Goa Part 1.

I haven't had much opportunity to write about the trip I had to Goa before I left India the first time but I thought I would cover it now.
My last night in India, I intended to leave at 10pm to go home and pack for my 6am flight to Goa. However I was thwarted in from my goals by the going away “extravaganza” they had planned for me at the office. First we had a Kabob fest of loads of yummy Kabobs for dinner. Then there were the pictures. I had to have my picture taken with each pod. Then with each supervisor group, then a large group shot with everyone. This doesn’t include the many pictures they took of me pretending to work at my desk, etc. That wasn’t the end of it though came the gifts. I got handed many gifts I had to open up. Well by the time they were done with me it was midnight. I got back to the apartment and packed my bags for Goa and it was too late to get any sleep before I had to leave at 4 am.

So long before the crack of dawn I headed out to the airport. Have I mentioned yet how nice it is to have a driver pick you up and drive you around? Chitty, our driver, picked me up at 4AM on a Saturday. Thank you Chitty!!! Not having to call on a random cab company was a great relief to me. Anyway I arrived at the airport for my early AM departure. On interesting thing about Bangalore’s Airport if you are traveling within India they will charge you 260 Rupees just to get in the airport.

I was wearing a nice sleeveless Salwar Kameez outfit (India outfit consisting of pants and top and a scarf like thing). Before I came to India I had read a lot of advice on what to wear and one the suggestions was that western women would be more comfortable and receive less negative attention if they wore Salwar Kameez. I will say they are very comfortable in the heat. They are generally made of very light cotton or silk that just breathe much better than a pair of jeans and t-shirt. I will say the attention avoidance concept didn’t entirely work.

My first interesting encounter occurred when I went through security. One nice thing about being a girl in India is we get to go thru the special “Ladies Line”, which is 1/3 third the length as the Men’s line so we breeze thru security while they guys are still winding thru the queue. So when you go thru security first you walk thru the standard metal detector, then everyone needs to enter a little curtained off box. You enter stand on a little platform and a security guard uses the little wand to check for metal.

When I entered the little box I had the most androgynous person I have every seen. I am certain since the person was working the girl line it must have been a female but honestly even with the eye makeup I still would have thought her a guy. Let’s call her Pat. Pat had quite a gleam in her eye when she looked at my papers and the whole time she was running her wand over me she kept saying “Oh Madam looks VERY nice.”

Much of India seems to use the tarmac boarding process where your flight is called you go thru the gate to a bus that trundles you out to the tarmac to you plane. Jetways seem to be reserved for International flights only. After I was bussed out the flight I board my Turbo Prop plane for Goa. The plane was so small that my seat in the first row was close enough to lean over and touch the Cockpit door. The Flight Attendant jump seat folded into the wall right next to my seat so during take of I sat facing and quite close to the male flight attendant. I assuming he liked my outfit too because he keep looking over at me and licking his lips. I one point I thought maybe his toungue was stuck and almost offered him a chapstick. Well I will cover the rest of the trip in the next post.