Goan Wild!

There are four girls (and by girls, I mean ladies in their 20s or 30s like me) at my hotel who came a couple of days ago.  They are clearly on holiday.  We’ve said hello a couple of times. Their names are Jyoti, Pallavi, Aparna, Bittu.  I know they’ve also rented scooters, I think for the same time as I did.  We mentioned trying to meet up last night to go to a disco, but I went to the night market, and stayed till WAY late.  It turned out they also went to the night market.  We didn’t meet up last night, but today, we’re going to go do watersports. There are multiple sports available on the beaches, such as jet-skiing, motorboat rides, banana (inner-tube) rides, etc., but I’ve never been parasailing, so I’d like to try that.  As it turns out, so would the girls.  So we’re all going to go together….

Me with the Ladies on the Arabian Sea

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PARASAILING IS SUPER-FUN!!! If you haven’t tried it, you should.  Basically, it’s like riding a swing, attached to a kite, pulled by a boat.  So you float through the air over the water.  Absolutely awesome.  In India, it’s extra great, ‘cause there are fewer rules and/or restrictions.  Anywhere.

For example, the lifeguards on the beach in India (yeah, there actually are lifeguards scattered throughout the popular public beaches) mostly drive up and down the beach in a jeep, occasionally stopping by the shoreline, pulling out a megaphone, and yelling in rapid-fire Hindi at the people in the surf.  From what I can tell, they’re yelling at them to get out of the water or to come into more shallow water.  They mostly do it when the surf is higher than usual, and it’s been pretty high in general.  It’s windy most days, and the waves will be several feet high when they crest.  Yesterday, I must have either arrived at the most popular section of the beach or a giant group of friends all decided to go swimming in the exact same 100 meters of beach at the same time.  I think that actually might be what happened, but I found it absolutely hilarious.  About 40 or 50 guys, (many of them in tightie-whities, as that seems to be all some of these fellows bring to wear at the beach – which sucks for the rest of us who have to see them, as they become horribly see-through when wet) were jumping the waves as they hit.  They were having a blast.  I watched as I had a leisurely lunch of super-awesome crab legs and fresh watermelon juice at a restaurant and heard the lifeguards pause to yell at them.  For a while, it seemed like there were less people in the water, but by the time I left the restaurant and headed back to the beach, the number had multiplied again.  So I was treated to another display of Indian Lifeguarding Prowess.  I was super-shocked to see someone in Lifeguarding gear actually on foot on the beach in that general vicinity too.  I guess one or two of them hang out in busy areas, but I didn’t see him do much…

So there aren’t a whole lot of rules in general in India.  You don’t have to sign any waivers to do even dangerous sports like wave jumping on jet-skis or parasailing.  So when we got to the beach, we went to the shack and paid to go parasailing. (It cost less than $10).  First, you leave in a boat from the shore.  People push it off and then it motors out to deeper water where you transfer to the actual parasailing boat, which has the equipment on it, such as the harnesses and parachute.  While going and coming from the shore, the waves were pretty high, especially as we were returning to the shore.  There were over a dozen people on our boat and the waves were so high coming in that they completely crashed over the end of the boat, soaking everyone in.  It was almost like whitewater rafting!  We were soaked!   After we transferred to the second boat, we were put into harnesses (waist and legs).  Then each person was individually hooked onto the parachute and got to parasail.  It was awesome!  As I was picked up off the deck of the boat and lifted into the sky, I felt like I was in a swing, and as though I were hitching a ride on a kite.  The feeling was pretty incredible.  And the view wasn’t bad, either – I could see the ocean below and the entire shoreline opened up before me.  I waved at my new friends in the boat below who were snapping pics.  It was over far too soon.  I want to do that again.  It’s great fun.

We spent more time on the beach and then stopped for freshly squeezed sugar cane juice, which is squeezed out of sugar cane from special little machines you’ll find lining the roads thoughout the country.  Then we stopped and got pizza on the way back to the hotel.  Later, one of the girls’ fiancée, Mohit, showed up to surprise her.  We went back to a beachfront area on our bikes for dinner and walked among the shops and generally enjoyed ourselves that evening.

The next day, we spent several hours in the infinity pool at the Empire Beach Resort where we were staying.  One of the reasons we stayed so long in the pool is that I was giving a couple of them mini swim lessons.   The main reason, however (aside from the fact that it was delightfully cool, compared to the nearly 100 degree F weather) was that Pallavi has an Xperia phone.  It takes pictures and video UNDER WATER! I’m pretty sure we took pics until the battery died and our fingers turned into actual  raisins.  It was a blast!  The girls were from throughout India, but Pallavi is from the same state as my family, and if possible, maybe she and I can meet up again when I go through Andhra on my way back to Kolkata….  Also, Jyoti is a professional photographer, and she helped me take a few Silly Pics one day, which I absolutely love to do. I had a great time with those ladies.  I’m really glad I spent time with them.  They were fun and I got to super-fun stuff with them.