Postcard from Goa

"Eefa you wanna fuckin' holiday from fuckin' India, then you should goto Goa," spat Bravo, the angry middle-aged Italian ex-pat I met on the beach in Gokarna three weeks ago. "Eeza the only motherfuckin' place in zee 'ole fuckin' country where you can ezcape ze fuckin'women in saris, blokes wiz ze big fuckin' moustaches an bad shoes, sheet motorbikes an stinkin' piles of garbage an' cow sheet every fuckin' place you go. Eeza lika fuckin' paradise man." Despite being a fossilized old racist with a body like a worn leather saddle bag in a g-string loin cloth, I have since discovered that Bravo was quite right about Goa. The lush stretch of coastland between Maharashta and Karnataka is a spiritual honey pot for jaded western malcontents, retired package tourists and gap year students, desperately trying to lose themselves (not find themselves) via the traditional means of cheap beer, ugly sarongs, fake dreadlocks, hallucinogenic drugs and largely unregulated raving. People like itbecause you get all the trappings of a spiritual break in a developing country – the heat, the brown people and the funny foreign food, rickshaws and squat toilets – but you can still eat egg and chips for breakfast, most of the brown people are called things like Martin, George and Theresa (thanks to the Portuguese) and you can get drunk really, really cheaply. And this is where I have been 'losing myself' for the past 10 days (on a two week holiday from India) with Rosie, (on a two week holiday from London), along with a whole lot of other people on holidays from various things. But as with most holidays –home is always closer than you think.
It all started with a large tattoo of Che Guevara, emblazoned on the back of a puny Welshman from Pontypool. Rosie and I were sitting in a café overlooking the least populated beach in southern Goa, gazing out into the distance where the jungle meets the flat white sand, thinking how wonderful to finally be so far away from it all, with only the sound of the lapping waves and a herd of buffalo for company– when suddenly: "WELL, well, well gurrrls," says a rolling Welsh voice, the sound of smacking lips just audible. We turned around to find a skinny bloke (Gaz) standing dripping wet in a pair of baggy red trunks, with a nervous looking chubby mate (Big Rich), looking longingly at us in our bikinis. "I 'ope you don't mind if me an' my buddy Big Rich sit ourselves down next to you, its not often' we get to talk prrrropa English on a beach in India to a pair of such bewtiful ladies such as yourselves, is it now?" Before there was time to react, Big Rich and Skinny Gaz were pulling up chairs, and suddenly I was transported from my Indian beach idyll to drizzly South Wales, the waft of fag smoke and the smell of wet dogs and chips by the sea. "No not at all [stop staring at my tits]", we said, "nice to meet youboth [fuck off fuck off fuck off]". After a bit of idle chit chat about Gaz's previous career as a Morris Dancer, a Bookie and a Ballroom Dancer and about how he once made 48 quid having sex with a girl on an Internet chat room, we finally got onto the subject of the Cuban revolutionary stamped across the back of his puny ribcage. "Oh this ole' thing, yeah got it done on 'oliday in Cuba last year". Wow, we said, it's really nice. "If you like this one, you should see the one I'm going to get done when I go to Jamaica: the lyrics of Redemption song tattooed over my entire right arm". Wow, we said, is that because it's your favourite song? "No, my favourite song is 'Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve," said Gaz.
Since meeting Gaz & co, Rosie and I have spent more time trying to lose them, than losing ourselves. We covertly moved into a different beach hut, started sunbathing at the other end of the beach and started wearing big sunglasses and speaking in thick Russian accents –but to no avail. The Welsh boys can sniff us out from a kilometer away like a herd of horny goats. And we are not alone. The longer you spend in Goa, the more people you find trying to escape from something: shit jobs, broken marriages, drug problems, family problems, or a disappointing career as a Morris Dancer… You find that some people escape by dressing themselves all manner of disguises bought from roadside tourist shops like Technicolour tie-dyed dungarees, genuine clip-on Rasta dreadlocks and pixie hats woven from banana leaves. Others go the classic route of choosing from the large assortment of hallucinogenic drugs on offer here - like a group of guys who I met last week. I found one of them, Steve, an electrician from Essex, sitting red-eyed under a mosquito net in his beach hut. He had been in there sweating for three days waiting for his mate Paul, who got lost after taking some bad acid at a rave in North Goa. "Where did you last see him?" I asked. "Well," he said thoughtfully scratching his chin, "I think it was when he escaped from the back of the car, took off all his clothes and ran into the jungle naked shouting: 'WHO THEFUCK ARE YOU? I WANNA GO HOME!'" He didn't have a passport, any money, any clothes, or any idea where he was, so I suppose you could call that the most literal incidence of losing oneself that I have come across so far.
Tomorrow I am leaving the beach, the bamboo huts, coconuts and powercuts and I am proud to say that I came out of the Goan beach experience relatively unscathed - with only a mild case of faux spirituality, a couple of dreadlocks and a small Che Guevara tattoo toshow for it.

Nearly nirvana

I have now entered phase three of my Indian journey. Let's call it thelying-in-a hammock-on-a-washed-up-hippie's-paradise-with-agang-of-soap-dodging-Israeli-backpackers-sipping-coconuts-and-smoking-extremely-strong-Indian-charis-phase.

I am staying on the aptly named 'Om Beach' in Gokarna, about 12 hours away from Mysore, 5 hours away from Goa and about a million miles from anything resembling real life. It's the kind of place where you might be having a bowl of fruit for breakfast in a beach cafe quietly reading your book, only to look up and find a middle aged woman stripped to the waist, saggy breasts sweating in the morning sun practising an orgasmic beach yoga on a rock, flinging her dreadlocks to the heavens in an ecstatic sun salutation. Of course there are also the crusty white men in loin cloths playing wooden flutes on thebeach, who look like they may have been there since 1968 but who I like to think, are actually cashiers at HSBC Crawley on a two week package tour - and picked up their clip-on dreads at the high street joke shop before they arrived.

But without doubt, my favourite new friend here is a Canadian fellow by the name of Jonathan. He looks like an albino sadhu, with a knotted ginger beard almost a foot long and a pair of oatmeal fisherman paintstied at his sinewy hips. He has the uncanny ability to catch your eye in a moment of weakness, hold your gaze with his intense pink little eyes and regale you for an entire evening with monologues on merits of Canadian lawns vs British lawns, to scaffolding, to the rules of chess. Sometimes I think people come to the beach in India, grow a beard and an intense-seeming gaze, simply to compensate for the absence of any real personality - but that's probably just me being cruel and unforgiving again.

You might think that all I do is sit about in cafes and on the beach all day sunbathing and bitching about my fellow man - but there is alot more to reaching nirvana than that. At night we try to light bonfires, but usually get too stoned and end up flat on our backs gazing at the stars for a few hours, and then walking up the rocky path to my beach hut in fits of hysterics about the cow on the beach who got it's horns stuck in a hippies' sarong... or about when you try and order banana and nutella pancakes for pudding and it arrives with complimentary pieces of carrot and cauliflower.

That's the best thing about an Indian beach holiday: you may be sitting on the most beautiful white sandy beach in the world, looking out into the tranquil Arabian sea, eating fresh salty pineapple - until a cow comes and craps on your towel, a 60-strong group of Indian men gather aroundyour boobs and ask "madam one photo please?" and you get back to your hut only to find that your bikini has been eaten by rats. So you see, it's nearly nirvana - but not quite.

If karma exists...

... Then may it bring a plague of locusts, a gut full of vicious tapeworm and a herd of sexually frustrated holy cows down on the thieving bastards who nicked my wallet last weekend. So if you are sitting comfortably, then I will tell you what happened.

It all began on a virtuous weekend excursion to northern Karnataka with the founders of the NGO that I am working with. I was tagging along to do some groundbreaking interviews with some former Devadasi prostitutes, who are the women that certain rural Hindu communities 'dedicate' at the age of 12 to work as sex slaves. It is basically rape disguised as a form of religious devotion - so I thought it well worth the epic journey across state to find out more about it. It also seemed like a neat way to alleviate some of the guilt I'd been feelingover my new silk sheets and plasma screen TV.

Like so many Indian journeys it began with ten sweaty hours sleeping on a rubber train bunk with six Indian blokes, followed by a bowl full of warm salty curd with suspicious bits in it and three hours of vigorous bumping through the countryside in the back of jeep. I wasn't feeling my best and by the third hour was desperate for theloo. I made the mistake of casually mentioning this to Stanly (my Indian boss), who then mentioned it to his wife, who then mentioned it to the rest of the staff, two wives, three children and Santosh the driver who all laughed for a good few minutes about my predicament, before delving into some serious discussions about WHERE SARAH SHOULD GO TO THE TOILET? It was all becoming rather uncomfortable –physically and emotionally – as the car full of nine people began scanning the side of the dirt track for suitable bushes (for"privacy") and running water (for "washing"). "Sister, you need number one or number two?" So I did what any other self respecting English girl would do and did some serious backtracking. "Stanly, actually Idon't need to go anymore. If we pass a toilet and there's an opportunity then I will, but otherwise don't worry." To which Stanly replied: "Opportunity is there, but toilet is not! HA HA HA!". After half an hour of more discussion, my wish was granted and toilet was there in a dodgy highway hotel. Naturally the curious hotel manager stood outside the filthy bathroom with a red light bulb and listened as I weed.

Our first stop that morning was the famous Hindu temple where these young girls are initiated into prostitution. The car drew up in a cloud of dust and flies at what could be described as an Indian Glastonbury in the middle of some bleak scrub land. It had all the elements of an English music festival: it smelt like human poo, was full of market stalls selling fried food and ethnic tat and almost 100,000 drunk people dancing around covered in bright yellow andorange dyes and pissing everywhere - but unlike Glastonbury I was the only white woman. I stood out so much I may as well have been walking round with a flashing sandwich board and a megaphone shouting "I'M A (POSSIBLY SLUTTY) RICH TOURIST, IF YOU PUT YOU'RE HAND IN MY BAG (ORON MY ARSE) YOU'LL FIND AN IPOD, WALLET FULL OF RUPEES AND A NICEDIGITAL CAMERA, COME AND GET IT IF YOU'RE RUNNING LOW ON CASH (OR IF YOU FANCY A FEEL)!"But I was in no condition to keep an eye on my bag. Looking up into the carved wooden balconies of shacks lining the road, young girls in full makeup and tatty saries were hanging out of windows. Hindi music blared from speakers and crowds of people danced pulling each others hair, stamping their feet and throwing up handfuls of brightly coloured powdered dye into the air. Every so often a crowd of children would gather around me, but they were much too sweet-looking to worm atiny hand inside a zip, and feel around for a nice black leather wallet, carefully remove it and zip it back up again without me realising it... right? Elephants in red and gold stood grandly at theentrance to the temple, people danced and prayed and petals and flowers were squashed into a multi-coloured paste underfoot. Walking back to the jeep, through puddles of shit and incense ash, I was reeling from a mixture of toxic smells, religious fervor and extreme culture shock.

It wasn't until I was back in the jeep that I discovered that all my cash and credit cards had been stolen. As miles of sunflower fields,forests and brightly coloured houses flashed thorugh the car window on the next leg of the journey, I thought about the lucky Indian buying £100 worth of rancid whiskey, sweets, rice, saries, cow harnesses andglass bangles, while laughing hysterically at the dodgy photo on my driving license.