Goa: En route and arrival

I woke up after a very long and satisfying sleep at 7am on the dot, and having had only a snack for dinner, was ravenous. After a copious breakfast of rice and vegetables (I’ve been veg and alcohol free ever since landing) and lots of coffee I packed and was ready for pickup at 9:15 am.

In this high end Comfort inn, the elevator man picks you up to the tune of Fur Elise which plays when you pushed the button to call the elevator. He wears a red uniform and always asks how you’ve slept.

My trip to Goa was supposed to start at the historic Victoria Terminal (VCT) but due to the change of schedule I departed instead at 11:40am from the crazy Lokmanya Tilak, The station was a complete madhouse, and the police were beating people with long sticks whenever something foul was happening (or maybe not). I sat for 45 minutes before departure in my second class AC but didn’t climb up to my berth. It didn’t have a window and I was taking the train to see the country after all.

Once the train started rolling, it was interesting to see people tending to their little plots near the tracks. They plant herbs and vegetables it seems wherever they can.

There are so many shanty towns around and inside Mumbai. Children and adults sleeping, eating and bathing on the street corners of a city which has officially 15 million residents.

The elderly gentlemen L. Watts sat across from me for a while. He’s a railway employee on his way home to the South, with a day and a half in the train. He helped me order my lunch. We ate on our lap, rice with lime pickle, bean curry, sambar and curd (which I didn’t drink). He talked at length about his mixed heritage, his daughter’s wedding and his grandchild, his love of Country music, and visited me a few minutes here and there during the 12 hour train ride.

Others who came and went included a young woman and her daughter, then a man and his toddler. The relationships were beautiful to watch. I took some pictures during the ride. I find the kids to be generally well mannered and very happy. The adults are generally very polite.

After lunchtime, the train car got very quiet and people drew their curtains to have a snooze. It looked like a scene from “Some like it Hot”. It was quiet except for the sellers walking by with their calls, “Tea-tea”, “Coffee-Coffee”, or “pakora-pakora-primri-primri”.

The express to Goa stopped every once in a while for 10 minutes or so at either a station or to wait for track changes.

Halfway to Goa, my cellphone receives an automated text message “Welcome to Goa and Maharashtra”. My T-Mobile GSM phone is working fine now that I know which codes to dial. No one at the hotel could advise me of the codes. But when we stopped for the tire change in the slums, the Vodaphone/cigarette seller told me to dial 00 for outside and one 0 then the local number for India.

I was reading quite a bit during the train ride, but once in a while would take a peek outside to see the lonely palm tree, or the groves, the women and men tending to their crop in perfectly square patches of cultivated land.

At 8:30pm, our dinner was delivered and it was light sambar (soupy lentils with cubed veggies) with four pieces of fresh chapatti for 27 rupees (which is less than a $1).

I disposed of my trash in the tiny bin on the far side of the car (if you can call it a trash bin). The railway engineer came to say hello and I told him I enjoyed my dinner. He assured me I would dine very well in Goa and must try the prawn curry. So maybe in Goa I will release myself of the “veg” and alcohol free diet?

The train was a few minutes late, and there was an hour’s drive into Candolim a small town near the Arabian Sea. My package includes breakfast and two half day tours here. My room is very colonial looking with some amenities (TV but no TP). There was a small bottle of local Porto (this is a former Portuguese region after all).

I had breakfast and went to search for an internet café.