Goa was well not my cup of tea, in fact not even the tea was very good. The 13 km beach was packed side by side in pubs and bars. Motorboats dragged all forms of paraphernalia behind them like water bananas, para-gliders and all that rubbish. Jet skies zoomed this way and that and the constant smell of boat fumes mingled into the hot humid atmosphere was an assault on anyone’s sensors. Our plan in Goa was simply to dive. Despite the warnings of dirty water and poor visibility we were determined to get a true representation of diving in India. Lakeshadweep although a mimic island paradise of the Maldives is where we would have loved to dive, it did not represent the Indian coastline, brown water infused with a myriad of human influences. We located a close and friendly dive school who would take us out to a wreck and a reef off an island about an ours boat ride south of where we were, excited by the prospects of diving the Mumbai madness out of our heads we headed off to the dive site on the worlds slowest boat (Honestly I have seen sleeping people eat faster), but the company was good and we were going diving.

The wreck, our first dive location was only lying between 5 and 13 meters. Despite the shallow water we could hardly even see our fins. Descending into the loom, the green finally gave way to an old 1930 something shipwreck, that according to the locals was teeming with fish life, I had heard that before. Despite the fact that we could hardly see our thoughts, fish accumulated around the bow, as if to watch alongside me two geometric morays playing in the wreckage. The fish, generally snappers, were small as I had expected, but relatively plentiful. Little coral was on the reef as the siltation from the dredging that takes place in the harbor 15 km away from our position smothers all hope of light.  Wrecks can be good artificial reef systems for reef fish, but on this occasion the scars of nets and lines with hooks on suggest that the wreck concentrated fish for locals to catch.

Our second dive was in water of similar depth, but instead of a reef, we were to see Indian coral. This coral is opportunistic, as somehow it manages to live given the slightest odds. The silt piling over the reef coupled with boat anchors and fishing nets, well I don’t quite know how the corals have survived.  In fact the corals were in rather good physical shape, and they had colour too. Fish were devoid though, nothing except an odd scorpion fish. We filmed what we could in the doom and gloom before heading back to goa to prepare ourselves for the train to Bangalore. The night before the train journey we ate some cheap food on the beach, something that we had done many times before, just this time Linda was down with food poisoning, so a long hard night was what greeted us. Luckily after a day things improved and we managed to book our train tickets to Bangalore. We were not unhappy to leave Goa, we got what we came there for.

Sitting at the train station, chaos unfolding in every direction, sort of organized chaos only by those in the middle of the confusion. We had Muslims praying on the floor, blaring Bollywood music in the back ground, some begging, not much though, a discussion on the latest cricket match was ensuing and the train packed like a sardine can. We climbed aboard our 3^rd class aircon coach, which is actually quite nice. You get a bed; well “bed” and you can hangout the train doors when it is moving. The scene was typically Indian, and it was good. We were somewhat disappointed at the train duration though. We boarded understanding the ride would be a 6 hour journey, but in fact it was a 15 hour epic. I walked though our carriage into a huge kitchen which was hot boxed, smoke pouring our everywhere, these sweaty silhouettes figures cooking in front of the bleached out light in the back ground. A loud cry of Chai would come echoing though the smoke as a “tea man” immerged from the gloom bolting down the carriage selling hot tea. I felt like putting on a colonial hat, sitting in white British pants, smoking a cigar sipping on tea and asking in the queens English if anyone knew the latest cricket score… We could only be in India.