Travel Journals XII: Another Day In Paradise
As it turns out, there are at least two "Paradise Beach"s in India.Following the success of the "Shiva Sham Show' a group of us decided to get away from the hustle and bustle of Arambol. What better way to relax and escape the stress of living on a palm lined beach than by going to another palm lined beach? There were seven adults and an incredibly precocious four year old girl named Ruby on this expedition we rented four scooters, packed our overnight bags, just in case we decided to stay and hit the road.
Traffic in India is truly unnerving to the western mind at first. It appears to be governed more by manners than any set rules.they drive on the opposite side of the road, British style there are no speed limits, very few signs and the speed bump replaces the traffic light here. To an Indian driver any vehicle without a working horn is to be considered fatally flawed, after all this is how you announce your presence to everyone else on the road, sounding your horn isn't a sign of anger here, it's polite to the other drivers. Large trucks are usually as brightly decorated as circus wagons and universally have some variation of the legend "Horn OK Please" hand painted neatly across their tailgate. Here a small vespa-style motor scooter is a standard family vehicle. I've gotten to the point where seeing a family of five and all their attendant luggage on such a conveyance scarcely causes me to bat an eyelash. there are amazingly few accidents and in my entire stay here so far i have seen exactly three incidents of roadkill. like almost everything else in India, traffic is noisy chaotic, and initially confusing yet quickly becomes familiar and in spite of all logic the system appears to work just fine.
After about twenty minutes on a twisting road that rolled through little towns farmsteads, rice paddies and spectacular scenery our group reached a point where the road spontaneously and with little warning besides a cluster of chai shops dipped into a large river. we stocked up on provisions and bottled water here and waited for the ferry to arrive. the elderly flat bottomed boat chugged to a halt. After several minutes of confusion and shouting in the local language everyone and their vehicles were on board. we inquired as to the fare for the ride and received the shock of a lifetime when the captain without looking up from glowering into the water snarled that there wasn't one. To find a form of public transport here that doesn't actually cost anything is entirely unprecedented!
We decided to make a brief layover at a old Portuguese fort that had been painted a cheerful yellow and converted into an upscale hotel. the fort was charming enough, but the real attraction here turned out to be a colossal banyan, large enough for all eight of us to climb at once without getting in each other's way. Up we scrambled and soon we were all clambering around pretending to be monkeys on the very thin pretext of amusing Ruby. Adults sometimes need the presence of a small child to permit them to be unconsciously silly. the small knot of Indians watching us seemed entertained as well. We were just about to descend and continue on our way, when we were joined in our arboreal hangout by a few Hanuman lagur. The beautiful grey monkeys leaped from limb to limb with insolent ease and would periodically sneer down at our clumsy fumbling for the next branch.
The Goan Paradise Beach is a flatter, longer stretch of sand than it's equivalent near Gokarna. there are less woven beach huts and open air restaurants. just like the southern Paradise Beach, the sea is impossibly blue and clear. it is idyllic and more or less isolated from the real world. this time it was a forest of palms and conifers rather than a mountain that acted as the buffer. we arrived and almost instantly decided to spend the night.
after a full day of swimming reading, building sandcastles, sunbathing and generally lounging we hiked up the beach for a round of good fish thalis. we then marched back again to build a good sized campfire that most of us drifted off around. when i woke up to return to the cabin the stars looked as though you could pluck them from the sky like apples.
the next morning i emerged from my hut and the first sight that i encountered was a blond stretch of sand and a sea so blue that it blended flawlessly into the horizon. over chai and a passable omelet i watched the fishermen work their net along the shore and around a swimmer who was generally oblivious to the fact that if he didn't move soon he'd be dragged to shore against his will among a cargo of flopping fish! fortunately for him he somehow got the idea and left.
It was probably the fishing nets that drew the dolphins so close to shore. we watched them breaching and dancing near the surface of the water for a while before someone got the idea of trying to swim with them. Who could say no to that? in a matter of minutes we were all trading water and scanning over the tops of the breakers for the telltale flash of flukes and backs. i personally didn't get very close but a few members of our bunch had the dolphins surface within twenty five yards of them. if you ducked your head beneath the waves for a moment you could hear the whistles and clicks of dolphins calling to each other like a poorly tuned old radio
J
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