The Lion, The Witch & The Rucksack
by Lynn Kilcline

'The Lion, The Witch & The Rucksack'
Chapter 1	Chapter 2
Chapter 3	Chapter 4
Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8
Chapter 9	Chapter 10
Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14
Chapter 15	Chapter 16
Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20
Chapter 21	Epilogue

CHAPTER FIVE - GOKARNA

(Printable version here)

We reached the open patch of dust called Canacona bus station at 7.00a.m. We wanted to make sure we did not miss the bus, but we really need not have worried.

We had read warnings about ' helpful' information given to westerners when travelling. It seemed that we might be told that the bus or train was not coming, it had been in an accident, had been blown up, or had already left. We might be told that the place we were going to did not exist, had fallen down, or had been burnt to the ground. As we waited for the bus, helpful taxi drivers gave us these and numerous other reasons why they should take us where we wanted to go. At a very good price of course. What a surprise!

We resisted all offers of help but by 9.30a.m. we were becoming fed up and I was desperate for a pee. I had been standing in a concrete bus shelter with the luggage while Brian tried to find someone who could give us some idea of what was going on. The shelter had been cool when we arrived but now it was filling up with giggling schoolgirls and chattering women, swarms of flies and sunshine.
Brian took over bag watch while I wandered around the back of the bus station to see if I could find somewhere to wee. Indian men just pee where and when the fancy takes them. Nobody seems to care at all.
Finally and with no alternative, I thought, bugger it, and hitched up my skirt and squatted behind a concrete pillar on a bit of wasteland. The fact that there was a school and a shop within sight was unfortunate. At least I went back to the bus stop smiling.

The bus station was now heaving with people, and it did seem that there must be some difficulty with scheduling as all the women and schoolgirls were becoming agitated and noisy.
We decided on some alternative action. We had to trust someone. Our cunning plan was based on the theory that, if we asked at least four bus drivers how to get to Gokarna, we could formulate a route by cross-referencing the information they gave. Based on the information we gathered in this way, we opted to fight our way on to a bus to Karwar. From there we would take a bus to Ancola and from there another bus to Gokarna.

I shall spend a moment on the topic of Indian buses. They are similar to the American school bus, but longer, and the windows are set quite high up. They look like military vehicles. Most of them appear to have been driven over a few land mines as they are pitted and dented and tend not to have doors. Or the doors they have are hanging off.
Bars at the windows are the norm and very occasionally there may be a shutter, which must be to keep out the rain.
They sound as if they are powered by a tractor engine and have gearboxes with no syncromesh. As an added touch, the suspension is removed.
Seats are wooden slats, dirty plastic, or just boards. And there is generally plenty of rubbish pushed into any available cracks or openings.
Drivers' seats do not come as standard fittings. In most of the examples we saw, the driver had supplied his own. One of the best was an old wicker chair lashed to the floor with string.
All drivers are supplied with an ear-splitting air horn which they used constantly or for at least 90% of the journey.

Later on we did travel in the deluxe version of the State bus. The only difference was that the driver had a tape cassette deck duck-taped to the dash. We were then able to enjoy his one and only scratched and worn tape of very bad Indian music played at full blast for the entirety of our trip.

Within an hour we understood why the long back seat had been free when we boarded. With no suspension and the wheels directly underneath us, every pothole launched us into the air and then deposited us back on to the wooden seat with a thump. Did I mention how bad the roads were?
For two hours we were banged up and down and crushed farther and farther into the corner of the seat as more and more people boarded the bus.

Karwar is a much bigger town than Canacona but we did not explore farther than the bus station. We learned on our subsequent travels that all bus stations look pretty much the same: large dusty squares with a big concrete building facing a main road. Karwar's building housed a ticket booth and the rest of the area was given over to beggars, people lying asleep, or sitting in groups talking.
Invariably we would find a door in one of the walls that was the office of the chappie in charge of the bus drivers. Most of these men had apparently been trained at the All India Charm School and Training Establishment for Compulsive Liars. It was a wonder that we ever found our way anywhere.
The only differentiating factor between bus stations, which concerned me, was whether or not they had toilets.

Without a doubt my most vile experiences were in bus stations. They even out-did the Airport Toilet Adventure. When we were about to embark on a bus journey of unknown length [two hours could turn out to be five] I needed to ``go'' beforehand. I had to go where and when I could, just like the Queen does, I've heard.
I have seen things in lavatories and next to lavatories that I did not know a human being could produce. And in quantities that would humble an elephant.
I have smelt smells that make drains, babies' nappies and sun-baked urinals whiff like a mountain of rose petals. I have held my breath, balanced in strange positions, and been able to enter and exit without touching a single thing in ways that would impress a contortionist and Houdini himself.
And the best thing? There was a man outside charging you to go in.
After a month or so of experience I would walk straight in and depending on what I was faced with would either tell the attendant to
`` piss off '' or pay him.

As we stood in bewilderment outside the Karwar terminal a filthy old man approached to give us assistance. He said the bus we needed would arrive shortly and until it did he told us tales of his being a graduate in English Literature from Bombay University. His English was very good and in ten minutes he wove a tale of a failed writer finding hard times.
Dressed in rags and haunting the bus station, he was just waiting for westerners upon whom he could practice his English and, of course, help in any way. Because, as he kept repeating, ''Great Britain is such a wonderful country.''
We had decided after two sentences that it was all complete rubbish, and this was proved when he asked us to pay him for pointing out the bus when it arrived. He wanted English money, so I found him a ten pence piece and that was nine pence more than he deserved.

Being now two hours of bus travel wiser, we fought our way towards the front of the bus taking us to Ancola.
The move forward made negligible difference to our backsides but now we could stare death in the face. Even Brian looked alarmed. The bus was travelling, it seemed to me, at 100mph and it accelerated to 150mph when approaching the rear of another vehicle or when overtaking. Overtaking only occurred if there was something coming in the other direction, and the bigger the better. It was utterly and completely hair raising.
The bus swerved and lurched, gears crunching, horn blaring, towards our next destination. When I looked around at our fellow passengers no one seemed concerned. Some were asleep. How?

In Ancola we were able to board the bus to Gokarna immediately and I didn't really care where we sat any more. The only way I was able to survive bus travel from this point onwards was by looking out of the window next to me and never ahead. The disadvantage was, that depending on the speed of the bus, the scenery was a blur, and I always had a crick in my neck. Brian, on the other hand, would stare straight ahead, riveted by the skill of the bus driver at avoiding collisions. It seemed to give him the same type of adrenalin rush you would have from a death defying roller coaster or white-knuckle ride.

On the approach road to Gokarna we kept our eyes peeled for accommodation. I had already marked a couple of possible options in our guidebook. We had decided at Palolem that I should be Chief Room-Finding Wallah.' It wasn't fair to send Brian off scrutinising sleeping arrangements as I was going to be the finicky one. It is always easy to criticize someone else's endeavours.
Gokarna bus station had the regulation square building in the middle of a large compound of dust, potholes and rocks. Brian sat in the shade of the terminus while I took a deep breath and stepped out into the baking hot sun. I negotiated the holes and rubble and made my way towards the road.

I must share the description of Gokarna as written in the guidebook:
The unspoilt town of Gokarna attracts an unlikely mixture of Hindu pilgrims, Sanskrit scholars, beach loving travellers and a hardcore of hippies who shifted here when things got way uncool in Goa.
It's sleepy, charming…………..STOP!!! We were quite clearly in the wrong place.
What I could see was a narrow squalid street reminiscent of 16th Century England. Everywhere was filthy, the buildings looked derelict with wooden balconies and shutters hanging from the walls
Everywhere seemed to have been sprinkled with grey dust and an open sewer filled with dead animals and litter ran alongside the narrow road.
There were cattle roaming about covered in faeces, and a few westerners whose clothes were hanging in tatters and whose hair looked louse ridden and who all made Kate Moss look grossly overweight. Add to the scene a temperature of about 40 degrees, and charming was not the adjective that sprang to my mind. This wasn't charming. This was hell.

I was approached by a tramp who turned out to be the proprietor of the hotel I was looking for. This did not bode well.
I followed him up an alleyway and reached a tenement building with big brown stains running down the walls. A small courtyard housed a few plastic tables and chairs. I was shown to the Master Suite which contained two stained sagging mattresses, a sink, and dirt-smeared walls.
This must be the time that most people turn to drugs. I politely told the owner, to his amazement, that I did not want the room and I walked back through the courtyard. Judging by the glazed expressions on the faces of the people sitting there, drugs were precisely what they had turned to.

I made my way back to the road and followed a stinking open trench away from the town. I headed for Om Lodge. The manager was lying on a single bed in the hallway. As I approached he got up, spat, and motioned me towards the stairs. I followed him up to the Penthouse Suite. It made the last place look better.
I was hot, and pissed off, and there was nothing I could do about it except keep walking and looking.

On the way into town we had seen a modern looking building that had a sign on the front saying: Gokarna International.
The name conjured up a vision of style and opulence, and that, it was not. Inside the decor was an Indian interpretation of western style that failed miserably. The floor was made of black marble tiles but the grouting was missing. The walls had been painted in places, but unpleasant red stains streaked down the plasterwork. There was a reception desk staffed by a man in a dirty vest, and two other men in dirty vests were lying on the two red plastic couches in the lobby. Just like Claridges, really.
[There were red stains on most walls in India and on pathways, this was caused by chewing the Betel nut which sends teeth brown and the tongue and saliva reddy brown. It is used like chewing tobacco and when the Indians spit it out, which they do frequently, and without consideration for where or at what, it leaves disgusting trails everywhere.]

I followed one of these men up to the third floor to look at a room, and was pleasantly surprised to find it was spotlessly clean. I pulled off the bed sheets and the mattresses were brand new. I checked out the en suite bathroom, which was a squat-down toilet.
This was something I would have to master. It was clean but a little smelly. There was also a small balcony with two chairs.
It was ridiculously cheap, cheaper than the other two places, about £2.10p per night, for two. I said I would be back.

I stomped back to the bus station and collected Brian and the luggage and we made a hot sweaty walk back to the Gokarna International.
We were both tired, hot, bad-tempered and hungry. It was mid afternoon and baking outside, but if we fell asleep it would be dark when we awoke, and we wanted to witness the glory of Gokarna in daylight.
We wanted to see if it was as grotty as we first thought and if it was, we wanted out as soon as possible.

After a wash we made our way back outside and into the oppressive heat of the day, we walked into the centre of town. The shops we passed were ramshackle and everything they contained looked old and dusty. As we turned into the road that led to the beach, the narrow street opened out and there were shops selling plastic figures of Shiva, Hanuman and Ganesha. They were also stocked with a profusion of plastic beads and really bad plastic toys.

We had read that in Gokarna we would find the sacred Mahabaleshwara Temple and next to it an enormous chariot which was pulled through the town on Shiva's birthday in February.
We found the chariot, which would indeed have been hard to miss; it was stored in a big lean-to shed. Locating the temple was something else. We couldn't find any temple, and definitely not an enormous one. Continuing onward through the herds of cattle and litter we came to a row of stalls which formed a passageway down to the beach.
The sand was so grey it could have been volcanic. Between this and a murky ocean was a barrier reef of litter.

We walked back to town, tired and despondent. Perhaps if we ate something we would feel better and then we could also take stock of the situation. We headed for the only eating establishment we had seen.
I quickly lost my appetite just by looking at our fellow diners. Two very scruffy hippies were attempting to eat ice cream through a drug-induced haze, and a very dirty Indian was eating rice and runny gravy with his filthy hand. The technique was interesting. He pinched some rice between his fingers and chased it around the plate in an attempt to soak up the gravy. He then clasped the gravy-soaked lump tighter, threw it towards his mouth and past his black stumpy teeth, and then licked all the gravy off his hands and around his mouth with big slurps and grunts. It didn't matter about the gravy on his vest as it blended in with the stains already there.
There was also the dirty waiter with the even dirtier cloth which he used to smear debris from the table on to the floor.
We ordered tea. Safest bet really. It arrived in stainless steel beakers about 2ins high and tasted like tar. I am not sure if it was the taste of the tea or the waiter having a good spit in the sink at the front of the restaurant, that caused me to lean my head on the wall, close my eyes, and pray we would live to see the week out.

We left the 'restaurant' and walked up to a shed which had a sign outside announcing money changing and travel. There were two white men already crammed inside and we struck up a conversation with one of them as we waited our turn. He was completely off his trolley and as high as a kite. He was German and probably mid thirties, but by his accent we could have been excused for thinking he was a native of Los Angeles. It was all ' Yeah, man' and 'Like cool man'. He told us:
``It's really cool over at Om beach, man. No one bothers you so it's cool to do your own thing and there's plenty of good gear, man. There may not be any huts available, man, cos it was the full moon two days ago, man, and the place was full with everyone partying.''

How could we live with that sort of disappointment? No room left in the huts on Drug Addict Beach overlooking Shit Hole Bay.
We asked the Indian in charge of the travel hut how to get out of Gokarna. He explained that there was a railway line about three miles out of town but we would have to walk there as there were no taxis or rickshaws in Gokarna. We would have to wait at the rail crossing and some trains would stop and some wouldn't. Sometimes the trains were late and as there was no shelter it would be very hot.
We asked if there was a bus. Yes, there was a bus at 5.30 a.m. to Mangalore. I asked: ``How long is the journey?''
``Six hours ma'm.''
Hell!

We bought a bottle of water, some bananas, a coconut and a packet of biscuits but the biscuits were inedible, even by Brian's standards, and they went in the bin. We sat on our balcony with a brew, eating banana and coconut and watching an army of ants surround us and the cows below trying to eat plastic bottles.
We decided it was to be the bus at 5.30am and if no further liquid passed my lips during the next twelve hours there was just a chance I would not wet myself on the journey.

By 8pm we were starving and we ventured down stairs to check out the restaurant attached to the hotel. Brian went in and looked it over and said it was clean. I am not sure how he reached that conclusion as it was so dark inside we could not read the menu. I had rice but Brian was more adventurous.
This was the first experience we were to have of clientele going to the washbasins at the back of the room, washing their hands and hawking and spitting into the sink. With all the Indians doing this before and after eating, and given that they eat food at the speed of a starving man, the frequency and noise of this particular brand of etiquette was a vomit inducing symphony. God I was fed up.

We had very little sleep that night as we were both convinced we were being eaten alive either by fleas, mozzies or bed bugs. I couldn't stop peeing as my paranoia grew about needing to use the toilet on this mammoth bouncy bus ride. I was also frightened that the alarm clock would not work.
At 4.30a.m.Brain thought that maybe we should stay another day and check out the beaches. I felt it my duty to point out that if Paradise was indeed an hour's walk away we would still have to return to the charming old town of Gokarna at night. No amount of golden sand was going to induce me to do that.
By 5.00a.m we were sitting in the dark at the bus station. The air was cool; the moon was full and peeping between the branches of the palm trees. It was the best Gokarna had looked.

(Printable version here)

'The Lion, The Witch & The Rucksack'
Chapter 1	Chapter 2
Chapter 3	Chapter 4
Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8
Chapter 9	Chapter 10
Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14
Chapter 15	Chapter 16
Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20
Chapter 21	Epilogue