Goa
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2005
1
42
72
Trip End
Ongoing
Panjim,
India
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
"Where did you get these tickets?" Hew asked.
"Kochin, two days ago. Can we change the date?"
"But, these are the best that you can get. Do not change these. Every train is full. Everybody must take the bus to Delhi."
And so, with that we were resigned to a couple of lazy beaches in southern Goa.
Not more than 12 hours after I type "No poisonings yet," do I find my self tossing in the early morning with a poisoned GI track. A minute later I am sitting on an over turned bucket in a palm leaf-walled bathroom puking into a toilet, sweating. But, to have a private toilet is a luxury. To have the palm leaf is luxury as well. It was bound to happen at some point, and it is humorously ironic that we can trace it back to the first bit of Western food that we have had since being here: the "Deadly Nachos" with "Calarado sauce." It was quartered and fried chipati topped with a peppery sauce made of beans, cilantro, and sour cream then covered in cucumber, tomato and cabbage slices. The lesson being, try to avoid ordering food that the locals wouldn't order. The more people that eat it, the more likely it is to be fresh. Noted.
There are much worse places to be waylaid than Goa, India. I'll try to spare you more imagery of tropical beaches lined with coconut palms, delicious yet inexpensive food, sunrise swims and hammocked sunsets. That sort of stuff gets old. We adjusted to the idea of passing time in Goa well, spending a week between two beaches. But besides these lazy days standing at the breaking waves letting our feet sink into the sand, we also visited Panjim and Kochin, two important cities in colonial history.
Heavy steel bikes rent for just over a dollar a day and they are a great way to discover a new place. Along the beach at Kochin is a line of tall pivoting fishing nets; technology borrowed from the Chinese. Four large branches dangle from one end of a great levered arm, forming the square frame of a large net. It is fulcrummed in the center and when it is lowered into the water, the other end, a thick pole weighted with large rocks, rises into the air. It takes half a dozen men to pull it down and raise the net.
Around the old forts, cobblestone streets run underneath huge canopies of massive trees. At Fort Kochin the Dutch, running the Dutch East Indies Company, constructed a large military encampment. At the former palace, there are the 17th century site plans from which you can see that it was designed with pointed embattlements radiating around dry moats, tall walled burms and tunnels. It was the same design that we saw running around the perimeter of old town Maastricht, which was never captured. Now though, in Kochin, the fort has been taken by the city around it and there are few obscure remains of its walls.
The fort at Old Goa, however, the one of Vasco de Gama and the Portuguese is both a World Heritage site and a pilgrimage destination. 11km out of Panjim, down a narrow street that follows the river (a street that incidentally is exceptionally narrow for two opposing lanes of buses, rickshaws, scooters, cars, pedestrians, two bicyclists on rented bikes and a herd of long-horned oxen,) stand Old Goa, the capital of the Portuguese colonial power in India. A gateway at the river port opens onto the main avenue between proud white washed churches and a secretariat. A tall cathedral and Baptistery enunciate the old city center. Slow growing trees with massive canopies cast shadows along the uphill walk from the gateway. The columns, stout towers and thick walls are beautiful in the hearty way of the Portuguese-Gothic. The crenellated tops are austere in a more earthly, rather than divine manner. The same tops are in old town Zanzibar and reminiscent of the fort palace at Gonder as well- earthly austerity.
At the center of town is a cathedral with gilded interiors, which is said to have rivaled those of Lisbon at the time. A large red stoned basilica houses in a jeweled glass case the divinely abnormal, "incorruptible," slow decaying corpse of St. Francis Xavier of 1552. Seventy years after his death he was canonized, for his body, no his corpse, had failed to decompose. Now, though severely desiccated and missing his right arm which has been farmed out around the world as relics, he rests in Old Goa awaiting his 10 year debuts.
more soon...
