so while sitting in the "ladies lounge" at the mumbai train station, waiting for my very late train i met a french girl named karin, who had been talking to this indian woman who was on the same train to goa. and lucky for me they showed me where it was, otherwise i would have been pretty lost.
the train left something to be desired, one of the crappiest trains i've ever been on. my "bed" in the sleeper car was more like a shelf with a little padding on it. but luckily with the fans and the open windows it wasn't too hot and i actually slept a little.
so in the morning karin and i got off at the same stop and decided to go to the beach at arambol together. when we finally arrived (after about an hour and a half on packed buses) we started to look for a place to stay. we ran into a guy (i still want to say "gaijin" which is what you call foreigners in japanese) named drew who told us about this place he knew of, and the rooms were 50 rupees.
so we hopped on the back of his bike (both of us and our backpacks...) and he took us to piya's guest house. we took the rooms - which are quite big, with a shared bath (though only shared w/ 5 rooms instead of 50 random indian men at the hotel in mumbai), and a big ceiling fan.
we walked out to the beach - which is about 3 minutes from where we are staying - and walked a bit, swam a little and went to a cafe filled w/ (seemingly) pseudo-hippies, trying to be deep. very amusing. so i managed to get a tank top burn that day- very unattractive with a high, square necked top.
we chilled on our balcony in the evening and met the other guest at our guesthouse, a belgian girl named ann.
the next day we all went to the beach for a lil sun 'n' swim. got a little henna "om" done. we walked into this forest to find some banyan tree (and supposedly there is a snake in this tree, so i think it was quite brave of me to go at all - luckily the snake was otherwise engaged) and we met a naked man who is living in the forest, eating only fruit, and not speaking. very interesting....
when we got back to the guesthouse i realized just how much sun i had actually got, and put on some after-sun. then it was downhill from there... i started to feel nauseas and then spent most of last night puking *and* not being able to move w/o pain from my sunburn.
so the sunburn is STILL killing me, it hurts to walk because when my muscles move it disturbs my skin and is quite painful.... so today i'm pretty much taking it easy, probably will go for a swim around sunset.
so i'm a lot happier about india now that i'm here. mumbai was filthy and crowded and hot and not very interesting. arambol is (well, still pretty dirty, but -) not crowded, not as hot, and very relaxing despite my sun stroke.
the other strange thing about india is the animals.... everywhere. in mumbai i saw cows and monkeys on the streets, and here also cows - and pigs, and chickens, and loads of dogs that follow you around and just want to be your friend. they're actually very good for "wild dogs" - 2 came in to the forest with us yesterday to protect us.
so yeah, this is really long... but a chilled out day today. might stay in arambol for another day or 2 and then head to another beach for a few days.
i wish i had time to reply to all the e-mails people have written, but internet time is money... but i love hearing from you, so keep writing!
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