It’s Saturday night at Palolem Beach. If you define paradise as beautiful, long sandy beaches, 50 meters to bath-warm water with frequent tumbling waves, a plethora of restaurants at which to eat succulent fish, beach huts with beds and a shanti shanti attitude with few tourists as the season is about to close, perfect sun and a ridiculously fantastic adventure novel to read, then yes, this is absolute paradise. There’s a band playing on the stage of downtown area, we’ll see how long the party lasts. I’ve heard they have a special 24 hour permit. Or else, like every other night, the music will be cut at 11pm. All thanks to a crazy British lady potentially with a drug problem and a young 14 year old who hadn’t cultivated her street sense.
The tragic events that changed the social cycle of Goa happened early this year. Without going into too much detail, a British woman took her 14 year old daughter out of school to tour India. They settled in Goa, fun town, land of beautiful beaches, 24 hour parties, drugs, alcohol and plenty of other ways to get into trouble. For some reason, and again I don’t really know all the details, the mom left her daughter with some sketchy dudes in Goa while she went off to tour the rest of India and the girl ended up quite violated and dead. Because of this story and a few less horrific others, rules have descended on this part of town. Rules tend to have an adverse effect in areas known for extravagant amounts of fun. So now there’s a sound law and a quiet time and I haven’t been solicited even once. I even did a tour through the town on my own just to see who might approach. It didn’t happen.
But tonight, old Goa is showing off. The end of the season, the monsoons are coming, perhaps there is a bash or two left in this beach town. Tomorrow I’m going to kayak to the little island sheltered in the bay and climb to the top of the mountain. And if I wake up early enough, I’ll do some yoga on the beach while listening to the waves crash against the sand.
No Jellyfish Jello
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First week in Kathmandu- Today I climbed to the top of one of the temples in the middle of Darbar Square in Kathmandu, a UNESCO world heritage site. At the top of the stairs there’s a room with a statue of the Buddha in it, where sometimes people can come and pray, make offerings, ring a prayer bell, spin a wheel, etc. This night however, the shrine room was closed because it was getting dark. I could make out a few piles surrounding the room. They were beds.
A child comes up to me and asks for some money. He’s one of the local glue sniffers, part of a colony of children that sustain their drug habits from the money of local tourists, and perhaps some generous shopkeepers and such. They smell the fumes of super glue in a bag, like the kind you’d use to fix a broken vase, only this glue is shittier than the krazy stuff. These kids just get fucked up all day, hanging around these gorgeous, ancient temples because they know that people with money come to see them and when they ask you for money, it’s pretty clear from their adrift demeanor what they want to do with it. You can smell the fumes coming off their coats. I asked one of them how old he was. He said he was 8 but he looked younger…or at least smaller… I was about to ask him where his parents were, but I decided that was just rude and unnecessary.
Pashupati Temple- The smoke from burning bodies really didn’t bother me all that much. There were 3 sections for funerals, the poor section, the rich section, and the royal section. I saw a couple cremations happening in the poor section, specifically on the stone slab reserved for people in the Vaisya caste. A small community of Sadhus for hire, dread locked and painted different colors, earn their money by lounging around the temple packing chillums with shwaggy weed. They’re nice guys mostly, I was complimented on my name and my Nepali several times, though they didn’t offer anything to smoke. They’re not real Sadhus in the fullest sense of the word, they haven’t really committed to a life of renunciation. Yes they lounge around the temple all day smoking herb, but they have families, they make money from picture takers, though any dude who grows his hair down to his ankles, paints himself yellow and wears nothing but a metal thong all day can call himself hardcore in my book. When I asked him if his thong ever got uncomfortable, “yes” was all he said.
-Das
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