a big wave came up and soaked them.

At one point a group of people were playing along the shore. One of their group noticed me sitting on the beach watching the waves and grabbed his pals and they all rushed over and took a bunch of photos with me. So we all made faces and smiled like we were great friends for three minutes and then one of them ran back to the sea and the others followed. It was pretty surreal, but much more fun than having hawkers and vendors approach me every five minutes.

Here are some pictures of Calangute between rainfalls.



These last pictures are from my second day, when the sun stayed out most of the day and everything was breezy and relaxing.








So that's pretty much it for my pictures of India. I hope you enjoyed them. If you ever get the chance to go, do it - it's a pretty amazing country. I will definitely go back, I only scratched the surface on this first trip.