Goan out of that...

After Mumbai something to get used to in Goa is the fact that many of the Indians round here are tourists like ourselves. Some are grown men who've never seen the sea before and splash around like schoolkids. Almost as childish is their tendency to gawp at the scantily clad western women in their bikinis, with no effort made at disguising it as anything other than good old fashioned leering. Some of them try and get photos taken of them with the girls or, failing that, they will pretend to take photos of each other with all that sinful flesh lounging in the background. I saw one intimidatingly built woman threaten to throttle a middle aged indian fella for taking her photo on the sly. He was quite unstirred by the whole thing, even when she removed his camera from him and made as if to throw it in the sea, but the other whitie women almost burst into spontaneous applause.

Their fascination with all this pink and brown skin is not suprising considering how little nudity there is in Indian culture (where apparently it is not unusual to wear "over-underpants" in the shower). If you've rarely even seen yourself naked then the men's reaction is a little more understandable. As you walk along the beach there are whole families of fully dressed indians standing in the shallows looking bemused, as if they have just got out of a taxi at the wrong place. Elsewhere can be seen the time honoured spectacle of fathers in rolled up shirt sleeves with hearty laughs enthusiastically dunking their terrified children in the sea. Some things are universal.

The water is as warm as dirty bathwater and quite unrefreshing but walking along the shore with the waves breaking over your feet reminded me of puppies licking my ankles. I'm not aware of ever having had puppies licking my ankles so I'm not sure what that was all about but i am now looking at getting myself a sunhat. I left my Nike sunhat in a Mumbai restaurant, no huge loss.

Like on one of those enema holidays i've read about the conversation amongst many of the traveller's is the various states of our stomachs and bowels. Though I am used to discussing this with some of my friends, who take a disturbing amount of interest in my regular and healthy toileting back home, hearing a well spoken and reserved Danish girl use the phrase "shitty panties" is something you need time to adjust to. ( In the same vein but altogether less surprising was hearing an Irish girl use the phrase "big ould titty massage". It is no wonder I save my love for Italian girls.) My stomach so far has been well behaved by my standards and I remain vigilant. The more first hand horror stories you hear about shit/vomit fests lasting up to 10 days ( can you imagine?!?) the more inclined you are to go with the vegetarian option. Accordingly I have not eaten meat in a week and find it surprisingly easy but then my appetite has all but vanished since i got here. Though I daren't hope to altogether dodge Bombay bottom, I do hope to minimise its impact on my trip.

One final thing. I have met some great people already and we have a regular gang on the beach at this stage. We were joined by a Polish American Islamic vegan for dinner the other night. He had a lot of smug and interesting things to say. Him and a friend did five days trekking in the tropics living only on coconuts that fell from the trees along the way, he ate the coconut flesh, his friend drank the milk. His friend doesn't eat anything cooked and doesn't eat anything but about ten types of vegetable, mostly green leaf ones. He also doesn't believe in drinking water (he survives on what he gets from the leaves.) Between the high falutin conversations on this and Islam it was a welcome relief to have one of the girls ask if his sister had to "wear a durka". Realising her error she started trying to explain that she had got it from Team America: World Police until I finally nudged her into a silent state of barely suppressed giggles. Priceless.