Goa, India

Day 32: Three Day Weekend in Goa

After working long hours for a month straight, we finally got to enjoy a 3 day weekend in Goa.  We just wanted to relax, sit on the beach and drink beers. Goa is really nice.  The water is greenish-blue, the sand is soft and the air is clean.  There are a tons of people that try to sell you things, like, drums, bootleg CDs, foot massages, and marble carvings.  It is like no other beach that I've seen.  Cows and dogs roam the beach alongside women carrying fruit baskets on their head.  The sellers after 10 minutes really started to annoy me, so I asked our server, if there was something he could do about everyone bothering us because I wanted to take a nap.  And he says sure.  He then proceeds to whistle to a few dogs that are sleeping not to far from us.  They come running and he introduces his guard dogs to us (Lucy, Blackie, Lucky and one older dog I can't remember the name of).  I thought he was joking at first, but to my surprise they really did guard us from anyone who tried to come near us.  They settled in around us and made sure no one bothered us.  That was the best part of the whole trip.  If a vendor did try to come close to us, Lucy would come barking and scare them away.  One guy was so scared, he jump on a woman's beach chair and didn't want to get off!  It was hilarious.  I wish I had more time to spend there.  The weekend ended too soon.  We didn't even get to see the Casino or the Spice Plantation.  But, we did catch up on some well deserved rest.

Day 21: Elephanta Island

It is the the forth day we've had off in the last 3 weeks, and we decided to treat ourselves to a day out with the locals.  Our new friends from the lab (Mehul, my new "best friend", Sheetal and Bharat) wanted to hang out with us for the day.  We decide to go to Elephanta Island.  Mehul wants to meet us at the train station and escort us on our first train ride.  We get to the train station at 11:15am, but on our way there, Mehul calls and says he is running late and will be there in 20 mins or so.  While we wait for him to arrive, we run into three people we know (2 people we work with and Sunil, the chef at the hotel). Meanwhile, Jessica and Christina are getting more irritated by the minute the long they have to wait. Half an hour later, Mehul arrives with Bharat and Sheetal, and we take off on our next adventure...riding the train.  We take the train to Colaba and then catch a ferry to Elephanta.  Mehul is the master bargainer and buys all our tickets for next to nothing.  Once we get to Elephanta, they are charging tourists 250rps and locals 10rps.  There are nine of us altoghter, and Mehul gets us all in for only 45rps!  Jessica is on a mission to feed the monkeys and brought bananas with her so that Mehul could be the one attacked by the monkyes.  The monkeys on the island are notorious for stealing any food or water bottles that people are carrying around with them.  Although, Mehul was holding a bunch of bananas, the monkeys were just staring at him.  They seemed a little timid and didn't get too close.  In the end, he had to throw the bananas to the monkeys because they were afraid of him.  On our way out, we watched a monkey jump on a lady holding a water bottle.  They were playing tug of war over the water bottle, and in the end the monkey lost.  But, his friend was smart enough to use this as a distraction.  The lady who was getting attacked was with a friend who was carrying a bag full of apples.  The other monkey makes a hole from the bottom of the bag and steals an apple from the lady and runs off before she realized what happened.
The caves at elephanta were really old, and there were tons of locals bringing gifts to the shiva temples.  We were able to get a lot of very good pictures.  The boat ride to and from the island was very relaxing, but the water was completely brown, no hint of blue.  On the way out, Mehul and Sheetal started bargaining for anything that we were interested in.  I wanted to buy these wooden elephant hooks that you could hang towels or robes from.  The man selling them wanted 1250 rupees a piece, and Mehul said it was too much. He was trying to get the man to sell them for 150 rupees each.  The man got mad and threw them down on the counter and said no way!  So Mehul says just walk away, we'll go back later.  We went back one more time and the guy wouldn't budge on his price.  So we walked away.  We stopped at the next stand, and the guy calls me back over.  I thought he would try to sell them to me again thinking I would be gullable enough to buy them for 1250rps.  So I walk over by myself and he shows me the price tag on the back.  He says, "1250. That's what I sell these for.  You're friend is a crack head if he thinks I'm going to sell them for 150!"  So much for getting the elepahant hangers, but it was worth the experience of the two of them arguing over the price.  And Mehul got a new nickname, the crack head!  On the way out, we had to walk down a long, narrow dirt road back to the ferry.  There wasn't too much room to walk side by side.  Of course I'm the only one walking on the other side of the road and I see a steer approaching.  I thought he would veer off to the side and let me pass, but I was clearly wrong.  Because cows  are sacred here they can do whatever they want, and everyone gets out of their way!  He sees that I'm not going to move out of his way, so he bends his head down to try to push me out of his way with his horns!  I jump out of the way just in the nick of time and make it back on the ferry safely.  It was a long day.  We were out for 12 hours.  I would like to go back, and maybe come back with the elephant hooks at a better price.