Mumbai to Agonda, Goa

Ding! 2:30am and I am wide awake, gotta love jet lag. After reading for a bit in my windowless room I decided to sit on the balcony and check out the early morning sites of Mumbai.. lots of activity with chai sellers on bikes, taxi's honking their horns for no apparent reason and the sugar cane man setting up shop for the day ahead!


At 4:30am I made my way to the train station for the nine hour ride to Goa. It was only a 200 meter walk and I saw 48 people sleeping on the 'sidewalk' and 4 rats! Right, I am in India and that was my early morning reminder. The train ride got off to a booming start with the chai seller spilling a cup of very very very hot tea all over my legs. Now I have wanted an India themed tattoo for sometime but the moon shaped one I have from the tea is not exactly what I was hoping for! Really I had a lotus flower in mind... The sweet couple behind me were most helpful as I was dripping wet and they assisted with the cleanup. Their daughter was fast asleep but she soon awoke and spent most of the trip rubbing my hair and saying something I did not understand.. Blonde maybe? Here she is, what a sweetie:

After nine hours exactly I arrived in a town called Margao. During my past two trips to India I basically got assaulted by touts trying to get me to take their taxi and stay in their hotels. What a pleasant surprise here - no one asked me anything until I was almost outside the station. Wow! Apparently this is one of the beautiful things about travelling in South India and if so, I am going to like the travel here. The man that did approach me was nice enough and he had a cast and slippers on so I thought, okay, I will go with him. Once we negotiated a price (250Rs) for the 45 minute ride we made our way to his.... motorbike! Now, before we started I told him I was not going anywhere without a helmet. He looked at me like I had 10 heads at which point I told him I wanted a head left at the end of our trip! I put on the helmet which must have had 10 pounds of dust in it and with my pack on my back away we went! At the end of the trip I asked him what happened to his hand and he told me he hit a buffalo at midnight while driving his bike drunk... I knew I smelled stale alcohol!

I was supposed to stay at Madhu Huts and when I arrived the owner told me he would take me to my hut. Well this required a scooter ride so I started to get suspicious.... After a 5 min drive we ended up at his 'relatives' because he was full - classic Indian style. The place was dump so I got him to bring me back to his place and I started walking the beach looking for a spot. Little Italy is where I planted myself as I liked the beach loungers and the bathroom was clean! By 6:30pm I was in bed, beat to a snot and hoping to sleep through the night....