The return from Goa

Our ride back from Goa was about as painful as the ride to Goa. At least this time we knew what we were expecting. We decided that despite the allure of an overnight sleeper bus, spending the money for an extra night in our 5-star hotel followed by an early start to the 10 hour bus ride during the day would be preferable. However, such bus rides do not exist. None of us are quite sure why this one is the only one available.

This whole day has been quite eventful. A rogue wave ruined my camera and soaked everything else we brought to the beach (so from here on out it seems that none of the pictures will be mine—I’ll still try to have as many pictures as possible), the room service brought spaghetti with mayonnaise instead of marinara, and to top it off, the ocean was too rough to swim in. The bus ride was also quite eventful. I saw something that in a way plays out the stereotype of India perfectly. We were stopped at a rest stop for a few minutes, and the bus next to ours has obviously broken down. For whatever reason, about fifteen Indian men had gotten to the front of the bus and started pushing. That is the Indian solution: if it’s broken, just throw more people at it!

The rest of the bus ride, while uncomfortable, was relatively uneventful. We even managed to get a couple hours of sleep (sort of). It was still dark when we got to the final stop, when the lights went on in the cabins and they started yelling something that sounded like “last stop.” Rachel and I were the last ones off the bus and stepped onto the unfamiliar sidewalk, where a horde of rickshaw drivers clamored for our business. We had arrived about a half hour early, so the driver hadn’t arrived to come pick us up. As the bus sped off, we began to realize that we may have made a big mistake.

The rickshaw driver started to explain to us where we were, and through the language barrier, we realized that we weren’t in Pune at all—we were in Satara, which is about an hour and a half from Pune. You can see Satara, Pune, and Goa all marked on the map with red dots. Somehow we had misunderstood the people on the bus and instead of getting off on the last stop, we got off a long way from the last stop. Given the fact that we were so early and the surroundings looked unfamiliar, our misfortune continued. We phoned Ajay with the message that we were stuck, and handed the phone to the rickshaw driver to let him know where we were. After getting a hold of our driver to let him know where to pick us up, the rickshaw driver and his pals drove off, disappointed that they didn’t get our business.

Two guys were standing a little ways off, and we went to go talk with them in an effort to better understand where in India we were. We mentioned that we were trying to get to Pune, and one of the drivers had a quizzical look on his face and said that we were in Pune. In fact, we were at the same bus stop we had left three days earlier—just around the corner. The rickshaw drivers had flat-out lied to us in an effort to get business. Undoubtedly, they would have driven us around in circles for hours before taking us to our final destination. After a couple quick phone calls to Ajay and many thanks to the guys who happened to be standing there, our driver Prakash pulled up to the station. Five minutes later, we were driving past DMH, and an hour later we were all resting in our apartment, showered, exhausted, and still missing America.

Our first full day in Goa was fantastic—we visited two beautiful churches, rode an elephant, danced with Indians on a riverboat, went to a spice plantation, dove into the Indian Ocean, took lots of photographs, and went out to dinner with the Desais. The last day in Goa will go down as D-Day (compliments of Ajay’s text: “...How was d day?”). It seemed that in a 24-hour period, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Such is life—it has its ups and downs, but at the very least the memories we have from this weekend will ultimately make it all worth it.