Goa – Don't hold your breath

The totally weird aesthetics of the wild

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A rather popular spot for wedding shoots in Goa was a little temple built into the middle of a jungle, with steps leading down to a small stream. I stood on the bridge above the stream looking for kingfishers, and taking ambush photos. Thinking about it later, I realized that the reason that spot on the steps was popular was because it was wild. Wild, but tamed, looks good in photos. If you picture a retreat you might think of a little hut in the middle of the woods, a sunny glade with flowers, or wild mountain peaks behind an Alpine meadow.

But a true wilderness has none of that slightly asymmetric beauty that looks good in a background to a selfie. True wilderness is totally weird. When we travel in the wild we bring back carefully selected photos which others will find beautiful. But a typical scene is like this. A web of lianas blocks your way. If you are sensible you will not hack your way through it into the leech infested understory below the trees which are each vying to reach the sun.

It is a jungle out there. A constant bloodless battle between trees for their leaves to reach the sun, and for their roots to reach nutrients. The battle to reach the sun makes for highly imbalanced trees, and branches break and fall, creating barriers for those unfortunate humans who roam the jungle with cameras. But this dead wood is a veritable feast for some: fungi in humid forests, termites in drier climates. These are creatures about which I know little, but would like to learn more. But it’s pretty certain that their domain would not yield good photos.

Even when you find a sunny opening in a forest, with a little stream flowing through, it is not a place that you can sit down in. There are pebbles and stones strewn over the open ground. If you dislodge one you find a nest of fire ants bubbling under it. There are ends of hard roots poking out of places. This looked nice in a photo, but it wasn’t a place where you could sit down for a wedding photo shoot. If you look up statistics, you read that every square kilometer of India has 488 people. But about 39% of the area is either forest or desert, and has aesthetics that is totally different from ours.

Small-town Saturday

A spreading tree in a little square in a little town in Goa still holds a Diwali lantern. There was a cheerfulness about the scene which made me believe that the lights of Diwali will only be renewed at Christmas.

Wherever the road leads

Back in the village of Colva, we wandered aimlessly in the afternoon, looking for lanes that we had not explored when we visited in the monsoon. Another chapel! This one stood in a small ground, and looked taller than it was broad. It had interesting doors, shut tight.

Earlier, just outside the pleasant cafe where we’d spent a nice hour after lunch, we’d come to the large village church and its graveyard. This section was recent. I looked at the names on the gravestones. Fernandes, Rodrigues, Mascarenhas. Familiar names, common across the Portuguese speaking parts of the world. Interestingly the Portuguese had exported family names along with their brand of Christianity. Once someone took the religion and the name, they would be considered a citizen of Portugal. This was a very different style of expansion than the extractive empire that the English and the Dutch developed.

We continued walking down the narrow lane past the chapel. Here the houses were set far back from the road. The lane wound between tall and dense stands of garden flowers trying to escape. When these I see these feral flowery plants growing tall I wonder whether plants find any advantage in becoming a woody tree. Maybe the competition to grow taller than any overshadowing neighbour eventually drives stems to become more rigid and woody. Is the capacity to produce wood hidden in the genes of every flowering plant?

Walking on, we came to a fork in the road. One way led further into the village, past the kind of local houses that we admired. The other led on to the beach. I looked a question at The Family. She nodded towards the beach. It would be silly to come to Colva and not take a long walk on the beach at sunset.

Fried fish

Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who ne’er to himself hath said “This is Goa. Shall I have some fried fish?” Even if you are an old Goa hand and breathe sorpotel and bebinca, xacuti and vindaloo, you’ll still want fried fish every now and then. In an attempt to revive our wilting souls, we tried it everywhere. This year the fried fish always arrives anointed in a batter of rawa. The batter was used also to coat and then fry thin slices of pumpkin. Equally wonderful, and it brought out the sweetness of the pumpkin too.

Saturday’s stillness

Behind a check dam on a little mountain stream water pools, its surface still late in the afternoon. Fish would surface now and then to swallow an unwary insect which landed on the water. They left behind widening rings of ripples. I stood there looking for Kingfishers to dart in and complete the next rung on the great chain of life.

Goa in signboards

The Family was very clear about her plans, “If you can travel to China and Kolkata by yourself, then I am making my plans for a trip to Goa after you are back.” I managed to insinuate myself in the deal by making the airline bookings. Goa may be next door, as these things go, but there is a lot that I haven’t done there. Wildlife and birds in the deep jungles of the Western Ghats in Goa was not an opportunity I was going to pass up.

There were completely unexpected sights. Like the little pond where an alligator had taken up residence, and was very possessive about. An egret landed at one edge of the pond, and the alligator immediately propelled himself in that direction to chase the intruder away from his pantry. At another edge, a pond heron was perched a neck’s length above the water on an overhanging branch of a bush. But under the watchful eyes of the croc, it didn’t dare to dip its beak into the water. Instead it snapped up every dragonfly which came within reach.

The road signs in Goa are also unusual. A ramp on to a bridge had a sign which I’ve previously seen only on steep mountain roads. Perhaps a tipsy fisherman on a motorbike needs a reminder that they are not in Kansas any more. And I’ve never seen such an emphatic sign for a speed bump anywhere else. It is not hard to imagine that this local dialect is due to the same TF.

In a Goa famous for its sosegad, it was interesting to come across a buried high-voltage transmission line where the trench was marked along its length by milestones such as the one above. The only signs of sosegad were the weeds beginning to obscure the stone. I’m glad I took this trip with The Family.

Pink Hibiscus

The gardens of Goa were full of plants which are easy to grow in the tropics. The most popular was the Hibiscus. Although it was the same plant in every one, the colours were different from one garden to another. So many ways of standing out in a crowd without really standing out!

Sunday service in Goa

Four days of bird watching in a jungle in Goa made me forget the date. So, on the last day when we emerged and made our way to a large but shallow lake, I had completely forgotten that it was a Sunday. A small church in the Indo-Portuguese style was built on a slight rise on one side of the lake. It was the perfect vantage point for watching the large numbers of migratory ducks which had arrived for winter. As we admired the migrants, three ladies with baskets of flowers seated themselves near us and started stringing them together into garlands. Someone came by and opened the doors of the church. Even then I hadn’t switched to tourist mode, and had no thought of taking their photos.

It was only after I’d finished with the birds that I turned around and saw the crowds arriving for the Sunday service. Two girls in frilly skirts skipped up the steps. We were still talking about the birds when a truck came to a halt outside the church and a whole lot of women dressed in their Sunday best began to descend. Finally something clicked in my head, and I realized “Oh, a Mario Miranda scene.” I managed to take a single photo to salvage my Sunday morning. As we walked away the first voices were raised together in a choir.

White Hibiscus

White flowers are hard to photograph. I saw this attractive white Hibiscus in someone’s garden in a small village in Goa. As I stood and fussed with aperture and speed, two dogs appeared on the other side of the fence and started to bark. Their loud calls didn’t stop even when I walked away. No one paid them any attention. Not a single person appeared to take a look, or even called out to them to stop barking.

Yellow and Red Hibiscus

Hibiscus is a common garden flower in India, and walking around South Goa, I noticed that Hibiscus X Rosa-Sinensis is a common choice. I understand that this hybrid was created in Polynesia long before the arrival of Europeans in this region. The red variety is used in various rituals across the country, and is so common that I don’t take photos unless the light is extraordinary. But this cultivar, with its yellow and orange flower demanded that I take a photo.