So much yoga!

Our first stop in Goa was the town of Arambol. We were originally planning on going to Anjuna, but strangely, were recommended the town of Arambol instead, by someone who stays 6 months out of the year in Anjuna. OK…being the north of Goa, it was definitely quite busy- a little too busy for us in fact. We only ended up staying two days, which worked out well as we were due in Panjim to meet up with a friend of a friend at the Goa International Literary and Arts Festival. Arambol is a typical beach town, that really could be anywhere in the world. Guest houses comprised mainly of cocohuts scattered along a pretty nice beach, with cliffs to the north. The water was a perfect temperature. The best part of the day was right at sunrise, when you could go for long walks along the beach with relatively few people up and about. What we didn’t understand about Arambol was the vibe. You know, what the scene was.

There were naked old Russian women, naked Russian children, drifters, older hippies doing yoga on the beach, younger wanna-be hippies doing yoga on the beach, and British people on a two week beach/party holiday. Not quite sure what to do with that, or where we fit in. We did meet a really great young Norweigan girl (who was doing yoga), but beyond that, didn’t make a lot of connections that would encourage us to go back. The other strange thing about Arambol were the staff at our guesthouse. For some reason, even after describing the above, no one could quite seem to fathom the fact that we only wanted to stay for two nights. Apparently everyone else was staying at least two weeks. Doing yoga I presume. How I feel about yoga can be summed it in two comments: “I like the idea of it” and “I hate stretching”. Anyway, there seemed to be an air of desperation surrounding at least our guesthouse, which bordered on creepy.

Our guesthouse

I came back to the room from reading one afternoon to a shocked Marieke telling me the story of how she had the door to the room open in order to have some light while packing, when in walked in one of the managers muttering “so you’re leaving today?” Marieke: “yup” Manager: “so you’re only staying for two days” Marieke: “yup” Long silence.  Marieke keeps packing.  Manager stays in room. Marieke: “Do you need something?” Manager: “Nope, just watching”. Needless to say, we were ready to leave Arambol behind.