We hadn't planned to stay long in Mumbai, just the time to recover from the flights and get train tickets to Goa, but it was as good a place as any to start our journey, and I look forward to seeing some other facets when we return in May. A friend told us about an easy way to buy train tickets online (cleartrip) and so before leaving Spain we bought tickets from Mumbai to Thivim station in north Goa.
Travelling by train in India is amazing! We were in a non-air conditioned sleeper carriage for the ten hour ride and, as advised by another friend, we booked upper bunks. It’s so civilized to be able to lie down to sleep or rest, helped of course by faithful eye mask and earplugs, rather than endlessly shifting weight around as one ends up doing when trying to sleep in a seat. The train has a bustling pantry carriage where huge pots of food are constantly prepared over gas or fire. Waiters surge forth to vend an array of snacks and drinks up and down the aisles, each with a unique call to sell his wares. We’ve tried the samosas and vegetable pakoras yum yum. The doors are all open as the train hurtles along - no health and safety concerns here as each woman is entrusted with her own life - you can stick your head out and enjoy the warm air flowing past, drinking in the sumptuous tropical landscapes, breathing the sense of freedom. This is all well and good but too much warm air whipping around my face and neck left me with a cold after this journey! I remember now this sensitivity to dust from when I lived in Colombia and the need to use scarves.
We had decided to head to Arambol - described in the guide book as a hippie haven from the 60s and 70s, still retaining some of its peaceful charm. Sounded great we thought, imagining a few shacks on the beach. More like a few hundred! It all seemed a bit of a circus to begin with: scantily clad foreign tourists alongside fully dressed Indians, myriad garish signs offering yoga, peace and Ayurveda, banging bass music the first night we arrived, a cocktail of bodies beautiful, preening and meditating at sunset. And it is a bubble, but as we allowed the sun, the sea and the sand to smooth our edges like pieces of beach glass, and lull us into a softer rhythm, we dropped into the simple joy of being by the sea.
Like Padstow or Punta Umbria, it is a seasonal tourist spot, where the buzz is a chance to make hay while the sun shines. For us, the week flew by in gentle waves of doing not very much. Strolling on the beach, practising yoga on the balcony in the mornings, swimming in the sea, sneezing and getting over the cold I caught on the train from Mumbai and, as ever, seeking out good food to eat. The best we found (and I’m sure there are many more gems) was Once in Nature, a lush organic café run by a community with great values about food.
It’s laugh-out-loud funny to notice our challenges, at times felt subtly like the insistent call of a bird, or at times overwhelmingly, like a deafening, discordant orchestra, or at times somewhere in between like an ill-fitting pair of trousers. We are affected by the outside world (ie I’m now in India and my perspective of myself, of life, of others, can change), but our inner patterns mostly disregard geography, and resolutely surface within us to let us know where we need to delve in order to grow (ie oh yes, I recognise these thoughts and feelings and oh! they have travelled with me!) Breathe in, breathe out. In Arambol, I tuned back into myself and let go of some obstinacy to flow I was experiencing.
