Goa at last

We've been travelling mostly by train for the last two days. Two l-o-n-g days. We left Kochin on the 27th and boarded the train headed towards Goa. We were not able to get a single ticket to cover the complete distance, so had to make an overnight stop in Mangalore. This was not necessarily all bad, as arriving in a new place at 3:00 a.m. is not always the best idea anyway. Plus, Mark had read that there's good food in Mangalore!

We knew it was time to leave Kochin when we finished seeing all the sights and started to roam from restaurant to restaurant. As mentioned in the last blog, we haven't really quite figured out timing here for food, so we figured we'd better not take any chances! Dessert at the first place (life is uncertain, eat dessert first!) was an interesting attempt at banana cream pie. The drinks on the other hand, were fantastic. Musumbi juice is similar to orange juice, but magically, it tastes JUST like Orange Julius!! My guess is, there's a pile of sugar in it, but I'm pretending it's healthy.

Then, to the next restaurant, which served up delicious lime ginger soda. But better than that, there was a lending library, where I picked up Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. There was a lot of travel ahead, and books are required for this task.

Finally to the dinner restaurant, which was fairly new and nicely decorated, with clean white paint and three large orange etched-glass art panels on one wall. There I had a tasty fish curry and Mark had a vegetarian meal consisting of black bean curry, okra, and green mango and beet salad. It's hard to linger when there are no post dinner drink options - they didn't even have tea or coffee on the menu to go with their famous chocolate cake! - so we headed back to the hotel relatively early, where I hunkered down with my book and Mark headed out to the free live DJ concert in the parade grounds across the street from our place. He mentioned that it was odd to see that the audience was comprised almost solely of young men between 15 and 25 dancing around with very few women out. I guess they were all home cooking, cleaning, washing, and ironing clothes.

There are two ways to travel: the easy way, and Mark's way. Okay, that's not really fair. I'm in general agreement of our travel choices. I do find it interesting though that many (most?) people will take the easy option. For example, you can take an auto rickshaw (tuk-tuk) directly to the train station for 250 rupees. Or, you can take an auto rickshaw to the ferry terminal for 80 rupees, take the ferry for 5 Rupees, and walk to the train station from the other side. It's not the easy way, but it's definitely the way the locals would do it. On the walk to the train station, we stopped at a good looking vegetarian restaurant, had some of our newfound favorite musumbi juice, and picked up some snacks for the train trip. There's something about travelling that makes us hungry!

Travelling by train is INFINITELY better than taking the bus. We went what is called "3 Tier AC" which means there are 6 people sitting in a section. Each person has a berth, but during the day the middle bunks are put up out of the way and most people just sit up and chat. We were officially seated in separate train cars, but once the conductor came around he arranged for us to sit together. It was very pleasant to hear the chug chugging of the train with a complete abscence of the honk honking of the traffic. Plus, the chai wallah came by often, along with the coffee wallah, snack wallah, juice wallah, and dinner wallah. I finished "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry - a very good, if very depressing, read. I sat and pondered it for some time before burying myself in The Lost Symbol. It was a great way to help the 9 1/2 hour train trip pass by quickly. We also spent some time watching the world go by outside the window, and took some time to actually reflect "Hey, that is INDIA out the window!". The sunset was beautiful, and the countryside seemed very serene and mostly untouched by the garbage that we see so much of in the cities.

We arrived in Mangalore late - at 10:30, and bargained with a tuk tuk driver to get into town. Maybe the driver was pissed at us for getting a good price, because he drove like a bat out of hell. We made it to the hotel in record time and thankfully in one piece, but I think he might need to take some Defensive Driving Classes.

The hotel price included breakfast, so we went up to the 7th floor, which offered a good view of the city, not to mention some good food! Very traditional Indian breakfast of idli, dosa, sambar, chutney, boiled egg, and "sweet". (Still not sure what that was, but it was tasty. Kind of like sweet polenta scented with green cardamom.) And of course, very sweet chai. I think my teeth may rot out here!

We had a few hours to kill before getting to the train station for the next leg of travel, so went to a lovely chapel that was located in a nearby college. The ceiling and walls are all painted with incredible 110-year old frescoes. Sitting in the pews, my neck was getting kinked looking up for so long to take it all in!

A walk through town took us to a clothing shop that actually had prices. I got a salwar kameez, that I'm sure you'll see in the photos soon. The funny thing about these suits is that they come with no sleeves. Well, that's not entirely true. They come with sleeves that are not sewn into the outfit, but they are just tacked on to the back. That way, if you want them sewn in, you just take them to the stitcher and he/she sews them in for you!

Snacks purchased, we were again in the tuk tuk on the way to the train station for leg 2 - Mangalore to Margao, Goa. This time it should have been only a 4 1/2 hour trip, and it was, except that the train was 1 1/2 hours late to the station. If only we had known, we could have had some of that delicious Mangalorean seafood we'd read about. As it was, by lunch, we were still too full from breakfast, so missed out. Too bad!!

We spoke of what to do when we arrived at the train station in Margao. Push on to the capital, Panaji, a 45 minute bus ride away? Or stay in the town with the train station? Since we arrived at 8:00, we figured we'd be okay to push on. Sadly, by the time we negotiated with the tuk tuk driver and arrived at the bus station, we just missed the 8:30 bus. Oh well, we'll take the 9:00 bus. Except that the 9:00 bus didn't arrive. We pulled out of the bus station at 9:30, to arrive in Panaji at 10:30 with no place to stay. The few places we called were sold out, so now it was time to figure out where to stay. A very friendly taxi driver took us to a couple of places, and we finally found one that had a room. It was kind of sketchy, but at 10:45 at night, you can't be too picky. I call it the the "Thou Shalt Not" hotel, as there was a list of 10 rules posted on our door. Neither of us slept well, and we were not sorry the check out time was 8:00 a.m.

We are now ensconced in a new, slightly better, place. It really is high season here, and accommodation is not easy to fine. Such is life - we're still having a great time, eating great food, and, perhaps the very best of all, this province seems to have relaxed liquor laws and we actually had BEER with lunch! Beer definitely makes lunch better....