life.... in goa......: September 2006

First of all, ditched everybody and went to one of those shady tambi stand up illegal bars had an awesome dosa +chicken curry there, that i still drool over, Reached kodai at 4:00am instead at 9:00pm the previous day, 2 of us were the only 2 awake the hotel had forfeited the booking. so had to find another hotel, found the YHAI dorm, arranged it, send for the bus, stole 4 blankets and slept before anyone came in, had a cold water bath the next morning at 7:30am almost froze to death, enjoyed that day, cycled the whole of kodai with a cotton T-shirt and shorts, so me and another guy, told the faculty that my uncle in coimbatore wants to meet me, so we want to go there, the most shocking thing is he agreed, the problem is that we had some 1500/- rupees between us, so we saw them off, And left ourselves to find a hotel for ourselves, the problem was neither knew the local language, to of us, me in shorts, with backpacks started going from hotel to hotel to find us a room, and all the hotels were packed, and it was getting really cold, after crossing half the town we suddenly see a guy standing on the road, familiar face.. we literally run to him, to see he is one of the tour guys, they had stopped for dinner, and our joy knew no bounds. With the help of a tambi guy from amongst them managed to get us a tiny room for 180/- bucks, bunk beds.. and just enough room to squeeze into the toilet, no windows, the toilet however was another story, it was twice the size of the room.
So the next day, we go first thing to get a bus ticket to Coimbatore (our college was in Nitte) got a ticket with the most expensive looking agent as we did not want to take any chances, roam the rest of the place on bikes till our butts hurt, had a blast, caught the bus at night and slept off.
At 1:30am he wakes us up, asks us to get off, says coimbatore is there... on the right side, and goes off, i was just starting to walk when the other guy decided to ask a lone guy standing under the only street light there the direction, the guy tells us that coimbatore is about 30km from there, we were stunned, strange place, no knowledge of tamil, and very low on cash, we decided to wait and catch a bus, waited for an hour and half, a small crowd of seedy looking guys had gathered, ones who were scaring us more than comforting us, some were hounding us, about lodges etc, but was too dark to leave the street light, so we shut up and stay put.
After what seemed like an eternity, an ambi taxi pulls up, everybody rushes to it, we don’t budge,
the driver clears the crowd, points to me, and calls to me, literally trembling we go up to him, there is a frail old looking couple in the back seat, and we heard that the cops were keeping a strict vigil, this was after the coimbatore blasts, he asks us where we are going to, I tell him, the irony is he speaks tamil, i speak English, how we understood each other i dont know, so he motions us to get in, I hesitate, Don’t know who they are, they could take us to some dark corner loot us and throw us out etc.. Were damn scared, both of us almost ready to run, but to what, the crowd around us? in the shady light of the streetlamp, it was even more scary, so we push ourselves into the front seat, i was almost mumbling a prayer the rest of the way, this guy takes us to Coimbatore, to the main bus stop, to a hotel, and charges us 11/-rs per head, says its the bus fare, my knees almost started knocking with the shock, but we go in, take a room, sleep tight, next morning catch a city bus, find a Icici Atm get some money, book a train ticket to Mangalore, and hit black thunder, thinking the adventure is over, but, the train was at 8:20pm, we left the place at 5:00pm to head back to the hotel. its about 30km from town, on the way there was an accident, the highway was totally blocked, we get stranded till 7:30, reach hotel at 8:15, pack and leave, reach the station praying that the train be late, reach at 8:35, there the platform crossing is underground, not above on a bridge like everywhere else, we ask a sardarji standing there where the train was coming, he says platform 2 we run like mad, reach the platform panting, to see a train taking off, we chase it, the guard at the last compartment was at the door, he asked us where we were running to, we ask him if its the train and he says, its not says its on platform 3, we literally drop dead from exhaustion, our train was not even there was a good 45min late, we finally caught it and returned.