Finding where the water meets the sand in India

At long last.......The south of Goa India. Me and shell spent a full month in the north of Nepal and trekked through winters first storms and snow in the himalayan ranges of Khumbu and Annapurna. Even Katmandu and delhi were in the throngs of winter and experiencing one of the coldest winters in memory...which is to say 50s and 60s and then snows soon after we left. It seemed that we were always on the forefront of the season. Coming from the great white north of minnesota it semed we brought the snows where ever we went or at least unusually cold weather. Most of which felt like atumun or an Indian summer quite literally. But not the heat we were looking for. With all the shaking and moving we were doing we needed a vacation from vacation. Fate finds you in interesting places never where you dream or Imagine but it happens and you smile. You know life is taking you for a ride. You do control the sails but not the winds. And sometimes those winds carry you down a long dusty road on a last minute decision in a packed bus. To the very end of the road to the last beach in a world renowned state of beachs. And inevitably the beach you end up on is one of the very insperation's that brought you to India in the first place.

Back track 18 months ago when I was working two jobs and still paying off the last of my school det in order to save money to be right where I am now. During that time I was researching where and by what route I should take for this trip. the whole world was open but the himalayas stood out above everything else. I knew I had to go there for sure. Mountains have always had a way of pulling me to them. So through trial and error Nepal ended up being the first place I would go to. Which made India a natural place to follow up with afterwards. Though I had never really had a strong pull to visit there like so many other places in the world. It still had an allure all it's own for the images and culture conjured up even at the mention of the name itself. India. Yet it wasn't till I saw the Movie "The Bourne Supremacy" with matt damon those 18 months ago that I realized something else about india. The coasts along the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal were teeming with remote beachs and a haven for rucsackers and hippies to escape the streets of India. The opening shot in this movie is of matt Damon jogging up a beach at sunrise in Goa India. It looked phenominal in the movie. Imagery and stories personally told have always inspired me to see a place and experience more then anything else. That opening shot of that beach planted the seed that inevitably tipped the scales to get me into india.

Me and shell departed our sardine canned bus after 15 hours of busing south from Bombay and walked out onto the very same beach as in the movie. Into the insperation that beckoned me to come to India in the first place. Of the hundreds of beachs along the coast of india....Fate - (God) and life can be so beautiful in the ways you are led and the places you are led to find them. I stood with feet in the sand, a pack on my back, and a smile on my face as I looked up and down the beach knowing what was happening. The knowing seems even better then the happening. How many times in life does fate happen without the knowing of it. But to know that out there in the world beyond there is a grander plan and a bigger picture happening around us each and every day. A story being played out with threads finer and deeper then we could ever see. Though when we are blessed enough to se them unfolding before us on that golden road of life, that true fated road.....Well it's always a great reminder of how magical and beautiful life really is and that there's more to life then just what your told to do and believe. That life can be as great as you could ever dream it to be and most times far greater then even those dreams. I've always thought that view would or will sum up my wife where ever she is out there.......

Any how fate found us on the sands of palolem India and two days later a group of two grew to three with the arrival of Elizabeth bearing gifts and foods from home. The beach we stayed at was called Palolem beach. A crescent shaped beach of about 3/4 of a mile long and capped on each end with high jungly hills massive boulders that rolled and dotted out into the ocean. In between running the stretch of the whole beach was a thick unbroken wall of towering royal palms. there is no devolpment on the beach at all but hundreds of bamboo walled and palm thatched roofed bungalows on stilts lead back into the forests and town behind. everything where you walked for the next 2 weeks was in your barefeet more often then not. the beach itself had a few dozen traditional wooden fishing boats with a single pontoon lashed to the one side and usually fisherman casting nets or tourists off the other side to swim with the dolphins that swam and played every day along the coast. All day you would watch the boats being hauled in and out to the sea (rolled over grease slicked logs). There were countless dogs wandering and sleeping in groups up and down the beach as well as a single small herd of cattle that grouped every night at sun set and walked the beach being chased and harassed by all the dogs. There were no streets along the beach so there were was never any noise of any type of traffic. Just music from the restaurants and the sounds of the sea. The sun set on the Arabian Sea in front of our bungalows every night. The weather was perfect as well as the tempeture of the sea as well. Two weeks of sun, surf, and sand. Palolem had the right amount of quiet bungalow life and stretch of sand as well as a great night life and social scene.

the beach was ringed with a good 30 or more beach side restaurants and bars where you at tables with your toes in the sand and palmed shade above. There were also reataurants that served real mexican food or real burgers and steaks in town. It was a good break from all the spicey Indian cuisine. Most of the western disha were actually done right and each restaurant displayed huge icey trays of they're fresh seafood. Heaping mounds of massive tiger prawns (Very Big Shrimp), King fish (Look Like Barracuda), pomfrets (Like small halibut), Tuna (SOOO Good!), Baby sharks (hammerheads - sad), clams, mussels, crabs, and lobster all to be grilled in tandoori ovens and spiced to your choosing along with scewered pototoes, tomatoes, green beans, carrots, cauliflower, green or red peppers, Hot Chiles peppers, Onions and the like. Baskets of tandoori baked Naans and chapati (flat breads like thicker tortillas) brushed with garlic butter, stuffed with you choice of cheese to be melted, cloves of garlic or maybe shreeded cocunuts, As well as plates of fresh picked fruits from the the farms inland that produced local Cocunuts, pineapple, bannanas big and small, Papayas, mangos, and watermelon - apples, blueberries, and grapes or limes, oranges, lemons, clementines, Guava, pomegrantes, or grapefruit all squeezed for cocktails, a cool drink, a fruit salad or garnish for this that and everything else. We only found one bad restaurant on the beach in 2 and a half weeks of eating out which adds upto almost 50 meals with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. An average dinner with a few select choices of what fish, what vegetable, what kind of bread and fruit along with a few beers was under ten dollars usually around 5 dollars. The seafood plates were large silver platters with everything served on top of a thick green bannana leaf and little laterns on the corners made from carved tomatoes or green peppers carved to look like flowers opening in the morning but hollowed out inside with small lite candles within them. The dinners were savored and thought about each day waiting for the sun and the heat to recede. But the nights themselves on palolem offered something more then just dinner to look forward to each day.

I have always wanted to spend a new years and christmas in a tropical climate after having 28 of them in the snows of the north. Christmas to me is family but it is also a season and timer of year that I relate to with where I live globaly at the time of year. It is a time of cold, of snow, of long blue shadows during the day, longer nights and a thousand other details and feelings. Thats the way christmas always will be remembered for me but I just want the memeory of one spent somewhere so different from home. I also wanted to see something over christmas that I have only seen in pictures before. I wanted to see a palm tree with christmas lights instead of the pine trees at home that seem to represent winter more then any other tree in the great white north. They are also very symbolic for the druidic tradition of adorning them with lights and ornaments for christmas. There were a dozen or more palm trees lite up and down the stretch of the beach at night. Lights windings they're way high up the slender trunks and some thrown about in the thick green palms. Every restaurants interior and exterior was also wrapped with lights or mettalic frings and dressings blowing in the slight breeze at night. Every restaurant is open air and hanging from the bamboo raters are chinese paper lanterns illuminated in many different shapes of the moon, the sun, and especially the stars. Some lanterns were just oval and rectangular shaped lanterns with images or classical Indian or christmas scenes hand drawn on them or painted. but the way the winds would slightly blow them from side to side on the nights breeze. Shifting the lighting about over the tables and the sand along with the sounds of the palms slightly blowing on that same breeze as well. Each liitle detail made every night so dream like and comfortable. There wasn't any other place in the world I wanted to be. Not even home. Christmas lights adorned everything at night giving the beach a good festive holiday atmosphere and mood. It could of been a hard holiday and a time of lonliness instead of a time of Happiness.

Along with the christmas lights, the beach itself up and down was lined with a few hundred tables at night that were carried out onto the sands for dinner and illuminated with candles as well as bonfires set out between most tables. So the whole beach had a few hundred little candel lights illuminating people at dinner as well as the sillouhettes of those standing around the fires. But the skies above us were even more light then the sand below. We were they're for the full moon toward the end of our stay but the beginning of it the moon set early in the night on the arabian horizon in a blaze of orange. But the stars shone high and bright in the night sky with the lack of light pollution. Swimming at night under only the stars was an experience all its own. A very prayerful and peaceful one. With the exceptional stray thought of sharks that seemed to swim in and out of my imagination. phantoms in the night. ut one thing also illuminated the skies every night and especially on new years and christmas. Every night huge mortars were launched into the skies above to flower out into massive fireworks that would illuminate or mirror on the high tides below. The nightlife was always anticipated each day lolling about on the beach or in the sea.

Days were simple. Rising at whatever time you felt like it. Walking out in your bathing suit, sunglasses, sarong, and your beach bag ( water - books - journal - gum - sunscreen - and a treat). you walk through the palm shaded sands in your bare feet to have breakfast ( Two eggs fried both sides, two pieces of toast - Bannana Lassi or fresh pine apple juice - some fruit papaya or bannana - and maybe a coffie. Then you walk out to find a open beach umbrella with 3 beach chairs and spend 4 or more hours there. In between walking out to cool yourself in the sea from the heat (85)under a cloudless sky ( I never saw one cloud in 17 days at Palolem). Then walk to Cubas Restaurant and lay back in a bean bag with low asian style tables and enjoy some good food and a few cold kingfisher beers and usually meet up with your friends. Spend lunch talking and sharing stories together. Then jump in the ocean once more before going back for some reading and a hammick siesta on your bungalow porch. Wake and walk the beach at sunset listening to your Ipod and clicking off a few picts as you walk the tidal lines. Go back to the Bungalow and put on a dinner shirt and a pair of slacks and meet with your group of friends for dinner at 7. Walk the beach all lite up with lights at night in your bare feet with the sounds of the waves rolling in and laghter among freinds. You find the restaurant you want enjoying a great meal (the food there was great) for about 2 hours and then mozy on down the beach to cafe del mar for a late night of drinks and some sheesha from a huka till the wee hours of the morning before you say your goodbyes and hugs goodnight and setting back home through the sands till you reach your bungalow and fall asleep to the lulling sounds of the Arabian sea rolling back and fourth where the water meets the sand in a conversation that started as the first whispers of life and living.

Then you wake and start the day once more. How I came to love India over those days on the beaches of Palolem.