Hey Everyone,
We've now been in India for 2 weeks now and hectic, hot and slightly insane seems to be a theme here. It's been the Ganesh festival for over a week and everyone gets very into it. It's like Christmas on acid with elephant headed statues everywhere. It seems to consist of open ended trucks (covered in extremely tack fairy lights and flowers) being driven down the street at about 1.5 miles an hour with a group of men banging drums and dancing wildly in front and a group of sedate women walking quietly and praying to the statue in the back of the truck. Then you have the children who run to the middle of big crowds and then set off fireworks that seem to be a relative of semtex. You generally find yourself showered with hot coals as you hit the floor in terror.
On one particular night we were with an Irish couple and after a pretty relaxing dinner we scootered down to the beach to watch the drowning of Ganesh. Just as we got to the sea front some little bastard put a firework directly in front of us on the road, it exploded in our faces and pretty much knocked us off our scooter while they all fell about laughing...... it was a laugh or cry moment I think.
We were then accosted by a seemingly sweet man in a red turban who was totally hammered.
To Laurie 'My friend where you from?' 'England' 'ENGLAAAAAAAAAAAAAND YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH' To me 'My friend where you from?' 'England' 'ENGLANNNNNNNNNNNNND' to the Irish couple 'where you from my friends?' 'Ireland' 'England?' 'no Ireland' 'ENGLANNNNND YEAHHHHHH' 'no Ireland' 'ENGLANNNNNNNNNNNND' 'oh for fecks sake... yes England' 'ENGLANDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD' I guess he loves England
He then gave Laurie a hug and I made the mistake of giving him one too... that's when we nicknamed him mr Goan Hot sausage as he jiggled up and down against me... yukkkkkkk. He then disapeared only to return with 10 of his friends all wanting a hug and no doubt a jiggle. We pretty much ran into an onslaught of firewrks to get away from them!
Down on the beach it was a scene of total madness about 2000 people were blessing about 800 statues before the head men of the families carried them to the sea to drown them. (For days afterwards you're having a nice swim when suddenly you get hit by a bit of Ganesh floating about)
After this we went for a couple of drinks with the Irich couple. On our way back home we had our first (and hopefully last) encounter with the Indian Police. They were waiting on the Calangute roundabout blatantly to pull over tourists and get bribes. This nasty guy with a huge mustache asked Laurie for his licence he then insisted it wasn't the right licence and said there would be a fine for this. It was getting pretty tense at this point as we knew they were only after one thing and it feels pretty unfair but there's nothing you can do. Luckily for us they pulled over another scooter with a huge Jamaican guy on the back, Mr Arsehole Mustache went over to investigate when this Jamaican guy started kicking off saying 'do you know who I am, you f*ckers? Do you know who I am, you don't want to f*ck with me'
They wrestled this guy to the ground and we just looked at each other not knowing what the hell we should do now?! Laurie suggested we got the hell out of there, so we sped off home! I think they were so preoccupied with this irate boxer type they probably didn't even remember us (I hope so anyway) It seems we owe our money and possibly freedom to a big extremely angry Jamaican guy!
Anyway we're pretty exhausted, we've been doing a lot of swimming drinking and sunbathing (it's a hard life!) so I think we're going to string up our hammock and spend the afternoon snoozing,
Hope everything's good at home, keep in touch.
xxx Laurie and Harri xxx
