I got off the big comfortable bed and out from under the trusty mosquito net (postively one of, if not the, most useful of my pre trip purchases) and stood up on the red tiled floor wrapping a lunghi I bought at the beach the day before around my waist. I still have it and will feature it shortly. "Lunghi" is the Malayalam word for a wrap-around cloth worn as a skirt by both men and women in Kerala. A sarong type of thing.
Yep, I was chilling. Sleeping in and getting up with no particular place to go. I had lost weight on the road (drastically in the week preceding this) but I had eaten well over the last few days, taken some light exercise (on the bike and swimming) and been sunbathing. I was feelin' good and, damn!, I was lookin' good too. Yes I was beginning to feel like one of the beautiful people. I was in the scene. I was living in a Portuguese style house, sharing with a cool woman next door to a even cooler beautiful woman, just a bike ride from a cool beach. Furthermore, I was almost perpetually a little bit spaced out. I did have quite a bit of the stuff to get through.
After opening the internal shutters to let the morning light flood the whitewashed walls and to check whether the black scorpion was there again (he was), I had breakfast (of I don't know what) and then cycled to Calangute.
"Up bfast → Calangute". That is all it says for the whole day. This is what I have to work with! I think minimal note making went beyond any useful level when I wrote such a short note. Two of the words are absolutely redundant and the third is just a place name.
There must have been more than one reason to go to Calangute and I am fairly sure that one of the reasons was that I had postcards to send and there was a very pleasant post office there. In fact Calangute was a fairly large place. It is probably a great deal bigger now. It was reasonably "cool" but bustling too. It was the local holidaying centre. I have a vague recollection that the road from Jeanette's house just ended up going through Calangute and that the centre of the place was where the road to the beach joined it in a T junction. Lining the side of the road to the beach were little shops and stalls and lassi bars and the like. Just behind these little shops I found a tailor and ordered some clothing made up. I wanted to have a couple of pairs of shorts modeled on some trousers I brought with me.
After that I went down to the beach. It was much larger beach than Baga and much more touristic. The hawkers were there in force. I did some more sunbathing for as long as I could. I probably ate a light and late lunch of some sort and might have listened to the radio and/or the walkman.
It was about 20 minutes (maybe more) on the bike back to Baga. I don't think that I waited for the sun to go down before riding "home".
Pictures below were taken from the road as I rode either to or from Calangute. One of the slides seems to have slipped in its frame, never mind.
After a day riding the bike and at the beach all I wanted to do was relax in the house. I got changed, donned the lunghi and walked off to the back of the house and out to the mandi bathroom. It really was the most wonderful feeling to tip buckets of well water over my head and wash.
When the sun goes down in these places, unless you are going out to somewhere like Tito's, or have transport to go back to Calangute, after eating there's not much to do bar read, write and get ready for bed. There was no TV.
The house was a few yards set back from the road. I think that it was pretty dark. The trees that provided shade during the day made it darker at night. Jeannette's house had a cool outside light which I photographed. It was a sort of three dimensional kite shaped box with vellum filling the panels. The clear incandescent bulb inside filled the box and the lamp gave off a warm (if rather dim) light. Without the light on someone coming home after dark might have cycled past the house.
The light box trapped the insects drawn to the light and the gecko didn't have to work very hard. These pictures are the only two I took and both rank with my favourites.
I turned in fairly early and was doubtless well and truly stoned. Smoking was another pastime. What can I say? I was on a holiday within a holiday.
