While I got quite snap happy with my friends and surroundings during my time in Thailand, there was not a subject which particularly interested me and compelled me to reach for my camera. As soon as I arrived in India I started carrying it with me everywhere I went because everywhere I looked I observed something I wanted to photograph.
This fact perhaps reflects the different feelings I have for these two countries. Thailand is a great holiday destination, rich and exotic and full of such beautiful people with such easy smiles... but sooner or later you start to get the uncomfortable sense that in a lot of cases there might not be much beyond those smiles except a deep and somewhat tragic understanding of the ways of the western world.
In contrast, Indian smiles are often hidden behind a deep reserve and caution. An Indian man will quite comfortably stare at you for minutes on end, his head cocked to the side and a scowl of concentration on his face - while you feel increasingly awkward and wonder what you've done to deserve such unwanted attention. All you need to do is stare back with matching intensity, wiggle your head from side to side and treat him and everyone else in the vicinity to a big beaming smile - then watch as he is immediately dissarmed and smiles back in delight, head wiggling fit to fall off.
India is a country I find totally compelling - the variety and the complexity of the cultures represented here is totally overwhelming and it would take someone like me a lifetime to really understand the place, which I think is the reason why so many people return to India again and again throughout their lives. It's endlessly fascinating. With each new place you visit you learn something new, or something you thought you knew is turned on it's head. It has the ability to continue to suprise you every day and in every way. Sometimes those suprises are good, sometimes they're not so good...
I started my second journey into India in the same place as my first. Goa, with it's multidude of beaches and Catholic churches is a good place to start because, they say, it is not "The Real India" – it’s an censored version with a lot of the offensive bits taken out, and as we all know from years of wincing at BBC-hacked TV versions of movies, the offensive bits are often the most interesting. I was not planning to return to Goa because I didn't think it had anything new to offer me. I had just come from Thailand which has a beach culture which is so much more unregulated and uninhibited. A young man can only do so much partying before he hankers for something more substantial and this was how I felt once my final Koh Tao hangover had subsided and I was on my way to Bombay.
I was wrong about Goa, it did have something new to show me - something valuable I was able to learn about myself and about other travellers who choose to come to India - but that is another story and will be told another time. I was also reminded that although Thailand may have nicer beaches, clearer waters and a more dynamic nightlife, in terms of people watching, Goa's beaches win hands down every time, but nonetheless, a week spent back on Palolem Beach could be seen from one point of view as a week too long.
Some of you may recall I was there for three weeks in 2005 and complained in my blog of the awful sense of laziness and inertia which slowly but surely engulfed my being until I felt like a raw husk of a man, a vampire who sweated through the days in a shaded hammock and only came alive at night once half a dozen beers and a couple of cocktails had been consumed.
An hour ago I left Goa for the second time. I remember feeling the first time no desire to go back. I feel the same way now. Clearly this is only a temporary condition then – perhaps one that has come about as a result of over-indulging in Goa and before that in Thailand… I’ve had too many nights out with not enough sleep because in this heat and humidity it’s impossible for me to stay in my hut much past 9am.
I departed in significantly more style on this occasion than the first time. Right now I’m flying high above the middle of India headed for Delhi. This flight compresses a 48 hour train journey into a trifling two hours. I had planned to catch the train and revel in the sights, sounds and smells of The Real India on my way north but that would have meant staying five extra days in Goa and I had to get out! I didn’t have it in me to laze anymore.
It was pointed out to me by a good friend that I’ve become a Champagne Backpacker, jet-setting around India with a laptop, mobile phone, iPod and digital SLR camera. I can hardly deny it. This afternoon I paid 900 rupees for a taxi to the airport instead of jumping on a couple of local buses and paying little more than 50 rupees for the hundred kilometre journey – which would have taken four hours instead of one and a half.
Yes – I took a taxi a hundred kilometres, and it isn’t the first time it’s happened this week, it’s the fourth time. I’ve been pinging around Goa shelling out rupees like there’s no tomorrow. In one weekend at The Big Chill I spent around 15,000 rupees on my ticket, taxis, accommodation, alcohol… and assorted sundries – that’s almost £200, probably more than you’d expect to spend in two days at a UK festival. Over the last few weeks I’ve been leading a very extravagant lifestyle but all that is about to stop because I’m heading into the mountains and planning to quit fags, drugs, booze, meat – and sex.
None of that should be too difficult. The cool mountain air and the state of the butchers’ shops up here should be inspiring. I added sex to the list as an after-thought. If, in two months of travelling in Australia and Thailand, I didn’t see any action then I think it’s fair to say that the trend will continue in the mountains, so I may as well pretend to myself that I’m being virtuous. Some of you might say that’s an apathetic and defeatist attitude but, to be entirely honest, I can’t be bothered and I don’t much care.
View my Palolem Beach photographs
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