I'm Predicting Clear Skies in 2036

Last night I looked out the window and as fireworks once again went off all over the city. Diwali is over and finished, but the celebrations last night were political. India has had it’s major state elections and the INC (Indian National Congress) pulled out a huge lead in Maharashtra and two other states (Haryana and A.P.). This gives the INC a huge advantage over the other political parties in India, particularly the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), who are the previous majority party in Maharashtra. Considering the low voting turn out, people are pretty excited in the streets.

Last night I grabbed dinner with some friends from the university. While dinner alone was fantastic, I truly enjoyed finding out that one of them was actually reading my blog. Even more incredibly, I received a compliment on it. I was starting to believe that my blog was being read regularly by ex girlfriends and the occasional worried friend back home, but no, it’s far bigger than that. Great success! On the way home from dinner, Jan’s horn stopped beeping loudly, so I started shouting compliments at other drivers to compensate (Is that a new haircut? It looks fantastic!).

The criticism of my friend was that my blog complains too much about technology and how it always breaks while I’m in India. Today I will reverse this trend. Today, my bike is fixed. The USS Constitution rides again!

The next morning, in Goa, we ate breakfast at the place across the street from where we stayed. On the front of the Times of India we read about some explosions where we got off the bus in Magao. Two men on scooters carrying the explosives caused the explosions. It’s unclear what they were planning on blowing up, but apparently they got stuck in afternoon traffic with ticking time bombs.

We took a long taxi ride to the next beach up to the north, Palolem. We said farewell to our Canadian guest, Aisha. We found a reasonably nice hotel owned by the shortest and angriest hotel owner in Goa. We decided to spend as much time out of this hotel as possible. On the plus side, it did have a place for me to hang up laundry.

The beaches were gorgeous, and in the modern style of having lots of bars and clubs all along the beach. This early in the season, crowds weren’t a problem. The water was nice, and in the early afternoon, we decided to check out a near by island.

The island was connected by a small land bridge, and we only had to wade through a little bit of water to get there. The island was home to hundreds of crabs crawling over all the rocks. Even the sand had small crabs pushing around even small balls of sand around their home. I had read an article about these crabs, by chance, once. They push the small balls of sand around in geometric shapes, but no one really knows why they do it. When the tide comes in, it always washes away their hard work. Weird ass crabs.

Josef, Andreas and I swam out to a small rock island in the middle of the ocean. The swim wasn’t that bad, but at first I thought it was just a very rough rock in the middle of the ocean. Turns out, it was completely alive. Every inch of the rock was covered in barnacles, coral, or weird sponges that squirt water when you touch them.

In the middle of one of our mud fights on the beach, two guys walked up to us and said hi. I realized that it was the French guys that we haven’t spoken to in months, and here they were, in Goa. We ended up just hanging out for most of the afternoon. Then we split up, with me going off alone to photograph the sunset on the other side of the island that we went to earlier.

The land bridge was covered in water, but I could see children playing in the shallow water. Half way across, the water came up to my knee. I was nearly across. Then one last step, and whoosh, the water rises to my chest.

“Damn it! My camera!” I thought to myself, quickly lifting my camera above my head. “Damn it! My cell phone!” I thought, pulling my cell phone from my now entirely submerged pocket. While my camera lives on for another day of capturing anticlimactic sunsets, my cell phone has gone to it’s water grave.

By the time I got to the shore, the sun had almost set. I had to dash over rocks that were covered by angry crabs bent on preventing me from getting some kind of benefit from making it all the way out to the end of the island. I did manage to get a couple more photos, but I noticed that the water was still rising. In a couple minutes, I would have no way back to the beach.

I dashed to the shore, stripped down to my boxers, hoisted everything over my head, and waded across, and dressed in the darkness. I needed a drink. At the bar where my friends where I ended up talking to a British cop. This is where we celebrated Bobby’s birthday. We now think that this may have actually been a gay bar.

We didn’t realize it at the time. When the guy insisted on dancing with Bobby because it was his birthday, we thought he was just being friendly. When those Australian girls left together, I thought they were just going to get a good night sleep. Then I saw the sign for the bar, hidden behind a palm tree. “Cocktails and dreams” it was called. The picture was of three dudes in hot pants. Sorry Bobby. My bad.

The next morning we went up to the north to meet up with Anna and the rest of the friends from Pune. They spent the whole weekend at this one amazing beach that they found. It was secluded, and there were amazing waves. The sand under the water formed deep valleys and shallow islands, so as the waves rolled in, they would reflect off this sand, creating places where the waves would come from both directions, to and from shore. For a physics major, this was pretty noteworthy. It got a solid “huh, look at that” out of me.

That night, we took Bobby out for dinner. We went to some restaurant where we met the owner. We hung around with him, and he was pretty cool. He took us to some bars that were open all night. The last bar was an Indian sports bar, but there were no TVs, no radios, and just some instruments set up for the patrons to play.

It was the kind of bar I expected in Goa. Old and young Americans (mostly) dancing (kind of) to 80’s music. It was shirtless old white guys dancing to Bohemian Rhapsody, while others were smoking charras, watching stoned from the mattresses laid out in the corner. This was single most typical tourist place in India I have been to.

We had rented bike scooters for the day earlier. We took two bikes, holding four people, and one taxi, holding four more, to go out to the bar. One of the bike drivers fell ill while we were out, so I got a chance to drive the bike back. It was my first time driving a scooter through Indian countryside, up and down hills, and through jungles.

Right before we got back to the hotel, we entered a police check point. They stopped us and asked to see our “international drivers license, not the license from your country.”

“Here’s my Indian learner’s perm-“ I started.

“This is not good! Not from your own country, I need your international drivers license!”

I assured him that it was areal Indian learners permit. It took a while. He was very confused. After talking to the driver of the taxi, they let us go with out anymore trouble.

Goa is the only place in India with no alcohol tax. This makes drinks about half th price here in Pune. Jan took advantage of this and bought two bottles of Old Monk. While three of the eight stayed up to drink and talk until sunrise, I chose to go to bed. When I woke up the next morning, the bottle was almost gone. I felt hung over just thinking about it.

We spent the last day on the beach, checking out, and catching the bus back to Pune. On the bus, I found out why Anna didn’t want to take the sleeper down to Goa. Had she taken the sleeper, she would have had to spoon with some strange Indian dude all the way down. Their sleeper bus was the same style as what we took back to Pune. She also joined us back to Pune, and slept with Parisa. I, on the other hand, spooned the whole way back with Bobby.

Happy birthday, Bobby.