Goa

Goa has so far been a hedonistic, insane ride through a space that is both joyful and frightening, but that’s jumping ahead. It starts on Friday, when I was still in Bangalore. It was my last day so we had to celebrate it. Since we were leaving at five the next morning we wisely decided to stay up the night. That was the first night missed. We cat napped in the car for a bit (it took 15 hours, the driver took the wrong route) then hit Goa at 10 in the evening. We drove straight down to the beach, after having dumped our bags in the hotel (we’re searching for a new one) and we prowled for a party. We bounced around between a few bars and people on the road, which led to Paradiso.

Paradiso is on Aljuna beach, so it has everything associated with Aljuna beach; beggars, pushers, gawkers, poppers, snorters, drinkers, stoners, dancers, consumers, pervers, talkers and wankers. Plus you could drink what ever you wanted for a thousand rupees. Bonus.

That closed at 4. From there we went to Paga and hit an all night bar there. It was actually a club, but nobody paid the entry fee, with everybody hanging in the bar section out front. Here the drinks did cost money, but Goa is known to be the cheapest state to drink in in India. Next came the actual beach, where they were just starting to put out the beach chairs. Sunrises are fantastic if you’ve partied the whole night. We stayed there till about three, headed home and slept for five hours. Some of us ate, other didn’t.

We decided to hit a different party. We ended up at West End, which was kind of cool; stayed there until six. They were playing pretty good trance. We got talking to some guys that have been coming here for a long time and they told us where they hung on the beach. That was our next destination.

Once there we sat around a table in that beach hut the whole day and soaked up the Goan atmosphere. We didn’t sleep, we just kept going. Slowly the beach hut got fuller and the party more frenzied. It’s all a bit of a blur at this point, but the day lasted somewhere between a minute and an eternity.

Then, finally at night we went to a club further down the beach. There we partied till about six but I can honestly admit that by the end of it I was sleep walking through life. We finally went home and crashed out for a good length. I actually already fell asleep in the taxi back, with my self so far unconscious that I didn’t even notice that I was banging my head into the window.

Will I be able to survive this for a month?