India 1- Goa – a much needed holiday

Buying train tickets to Goa from Mumbai is no easy feat when you are in Dubai and a foreigner. The Indian booking system is impossible. So I email Carole from Casa Susegad (the guest house where we are staying in Goa) to see if she can help. “Of course Felix in Mumbai will arrange that all for you.” I suddenly remember from a previous trip  here in 1984 that India is a country where someone somewhere will always find a way. You just need to ask. Felix meets us at the airport.

This is a good plan, as we have to cross miles and miles of the worst slums in India, to a very busy train station, and we have just come from gentle Ethiopia, so we are a bit untrained. “Get a porter  to carry your stuff and don’t pay him till your stuff is on the train and DONT take your eyes off your luggage as your stuff will get stolen.” We  have an hour and half till we get our night train, though Felix leads us to a quiet waiting room with ceiling fans, to while away the time. At 10 o’clock on the dot the porter comes back to lead us to the train. Everything is going like clock work. We are In a 4-berth, that means Millie will be sharing a bed with me, or rather a fairly sleepless night for me – hey ho! I am getting used to this… we have packs of white sheets and a blanket waiting for us and before we go to sleep we can order omelette sandwiches and Chai for breakfast, so civilised. The kids are so excited by this.. Gabriel and Jemima opt for the top bunks.. that means Gabriel can swing like a monkey from one side of the carriage to the other. This is another adventure unfolding.

We wake up in Goa to the clackety clack sound of the train on the rails and it’s choo-choos, that we have become unaccustomed to in the UK. The doors between the carriages are open as we pass through paddy fields and coconut groves and the sun starts hotting up. The children sit on the steps watching the Goan countryside unfold. This seems a far cry from Virgin UK trains and their fully sealed windows and air con.

Goa – A complete restorative break.

We are installed at a LOVELY guest house called Casa Susegad (which means laid back – this is a good start) in an old Portuguese house in a very Portuguese village, inland from the sea. The houses are lovely, old one-storey buildings with huge high ceilings centred around a courtyard are typical of the Goan Old Portuguese buildings. though this house has been beautifully restored and now has a pool and glassless wooden windows, where lovely Indian fabric billows in the breeze. There are numerous swinging chairs and tables on terraces in front of the rooms, lovely spots to read books and relax and enjoy the tranquility of the place with the most lovely friendly family feel to it. AHHHH Bliss.

The back drop to the house is jungle – buzzing, teaming jungle – and monkeys on the roof and in the trees. Norman advises us that should we want to do any of the village walks or wander the paths in the garden, to carry a stick to warn off any snakes. Gabriel finds this idea quite exciting. The house is an hour away from the lovely Southern beaches, but as Its Monsoon time, no one else is here. Everything is fresh and green. We are the only guests, that’s good news. That means I won’t be having to constantly shush the children.

Norman and Carole run this place and they really know how to look after people. Not only did they greet us with huge hugs like old lost friends, providing us all the creature comforts we are in need of, delicious Goan meals, sublime breakfasts to start the day, advice left right and centre, gin & tonics at the right moment in the day, mango lassis for the kids, and pool, pool and pool. But they also loaned us the money to pay for our train tickets. And continue to lend us money as our bank doesn’t seem to want to let us have any.

Mark and I can unwind. I have arrived in Heaven.

The children inevitably want to spend large parts of the day in the pool, Millie even learns to swim. She is the last one in the family to toss her arm bands aside and GO FOR IT and Gabriel gains a lot of confidence in the waters.

Norman and Carole take us down to Palolem beach, an hour away, where they have a beach hut. We feel like we are with old friends. Norman buys Millie a bucket and spade set, and the children set to work in the sand. We have the most delicious crab and prawn curry with coconut, and lassi lunch followed by a swim in the Arabian Sea.

Mark and I are not particularly beach people but the beach is beautiful here – lovely wide palm-fringed, with cows ambling along it and fishermen’s boats. But I can see great potential for beach tat and hippy hanger-onners, so I am quite relieved that it is still Monsoon and that we are staying inland instead. We decline Norman and Carole’s kind offer of using their beach hut in favour of their spoiling attention  back at the guest house.

I shadowed Carole on Monday on a routine, run of the mill trip to Panjim. We stop at a beautiful, most exquisite, fine Indian designer shop (at Top Shop prices). We are talking stunning colours and soft, soft cottons and linens. My goodness, if I lived here I could  become quite used to these exquisite fabrics.

Then on to her tailors to have her favourite outfit copied four times over for her UK daughters, then an amazing lunch at the Ritz – a secret hideaway place (which only the locals would know about) down an alley, up some stairs and into a room, full of Indian businessmen / women lunchers and families, for a fish Thali – a blow-away lunch presented in a metal tray, copious amount of rice, a sublime clam and coconut something or other, prawn curry, total yummy, all for £ 1.70 with a lovely bowl of lime water to wash our hands for afters.

Then on to buy some binoculars for Norman, a quick stop at Fab India – Wow. This is a chain,  equivalent of M&S, a blaze of colour! Pinks and oranges, yellow and turquoise! A blaze. So I buy a  bright pink dress and an orange necklace – while I am in India and beyond I have decided to be a chameleon and blend in with what everyone else is wearing. Colourful – gone are the usual faves,  the browns the dull greys etc –  I want cheerful. Then a quick stop for dairy products at an unassuming tiny shop, that sells mozzarella, yoghurt and crab sticks and pork sausages.

It’s interesting to experience local life. This is fun, and I get a break from the kids, but shopping here is time consuming – no Tesco to deliver it all for you. You pick up everything from individual shops, although the motorbike does deliver fish, and fruit & vegetables to the house every morning.  and blows his horn between 6-7 to announce his arrival.