GOA: FEBRUARY 13
Simon and Lisa have difficulties in getting published. Simon does the writing and organises their photo-library (one hundred thousand or more pics) while Lisa does the more mundane: route planning, visas, finance, etc. Simon is one more forty-year old biker – OK, so he's tall with long hair and moderately glamorous. Who cares? Lisa is the story. She is the elder by ten years, tough good-looking without being butch and astride a great big throbing BMW. Open the throttle and she leaves Simon trailing. That's the story, Flash leather and a Toy Boy. Most every woman's dream.
Showing posts with label Arambol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arambol. Show all posts
Monday, March 08, 2010
DON'T LAUGH AT THE MINOW
GOA: FEBRUARY 13
www.horizonsunlimited. com is a web site community of biker travelers initiated by a Canadian couple, Susan and Grant Johnson. Check the Hubb for road conditions in Albania, visas for Turkmenistan, possibility of entering China, BMW mechanic in Buenos Aires. What ever, you'll find it here. And you make friends. I have been communicating via the web with an English couple, Lisa and Simon, since 2004. Now, finally, we meet on Arambol beach. They have been on the road for seven years and ride monsters. I ride a minow and we are very different travelers. Simon and Lisa are adventurous. Travel ecstasy for me is good tar, a dish of prawns, soft mattress and Emails from my kids. For Lisa and Simon, the tougher the road the happier. Truly dangerous and they are ecstatic. Check their site on how to survive a broken neck in the Amazon forest (www.2ridetheworld.com). However a few weeks of Indian drivers has put them in a hate-India mood.
IN SEARCH OF HIPPY HAVEN
GOA: FEBRUARY 13Paul and Fiona work a twelve-hour day. I hunt my past. Goa's Hippy community has been squeezed steadily northward. Calangute was the beginning, then Baga, Anjuna...Now ninety minutes up the coast to Arambol. Goa is ruined – so they say. Then why do I pass almost deserted white-sand beaches?
As to the hunt, imagine a fat ederly Blimp accosting any Oldie with long hair. “Excuse me, have you been here long?”
In a guttural German accent, “Ten years...”
The Blimp needs forty...And the courage to keep accosting elderly long-haired strangers. A full day (unsuccessful) and I divide them into gracious, puzzled, bewildered, dismissive and impolite.
As to the hunt, imagine a fat ederly Blimp accosting any Oldie with long hair. “Excuse me, have you been here long?”
In a guttural German accent, “Ten years...”
The Blimp needs forty...And the courage to keep accosting elderly long-haired strangers. A full day (unsuccessful) and I divide them into gracious, puzzled, bewildered, dismissive and impolite.
Friday, March 05, 2010
FREN JOSHUA
GOA: FEBRUARY 9
Everybody at the Fren Joshua concert is a small crowd of maybe one hundred. The true sound of Goa is German. He sits in splendour on a raised dais on the stage and plays the sitar and a flute. To his right, a grey-haired Japanese with a frozen face plays base guitar next to a tabla player who might be Indian. A second German plays keyboard and fiddles with a lap-top. Fren Joshua is both serious and spiritual. He dedicates his songs to a series of Sufi saints and mystics. My untrained ear finds one song much like the next. Perhaps the Sufi mystics were equally similar. The concert is enlivened on occasion by all four musicians emitting a series of very loud harsh barks.
The Japanese base player runs out of battery.
I clap once at the wrong moment.
The prawn risotto is dry and without taste.
So where is the luck?
In meeting a young Dutch couple, Paul and Fiona, at the restaurant.
Everybody at the Fren Joshua concert is a small crowd of maybe one hundred. The true sound of Goa is German. He sits in splendour on a raised dais on the stage and plays the sitar and a flute. To his right, a grey-haired Japanese with a frozen face plays base guitar next to a tabla player who might be Indian. A second German plays keyboard and fiddles with a lap-top. Fren Joshua is both serious and spiritual. He dedicates his songs to a series of Sufi saints and mystics. My untrained ear finds one song much like the next. Perhaps the Sufi mystics were equally similar. The concert is enlivened on occasion by all four musicians emitting a series of very loud harsh barks.
The Japanese base player runs out of battery.
I clap once at the wrong moment.
The prawn risotto is dry and without taste.
So where is the luck?
In meeting a young Dutch couple, Paul and Fiona, at the restaurant.
SEARCHING FOR THE PAST
GOA: FEBRUARY 9
Calangute is the northern end of a thirty kilometer hodgepodge of high-rise apartment blocks, bed-bug dosshouses, luxury resorts, bars and restaurants that range in quality from brilliant to instant dysentery. My memories are of a small village. We were fifty foreigners at most. Fishermen mending nets were the only Indians. I trust to luck in searching for my past. The luck is an Italian with a shack restaurant amongst the trees a kilometer back from Vagator beach. He has long hair, an old bike and spent years up in Poona or Pune at the Shri Rajneesh ashram - wow! a real life sennayasin. How old? Mid-sixties and an old stager. He belongs...While I fall at the first hurdle. I've never heard of Fren Joshuah, never listened to his music, the true sound of Goa (so the Italian asures me).
Fren Joshua is in concert tonight on the beach north towards Arambol. Everybody's going. Return to the restaurant afterwards for prawn risotto.
Calangute is the northern end of a thirty kilometer hodgepodge of high-rise apartment blocks, bed-bug dosshouses, luxury resorts, bars and restaurants that range in quality from brilliant to instant dysentery. My memories are of a small village. We were fifty foreigners at most. Fishermen mending nets were the only Indians. I trust to luck in searching for my past. The luck is an Italian with a shack restaurant amongst the trees a kilometer back from Vagator beach. He has long hair, an old bike and spent years up in Poona or Pune at the Shri Rajneesh ashram - wow! a real life sennayasin. How old? Mid-sixties and an old stager. He belongs...While I fall at the first hurdle. I've never heard of Fren Joshuah, never listened to his music, the true sound of Goa (so the Italian asures me).
Fren Joshua is in concert tonight on the beach north towards Arambol. Everybody's going. Return to the restaurant afterwards for prawn risotto.
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