Morgalogue

Before reaching Gokarna, I was about to write a post which would have had to have been filed under the new heading of ‘moans’. I’d been giving myself a bit of a hard time about what exactly I was ‘doing’ out here. I didn’t expect a beach and beer bottle to provide me with so much inspiration.

I suppose I’d convinced myself I was doing something more than just ‘travelling’. I’ve been lucky enough to live in and get to know a few countries since my last trip to Asia 9 years ago. As a result I’ve been a bit resistant towards joining the mobile micro-culture I remember as ‘the traveller scene’. At the same time though, I’ve been a bit stumped as to how to see alot of India (read:Travel) and do and experience something more than my guidebook instructs me to. Constant travel, despite being basically a glorified holiday, can be physically hard and I’m pretty tough on myself too.

I had originally planned to have my week of cultural escapism in Goa. But the closer I got, the more I heard stories about overpriced nightclubs playing nothing but trance music, awash with prescription ketamine, vallium and acid - it began to sound more like Irvine beach than the fading nostalgia of a hippy paradise haunting the place, no doubt inviting disappointment. While I’d still like to go to Ibiza once in my life, this just sounded a bit too hectic.

After a long, sleepless night on a sweaty bus that broke down twice (and almost killed the mechanic when it fell off the axle stand) that first day on the beach was probably better than opium, not that anyone offered me any. I dissolved into the water like an asprin and then lay stetched out under the sun in a 4 hour yawn.

Despite having been in the Lonely Planet for over 10 years, Gokarna still has a lot of character. It’s a big Bramhin pilgrim town, so can perhaps afford not to rely to heavily on Western wallets. Most of the beaches are not easily accessible by road, never mind coach or cement mixer, so what development there is, is mainly basic bamboo beach huts and palm leaf shacks. Chuck a few hammocks, a beer tap and the obligatory Bob Marley sountrack into the picture and you’ve pretty much catered for the needs and expectations of most travellers. There are of course, Beach Utopians, who discuss these things at great length and consider this to be over-developed. For them there is Paradise Beach, a remote cove at the end of an hours’ trek, on foot, along jungled clifftops.

I went for a look once and midway along the path bumped into a white guy wearing a dhoti. “Is this the way to Paradise ?” I asked, cracking what is probably a pretty well worn gag. “What part of Glasgow are you from ?” He replied. He was from Shawlands.

I met another guy on the way back and asked him “Am I on the right path ?”. He paused and said wistfully “That depends on where you’re going“. I thanked him for the advice.

There was nothing much to see or do. It was nice to take an enforced break from my preoccupations and do something I have done less than a handfull of times since Sept 2006 - get pissed. Yet, whilst doing all that nothing, I was surprised to find something: Travellers. 

It’s not that I haven’t met alot of good people along the way, it has just taken me a while to realise that these people are more than a minorty. I was really inspired by our little group. There was a bunch of Cornish circus performers who live in squats in Bristol, a big, gentle estate agent from Malaga with a bald head and a beard like Sinbad, a photographer from Madrid, a German social worker, an Iraqi computer prgrammer living in London and an aeronautical engineering graduate from Edinburgh.

Most of them (including the Brits) could speak 2 or more languages. And all of them love what they do for a living but have each found a way to only do it 6-10 months of the year. Work to live. Far from being clueless boho drop-outs, most people seemed to know exactly what they were doing with their lives. It was nice to meet so many people (in the closing stages of my 20’s) who reinforce my idea that the whole mortgage, career, travel, dreams, life dilemma need not have an ‘either or’ outcome. It seems just to be about being creative with what you’ve got and having a bit of hustle about what you want to happen.

I met one guy who’d tried out a similar assortment box of jobs as I had. He’d flirted with furniture making, worked as a freelance computer programmer from the Pyranees, got into acting and then care work. I knew where he was coming from but couldn’t help realising it sounded like the erratic, restless trail of a madman. I’ve always believed that ‘variety is the spice of life’ but listening to him I suddenly realised that I may have been unreasonable to expect family, girlfriends or even friends to understand what the hell I’m doing sometimes. Apologies.

So I lay in my hammock, drank Kingfisher all afternoon, played scrabble, read books, ate curries, watched the cows wander along the beach nibbling at sunbathers, swam under the stars and drank more Kingfisher. Bugger it. I must be ‘a traveller’ then. Nowt wrong with that.