Say Hello, Wave Goodbye: Sweet Surrender and the Bus to Mapusa Market

I'm starting to surrender to the pace of life in this serene and placid place. The days are filled with leisure: unhurried practice, breakfast and whatever. No surprise I'm quickly getting used to it.

My first glimpse of India from the plane window was quite a telling one. Mumbai - the brush turned to high rise, turned to tightly packed slums, shacks upon shacks that stretched right to the edge of Mumbai airport.

Making my way through the airport to reach my connecting flight to Goa, I could feel the huffs of the impatient Brits on the back of my neck.

"Babe, what are you walking up and down for?" a man asked his stroppy girlfriend.

"It's this f**king airport!" I think she must have still been operating with her London (judging by the accent) expectations.

I take their point. When you're used to things happening a little quicker and more efficiently, it can seem frustrating. Time to surrender to life with a different point of focus.

And then my arrival in Goa was a great introduction to the Goan way of doing things. At the airport, there were guys just hanging out in the middle of the runway, waving at the plane as she landed (I couldn't work out if they were actually airport staff as they weren't wearing high vis) and inside the airport the Christmas decorations were still up.

Also, as my taxi took me to Anjuna, the place where I'll be staying for the next month, I noticed that the women travelling on the back of the scooters (EVERYBODY travels by scooter round here) were barely even holding on, even though the roads are crazy as hell. They seemed to feel at ease with what would be and the lack of tension seemed only to help them to stay firmly put on the bike.

Anjuna is an interesting place. There seem to be a few ways of living here. There are plenty of people like me, fellow yogis who have come to take their practice in a special place and with some really great teachers. There are also quite a few ravers (mostly German by my observation) who are really into their trance. A hangover perhaps from the hippy days. Actually, the local government have really cracked down on the illegal beach parties recently, due to the steep rise in tourism. But I have seen very few of the "all inclusive" type holiday makers. I guess they have been confined to their resorts.

The shop keeper and his newspaper article

And the locals are very friendly. Many seem pretty content to make as much money out of the visitors as possible. In fact, there's a bit of a debate running round here, as the infiltration of foreigners has pushed prices up considerably, making it very hard for locals without the means to make the most out of the tourist trade.

A shopkeeper I met at Mapusa market had written an article for his local paper on this very topic. He described the practice of having two prices for locals and tourists as "bullshit." He was very proud of this article, but I couldn't read it: it was in Hindi.

The bus ride to Mapusa. The sign says, "No spitting", 'No Smoking" and "10 Standing." There were about 25 of us standing by my reckoning, and plenty of spitting.

Here are a few more pictures of Mapusa market (just a few as uploading them is eating up my time in the internet cafe)...