Being a hippie in Arambol

January 24:

Well, despite everything, Arambol is still my favourite place in India so far.  

I left Vagator without a fuss.  Got up early (the first night in DAYS that I haven’t been up half the night due to nightmares and other things.  Seriously, it’s been that bad, lately) and headed down to the beach for the ol’ sunrise.  I try to do it every morning that I’m not up half the night in cold sweats.  Bumped into the old English man who gave me directions on the first day I arrived, and we went to breakfast together.  

He was a charming old chap; at least in his sixties, retired, and spends his life half in Spain, half in India.  This year’s six month long India trip is the southern beaches.  Last year it was Maharashtra.  Pleasant enough to talk to, though the age gap made things a little awkward.  My life exists in five year segments; his in multiples of ten.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed it well enough.

 

 Took a pre-paid taxi to Arambol, because it was easier than taking the public bus to Mapusa, and then another public bus to Arambol, when they’re only 25 kilometres apart from each other.  Getting a room was a huge hassle and undertaking though, which is ridiculous, considering I booked the damn thing in advance.

What the webpage, Lonely Planet, and GOOGLE doesn’t inform you of, is that there are three, possibly four different guesthouses in Arambol called Om Ganesh.  And they’re all run by different members of the same, seemingly gigantic family.  So, the taxi dropped me off at one of them, and all I had to confirm my reservation was an email, which didn’t suffice, so phone calls were made, a man from Mumbai helped me out/tried to hit on me (go away, Indian men!) ...and I walked from one Om Ganesh to another Om Ganesh, and I was registered with neither.  So another man on a scooter showed up and told me to get on; and all conversations at this point were in Hindi, and not directed to me at all, but to the random man from Mumbai.  It’s like I was invisible.  It’s MY reservation, people!

 

So, after much arguing on my part, I got onto the mysterious scooter with my things and this other man, who dropped me off down the street, where another random man showed up, and took my backpack from me, and started walking down the beach.  1.5km, and a short hike up a cliffside later, he opens a room to a building and puts my stuff down on the counter and says “You pay now?”  ...uhm, what.  Where am I, why has nothing been explained to me, and why doesn’t this room look like the one I booked on the webpage?

Oh, the webpage.  It promised hot water, access to internet, a room with a view, and a nice restaurant to eat from.  Well, no hot water, no internet, I’ve just discovered that BOTH my electrical plug-ins don’t work, there’s no bug netting, but open windows, and the bathroom is kinda small and gross.  800R a night.  I was paying 550R for my way-awesome place in Vagator.  

But I’ve got a view, right?  WTF.  And no, I didn’t have the money for all nights up front, so I had to walk the 30-40min to the ATM outside of town, just to learn that it’s the one and ONLY goddamned ATM in all of goddamned INDIA that doesn’t accept my card.  So...I’m running rapidly out of cash, and I still have to pay my hotel bill.  

I’m going to make another attempt at the ATM tomorrow, but in the meantime, I still have that $100USD that papa gave me, so I’m going to convert it tomorrow, which will cover the cost of my room for the next four nights, and leave me some cash until I can get to an ATM that works. 

After my half an hour of arguing with this random man about whether he’s taken me to the correct place, and no, I wasn’t going to hand over my passport, and where was the reservation office, and more things along this line, I was pretty pissed off.  I was also starving.  So I went and had second-rate falafel in some random restaurant (I think I left good food behind in Northern India – it’s all shitty attempted western-catered to tourists crap here) ...and wandered around.  

Arambol so far, despite the two pages of writing above, seems pretty stellar so far.  There are hippies everywhere.  It’s like a goddamn pandemic.  A lot like Pai in Thailand, in that regard, actually.  I can’t look left or right without seeing those stupid pants with all the fabric in the middle, dreads, and nose rings.  And that in itself is pretty spectacular.  There’s yoga classes everywhere, and after some careful browsing, I signed up for five days of aruyvedic massage lessons, which I started this afternoon.  By the sounds of it, I’m going to get massaged a lot in the process.  I’m also very oily.  Very, very oily.  Like a fish.

January 25:

I’m still wondering why I didn’t just come here first.  Or come here sooner, at least.  I’m absolutely loving Arambol.  I’m still harassed a bit by shop owners and things, but I can’t change the colour of my skin, or fault them for their livelihood.  I still ignore them, but hey, I’m running on a limited amount of money, patience, and space in my backpack.  

My massage course so far has been, uhm, educational.  Yesterday was my first day, and I was taught by being given an aruyvedic massage to the head and to the body, while my instructor, Vishnu (yes, like the god) explained the motions he was making while I was receiving the massage.  Today was considerably more uncomfortable.  He was going to do the same again, but with more detail, but I asked if I could try it myself, because I am paying 1000R a day for this, and so...I massaged him.  

Needless to say, touching a complete stranger who is laying near-naked on a massage bed is unnerving.  I alternated between averting my gaze, laughing nervously, and my memory went to hell because I was so uncomfortable I couldn’t retain anything.  To add to the distraction, there was a poi-spinning class happening outside the massage parlour, and it sounded both more exciting and less uncomfortable than the course I was currently doing (and it made me miss spinning poi.  I’m definitely going to have to dig them out of whatever box I packed them into when I get home.  Bring on the buzzsaws!) ...anyhow.  The head massage wasn’t so bad for me.  I could stand behind him while he sat on a stool (fully dressed) ...and I learned how to do each step for the head massage, using the special medicated oil for the head.  Everything I use is in Hindi, and sadly, my memory for Hindi words is poor at best, so I don’t recall what it’s called.  It’s a cooling oil, and leaves that minty tingling feeling that Head and Shoulders sometimes does.  Learning the body massage was uncomfortable at best.  On the back was not as bad, because it’s just a back, but he stripped down to his briefs, and didn’t cover up or anything, and I was beside myself with unease trying to figure out where I should look that was safe, or how I could learn the massage strokes with touching him as little as possible. 

Quite frequently he’d have to tell me not to remove my hands, or to press harder, or use more of my fingers and palms than I was using.  Then I did the arms, then the backs of the thighs, and the calves, and when I had to massage behind the knees, I actually cringed so much he made me stop.  Apparently, not only do I despise having my knees touched, but I can’t touch someone else’s knees.  I kept shuddering the way someone does when they have to do something really gross, until he finally let me stop.  I declined learning foot massage also, because I couldn’t bring myself to touch another person’s foot.  I can touch Tim’s feet, but apparently not any other human being.

After that, he rolled over, and I became more uncomfortable, if that’s at all humanly possible.  So now, I have a mostly naked Keralan man laying on his back in front of me, and instructing me how to massage his stomach, up through the chest and down into the arms.  Many of the arm strokes involved holding his hand the way you would a lover, and stroking up and down, hitting key points with specific pressures.  By that point, I was running out of time, and so he quickly instructed me how to do the fronts of the legs, which uses the same three strokes as the back of the legs, so it was a bit easy, except I couldn’t remember anything very well because I wasn’t comfortable touching another man’s thighs.  

I’m not really sure when I became such a prude – I used to be comfortable naked, and indeed, I’m sitting in my little hut in just a shirt and my underwear, but I can’t even fathom the thought of wearing a bikini on the beach, where other people might see me.  I think I have spent too long in countries where showing skin is disrespectful, that now I’m in a location where it’s okay, I can’t deal with it.  Oh Asia, how you’ve broken me so.

For tomorrow’s lesson (each lesson is two hours long and 1000R, which is the best price I found) ...I’m going to be massaged for one hour to be shown how to do correctly the things I did wrong today, and then I’m going to massage a woman for one hour, to practice on a different body (because men and women have slightly different strokes for particular muscles).  

As far as I can tell, the whole point to aruyvedic massage is to increase blood circulation, and/or to relax the muscles, including the tiny muscles that live inside your bones.  The end of the massage always includes running your fingers feather-light across the skin, which is supposed to relax the mind.  When done to me, it just tickles.  When I do it, I just feel extreme discomfort.  It’s just not a platonic act to me, I’m sorry. 

In the case of the head massage, which I think I remember the best, oil is spread through the hair to coat it so that everything is oily, but not dripping in oil.  The point is to be able to run your hands through the hair without tangling.  In the case of my hair, this is impossible, and I’m quickly running out of shampoo trying to wash the damned stuff out because SO much is needed/used.  Then you comb the hair with your fingers, after burying the oil all in the hair.  Then you do different things, like burying your fingers in the hair, and pulling the hair outwards, or using the thumbs to press different points on the head, or tugging at the little hairs at the base of the neck.  All these things increase blood flow to the brain, it was explained to me. 

The body is more about relaxing the muscles.  It is meant to be healing, and depending on what you do, it heals different things: one of my lessons will be the powder massage, which apparently due to the herbs in the powder, combined with a diet plan can help reduce obesity by up to 7kg in 7 days (which I think is unhealthy, but Vishnu isn’t perfectly fluent in English, so I take the descriptions as they are handed to me).  It’s neat, and I like it, minus the discomfort at touching another person’s body.  Hopefully I am more comfortable with a woman, though I doubt it.  The woman at the massage place that I’ve met is really sweet, though, so if it’s her, I might not have too much of an issue. 

Oh, and I met a teeny tiny kitten at the massage place.  It, plus its sibling and its mother seem to be strays, but it (I think it was a he, so I will say he from now on, because I hate disgendering animals) ...I picked him up and he mewed a little, and then fell promptly asleep in my arms, and I almost had a pet in India.  And of course, I took a photo on my phone.  

 

  The remainder of my day was decent.  Before the massage course at 10AM, I went for breakfast at one of the numerous bar/restaurants here and had a pretty amazing fruit salad, and exchanged that $100USD note for some rupees, which I’ve now used to pay my rent at this hostel, though I learned today I could have bargained them down for less money.  Oh well, lesson learned.  It’s not that bad, really.  I McGyvered the plug outlet back into semi-working shape, so now I at least have an electrical outlet that works, and the cold shower sucks, and there is a frog that lives in the hole above the shower tap, and two geckos that live behind the mirror.  The bed is still too hard to sleep on, but not overly hard in comparison to the crap I’ve been sleeping on for the last three months.  I don’t even remember what pillowtop feels like.  

After the course, I made attempt number two at the walk to the ATM, and miracuously, this time it worked.  I also did some banking and discovered that it’s time to come home for financial reasons.  I’m about to break the $1000 barrier.  Work, hurry up and hire me back!  I had lunch in the village that houses the ATM, just a simple veg. thali.  It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad, and it was only 40R, so I was pleased enough.  After that, I spent some quality time on the beach, in my new beach attire – some flowy yoga-hippie shorts/pants, and a tank top I purchased today.  

Oh!  And I did something cool to my hair that I almost forgot to mention.  It’s called a lulu? ...probably not spelled that way, but that’s how it sounded.  It’s like a single dread, but made of string, and with a shell from the beach attached at the end.  It’s not a proper dread, and it’s the length of my hair, behind my ear – and it should last about 8 months, or less, should I choose to unravel it.  I’m curious to see how long it lasts, but I really like it.  And it’s got a seashell from India attached to it!  I love seashells so much I’m attaching them to myself now.  Apparently, it’s not enough to have them all over the house.  

 

 While watching the sunset/reading outside my room, an Aussie man walked past me to take some photos, and we started talking, and then I went to dinner with him and two men he met earlier, an older Afghani man, and a Frenchman.  They were all really nice, and I’m just getting back from being out with them, at midnight.  The Aussie – Callum – and I chatted outside of my room for a while before going to dinner, and he’s been traveling since February, and he said he’s been living in England, and then he traveled to Egypt, Greece, and Turkey, and he just arrived in India two nights ago.  He’s got a really neat tattoo, which is new, that he got in Istanbul of a quote which is lined on the side of his foot.  That’s a really terrible description, but I thought of mom when I saw it.  I think she’d really like the idea – actually, I do, too.  

We met the other men at a different guesthouse down the way, and we all went to a restaurant right on the sand.  The Afghani - ...fuck, I forgot his name.  Rasheem? ...I think – and the Frenchman – Raphael – had acquired some hasheesh, and offered some to me, but I won’t touch the stuff if it’s got tobacco in it (and not even then, but this is India, yes?), so I declined.  Dinner was okay – they loved their freshly caught fish from the sea, but I ordered veg. jalfrezie, and it was a bit creamy, and not quite spicy enough.  Tasty, but I needed to take Lactaid, and the spice level just wasn’t quite there.  After a beer, we walked along the beach until we found another place and sat there for two cups of tea (for me), and two cups of coffee for the menfolk.  It was a nice place where we sat on the floor on bamboo mats (my favourite kind of places) ...and I got to watch a couple of people play with glowpoi, and I kept trying to pinpoint the moves they were making.  The girl was way better at the overhand butterfly than I am, and the guy was just downright good.

 Rasheem was fairly outspoken, and his accent astounded me – he’s Afghani, but living in New Zealand for 21 years, and so his accent switched back and forth in a very curious manner.  I quite liked it – it was a strange blend to hear, and his accent would be a thick Afghani, and then his next sentence would be pure Kiwi...I love accents.  We’ve all agreed to go to an afternoon yoga class tomorrow, which suits me well, as I had planned on going to an early morning one tomorrow, but this way, if I don’t make it (which I invariably won’t) ...I don’t feel bad about missing it, because I know I’m going in the afternoon.  And then hopefully, I’ll have worked up an appetite for dinner!