I arrived in Goa on Saturday, and it couldn't be further from Delhi. Sure, it's two hours south, but it may as well be another country. There is so much space... luscious green hills roll all around, swirling into massive valleys, curling into cliffs. Trees everywhere. Rice paddies. It looks like Vietnam in every Vietnam war movie you've ever seen (and apparently most of those films are shot in Thailand, so I guess that's what it looks like).
It's hot here, but it's a nice kind of heat, all salty and cool. A huge 25km beach runs down the side of Goa, looking out on to the endless Arabian sea, the vanishing point of the ocean only broken by small islands where dinosaurs live after failed experiments with mosquitoes.
Last night I ate a delicious peppered steak - the spices here are fucking amazing, seriously - while looking over the ocean and drinking feni cocktails (that's a booze extracted from cashews. Think vodka plus actual deliciousness. If I could set up an export business I'd be a very rich man). Hundreds of Indian families were on the beach, the men wearing collared shirts and long pants, and the women all wearing saris.
The beach is endless, and the summer wind - it's always summer here, as far as I can tell - continually begs you to drink cocktails.
Almost everyone in Goa is a Catholic. The Portuguese ran the place for more than six centuries, and remnants of their rein can be seen everywhere; it's there in the Jesus on the dashboard of every taxi, and the beautiful old run-down churches on every tenth corner. The people here are mostly laidback and relaxed, and people rarely ask me for money. People don't stare as much either, although yesterday two excited guys asked me to pose in a photo with them (which happens pretty often in India, and is as disconcerting as you'd imagine).
This is it... when I'm old and rich and looking to live out my days in paradise with servants fanning me and feeding me delicious fruits from fertile coastal soil, this is where I'm moving. The houses are cheap, the food is delicious, the cocktails are plentiful and always come with pineapple stuck on the glass. Magic.
It's hot here, but it's a nice kind of heat, all salty and cool. A huge 25km beach runs down the side of Goa, looking out on to the endless Arabian sea, the vanishing point of the ocean only broken by small islands where dinosaurs live after failed experiments with mosquitoes.
Last night I ate a delicious peppered steak - the spices here are fucking amazing, seriously - while looking over the ocean and drinking feni cocktails (that's a booze extracted from cashews. Think vodka plus actual deliciousness. If I could set up an export business I'd be a very rich man). Hundreds of Indian families were on the beach, the men wearing collared shirts and long pants, and the women all wearing saris.
The beach is endless, and the summer wind - it's always summer here, as far as I can tell - continually begs you to drink cocktails.
Almost everyone in Goa is a Catholic. The Portuguese ran the place for more than six centuries, and remnants of their rein can be seen everywhere; it's there in the Jesus on the dashboard of every taxi, and the beautiful old run-down churches on every tenth corner. The people here are mostly laidback and relaxed, and people rarely ask me for money. People don't stare as much either, although yesterday two excited guys asked me to pose in a photo with them (which happens pretty often in India, and is as disconcerting as you'd imagine).
This is it... when I'm old and rich and looking to live out my days in paradise with servants fanning me and feeding me delicious fruits from fertile coastal soil, this is where I'm moving. The houses are cheap, the food is delicious, the cocktails are plentiful and always come with pineapple stuck on the glass. Magic.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
I didn't really like the Shins, they weren't bad or anything, just sort of bland. The Stripes were amazing, of course.