Though this trip has been planned, sort of, I never really expected I would actually spend Christmas on a beach.
This was inconceivable because all my life, my family members were all gathered, and were all expected to be gathered, at home at Christmas. Then my mother said this year, “We're going to Australia for Christmas, will you be alright?” and the world changed.
It took fourteen hours to get to southern Goa by train. My Sulabh contact had managed to get a last-minute reservation. I don't know how. The train was so full, people were sleeping two to a narrow bunk. I was sleeping one to a bunk but cockroaches kept me company. “Never take a holiday train,” said a fat Indian who is now resident in Hong Kong and who was competing with a blond Urdu-speaking Swiss man who teaches in Pakistan, as to who could be more boring. I think the Swiss won. Holiday trains are put on specially by the railways and are always shunted aside for “proper” trains. The regular Mumbai-Goa express takes ten hours. But it got there, cockroaches and all. And I found a beach which the Lonely Planet describes as idyllic and which is indeed idyllic, if you can ignore all the coco-huts and indifferent restaurants that infringe its shore. But I suspect that compared to the tourist areas of North Goa, Palolem is idyllic.
The Indian Ocean, certainly, is warm and serene. The beach is white and sandy. The weather is hot and sunny. The holidaymakers are fat Lancastrians and fat Punjabis who are probably the equivalent of trailer trash from Eccles. And though I never take beach holidays and never expected to be anywhere but West Yorkshire for Christmas, I had a beach holiday celebration which involved no celebration and not much exertion beyond lying on a sun lounger and reading Clive James.
In the evening I walked the length of the beach. I noted that you could tell where the Indian holidaymakers hang out because suddenly, there is trash everywhere. Indians are adept at ruining their beautiful country by throwing crap on the ground/out of windows/out of train doors. They do it casually and thoughtlessly and then wonder why everywhere stinks. An Indian architect I know said “we have no civic sense. We keep our own house clean but we don't care about common areas. It's a real problem.”
And it's a mess.
I stepped over the trash, the stray dogs and the sitting cow and sat down to watch the sun set. Then three large Sikhs came over. They weren't large actually but they stayed standing while I was sitting so there was a lot of looming. “Hellomadamwhereareyoufrom?”
“London.”
“Can we take a picture for memory?
“Of what?”
“Of you, Madam!”
Three Sikhs of Orient they were. They took three pictures. They were three men with no wives in evidence so my groper instincts were on alert. When the first draped his arm around my waist and gripped rather tightly, I said in my best uptight English voice, “No touching, please.” I will now probably be immortalised in three Punjabi photo albums as “the uptight girl I had in Goa,” and not many people can say that.
Summary of beachy Christmas: It was serene, and I miss my family. I miss my friends. At this point, having become deeply sick of my own company, I miss perfect strangers.
Happy Christmas!