Bullseye’s Blog

I’ve arrived safely in India, and have been with Hot Rock for the past week or so.  The journey over here was not as bad as I expected, the whole thing was more than 24 hours of traveling, but the plane was about as good as you can get in coach and the rest went without any major hiccups.  The first thing I had to do when I got to Mumbai was to find the train station and get a train down to Goa – I took a taxi from the airport and stepping out of the air conditioned passenger lounge was like stepping into a completely different world.  The most striking thing about India is how dirty it is, and how many people live in what we would consider really poor conditions.  I’ve traveled quite a bit in the third world – Egypt and Syria were pretty dirty and the people quite poor, but this is really a whole new level. 

The train ride itself was fairly enjoyable, although I was dead tired.  Luckily I shared a compartment with a middle-class Indian family, they seemed pretty trustworthy so I was able to go to sleep for four or five hours without having to pay close attention to my luggage.  Riding an Indian train is a different experience – I road in sleeper class which isn’t air conditioned and is where most middle class Indians would travel.  As you sit there looking out the window there’s a neverending procession of people selling food, drinks, toys and whatever else you can imagine.  Unfortunately the one wallah they did not have was the beer wallah, much to my dismay, because a cold brew after a 24 hour plane ride would have been JUST the ticket.   If I was more awake I would have been all over the food offerings, but the couple things I did get were really good – thats definitely an upside to this country – the food is delicious even in the worst places.  Finally we got to Goa and I got off and took a taxi to my hostel (at which I seemed to be the only guest), and then immediately passed out for about 12 hours.

Finally the next day I got an Indian cell phone and gave Danny, the trip leader, a call and took a five minute drive to meet up with the truck – which was looking as beautiful (or as dingy) as ever.

I spent the next couple days doing pretty much nothing, just relaxing and sitting on the beach, which was really beautiful – and with warm water!  It was almost a surprise when I went in, since I’m used to the cold Atlantic in New England.

One awesome perk of our hostel was that they rented out scooters and motorbikes by the day, for only $3 dollars.  Indian driving is chaotic, but I got used to it pretty fast and zipped around the nearby beach towns to go to restaurants and shops with other people from the group.  Unfortunately I also wiped out on it once, and had to pay the guy about $10 for it to get the paint touched up (in the end that was still a steal, India is so cheap!).

Finally we left Goa, and that’s where I’m going to leave this post.  We’ve traveled north about 1200 km to Mt. Abu to do some climbing – but I’ll get to that next time.  Here’s a parting picture that pretty much sums up how relaxing Goa was: