ITALY VOTES AND BANS NUCLEAR POWER ONCE AGAIN

THE ITALIAN PEOPLE VOTED IN A REFERENDUM TO BAN NUCLEAR POWER AND LEAD THE WORLD TOWARDS A NEW FUTURE OF HOPE.

"CHERNOBYL AND FUKUSHIMA WILL NOT HAPPEN HERE, AND WE WILL WORK WITH EVERYONE IN THE WORLD TO STOP THE MONSTER WHEREVER IT LAYS IT'S UGLY HEAD."

VIVA L'ITALIA

Old Goa

I was seriously squashed on the bus from Madgao to Panjim, by a big, fat man whose shoulders pinned half of me to the back of the seat. I was amazed to find that I had not changed shape when we arrived, or indeed suffered any lasting damage.

Augustinian friars arrived in Goa in 1572 and built a small monastery on the Holy Hill, at present day Old Goa. From this small beginning grew an enormous monastery, three stories high, with a tower, two large stone staircases, cloisters, corridors, pillars, galleries, halls with numerous rooms, a refectory, a guest house, an infirmary; vast dormitories and numerous cells. The monastery was built out of the same black larval stone that was used to build the cathedrals. This was then covered with plaster, inside and outside. Vestiges of blue, white and yellow Portuguese tiles remain in places, as do occasional traces of carved stucco floral designs.  This and several large cathedrals marked the centre of the Portuguese capital of Goa, a large, thriving commercial city that rivaled Paris and Rome at the time.

Eventually the Portuguese were forced to move their capital to present day Panaji (Panjim), abandoning the old city, which disintegrated completely, leaving only the ruins of the massive monastery and the old cathedrals. The rest was reclaimed by the jungle, which grew up quickly in the tropical heat.

I had read about the cathedrals in the jungle and was curious to see them. Imagine my surprise (even disappointment) when I got out of the bus to see a big white cathedral on one side of the road, surrounded by a vast expanse of rather dessicated lawns with a fancy white stone perimeter wall. On the other side of the road was a black cathedral - black because it had not yet been plastered and painted white, like its sister opposite. It was similarly surrounded by lawns, trees and pathways lined with neatly clipped box hedges. To add to the well maintained effect, between the white walls and the road there were pavements with neat edges - something you never see in India, not even in Goa - and an avenue of palm trees along the stretch of road between the two cathedrals. There was even a row of neatly parked cars.

I went in search of the ruins of the Augustinian monastery. The Archaeological Survey of India had been at work here, carrying out "scientific clearance' of the ruins since 1998. They had removed all the invading jungle and taken out pieces of carved stone, which lay neatly arranged in rows in a field outside the ruins.

A lot of money has been spent on the cathedrals, which are now a major pilgrimage site. They are large, imposing and to my mind, ugly, built to impress.

I caught a bus back to Panaji (Panjim) and went to eat fish in a riverside restaurant. I walked about a bit in old Panjim, whose small, one story houses are as delightful and the cathedrals are not. Much of Panjim has succumbed to the great God concrete, but there are still little streets with old houses with their ornate balconies and curved windows and doors and tiled roofs. The bus back to Benaulim was more crowded than any I have ever been in. It was a struggle to get through the crowd thonging the corridor of the bus to get to the entrance and I was not sure that I would get there in time to get off. But the bus waited. I arrived, sweat pouring down my face in rivulets.

carnival in Goa

Madgao
I missed the carnival in Panjim,  so I went to the one in Madgao. It was a very tame affair, for although many of the floats pumped out old recorded calypso numbers, there  was no hip movement during the dancing - no unseemly showing of cleavage or thigh. Instead the dancers hopped from side to side, waving  large handkerchiefs in the air, or stepped demurely sideways, one way, then the other.

One in every five floats was advertising something. There was however, a float with a rice plantation being planted, complete with papier mache' buffaloes, a float with a fish market with real fish, a giant swan and a giant preying mantis; wealth out of garbage, producing petrol from garbage and a giant bee made out of coloured rope. Several giant puppets ambled along the road, together with men in drag, and  a lot of people in fluorescent wigs and plastic masks. A large police presence did not, however, prevent the public from invading the road that the floats were travelling down, thus impeding progress.

When people started throwing coloured water about the place I decided it was time to leave, but leaving was not as easy as that, for all the streets where the bus passed through had been blocked off. In the end I shared a taxi with a German couple.

Today the carneval is coming to Benaulim, but I haven't seen any sign of it yet.

Panolem

Yesterday I took a couple of buses from Benaulim, where I am staying, to Panolem, where Selvaggia is staying. The buses drove through steep, hilly, thickly forested countryside. Selvaggia is the director of the Florence River to River film festival - an annual Indian film festival, held in Florence. She was having a break from her busy schedule in Mumbai.

The up market beach huts in Panolem are built on stilts, each with its own open-to-the-sky bathroom. People step out of their beach huts onto the beach, where there is every sort and kind of cafe - a bit like Gokarna really but much easier to reach from the airport and consequently more expensive.

Goa, as everyone will tell you, is not really India. There is no border between Goa and the rest of India, but you notice the difference immediately. Goan women dress like old fashioned Portuguese women, in just below the knee skirts and blouses; there are bars selling alcohol and catholic churches everywhere. The people even look different, which is hardly surprising, since Goa was a Portuguese colony for over three hundred years, during which time the locals and the Portuguese intermarried. Apparently many of the older Goans still speak Portuguese.

Carneval is celebrated here in every town. Tomorrow there will be a huge procession in Panjim and I'm wondering whether to go. Later in the week there will be processions here and I suspect everyone will get drunk. The bicycle hire man has started already. I hired the oldest, rustiest bike from him a couple of days ago. Unfortunatly it doesn't have lights.

Goa

I caught the train from Jodpur to Mumbai - a nice twenty hour journey, this time in three tier AC because there were no seats left in sleeper class when I booked the ticket (over a week ago). There were 64 middle class Indian teenagers from an international school in Mumbai in the carriage. They had been on a school trip and all chatted excitedly in Indian flavoured English.

I arrived in Bandra station in Mumbai, bought a ticket to Victoria terminus and caught the local train, which had a special compartment for senior citizens (not that anyone took any notice of this). Victoria terminus (or CST) is a glorious relic of the British Raj, with ornate pillars and arches, curlicues and statues. I left my luggage in the left luggage, which involved putting it through a scanner and getting a police stamp and locking it, and headed off into the streets of Bombay. I was surprised to find myself in a street full of people and virtually no traffic. I decided to go to Cafe Universal, an art deco cafe, and ended up spending the rest of the day chatting with a German couple who were the most well-travelled people I have ever met.

The cafe was delightful, the beer flowed, the food was delicious and at ten o'clock in the evening I retrieved my luggage and boarded the train to Madgao, this time sharing a compartment with two French sisters, a Czech man, a Norwegian woman and a woman from Kyrgistan. This was a mere twelve hour journey. There were more food vendors on this train than I have ever come across. They were selling samosas, omlettes, sandwiches, masala dosas, upama, chicci (nuts and sugar made into bars), chocolate, biriani, and of course chai wallas and coffee wallas every two minutes. This went on incessantly until at least midnight, when the bunks went up and everyone who had a booked seat lay down. We ended up with three people sleeping on the narrow floor space between the two tiers of bunks and the people sleeping on the lower bunks had several people sitting on the ends of their bunks. The rest of the people with tickets but no booked seats ended up sleeping in the corridor. In the morning the procession of food and chai wallas stepped carefully over the sleeping bodies as they made their way along the corridors from about eight am, when no one was the slightest bit interested in food or drink.

I'm now in Benelin in south Goa, staying in a little house next to a bar in a palm tree forest. I walked through the forest today and came to a beautiful lush green swamp, surrounded by tall coconut palms. Eventually I came to the beach and a nice beach cafe that was full of huge fat Russians. There are so many Russians here that some of the signs are written in Russian.

Sweepers in Jodpur

Sweepers, blacksmiths and leather workers belong to the untouchable or Dalit caste, which officially does not exist, but in reality is as strong as ever. In India everyone throws everything on the ground, in the street, out of the train windows, bus windows, car windows, wherever they are. It is the job of the sweepers to clear up this rubbish in the city streets, early in the morning.

Old Jodpur has narrow streets with old houses, whose stone balconies, carved like lace, jut out over the floors below, almost obliterating the sky. On either side of the streets run the open sewers. During the day the rubbish accumulates in the streets until some of it falls into the open sewers, blocking them, so that by night time there are floods of foul water in the street. First thing in the morning it is the sweepers' job not only to sweep up the rubbish, but also to unblock the sewers, which they do vigorously with their brushes, heaping the resulting slimy black detritus onto the general pile of rubbish, which they build in the middle of the street for the rubbish cart to come and collect. Cows munch on paper, cardboard, vegetable peelings and the odd bit of plastic as the pile grows before it is taken away. I guess the sweepers in every town with open sewers have the same job. In the big cities the sewers have mostly been covered.

The Jodpur Fort

The Jodpur Fort is quite different from the Jaisalmer fort. The Jaisalmer fort is a fairytale golden sandcastle, perched precariously on a pile of sand, gradually sinking as a tide of sewage seeps down from the hundreds of dwellings and hotels in the fort, eroding the sandy foundations. The Jodpur fort, on the other hand, is a serious affair. Built on top of a steep solid rock, out of dark, forbidding, red sandstone, its walls tower threateningly above the town, tiny slits for windows and rows of cannons on the ramparts. Inside, the Rajputs built themselves a beautiful palace, with ornate, gold encrusted rooms, series of courtyards and a whole area for their women - a Zenanna, where the women could look out through stone screens but no one could look in on them.

I spent a delightful afternoon with my two German friends, then they caught a train to Agra, leaving me to be entertained by the cook in our hotel, who wanted to introduce me to the joys of 'good Indian whisky'.

Yesterday I discovered the Jodpur parcel making mafia. One man who doesn't have a licence to make parcels, nevertheless pays off the police to let him drag unsuspecting tourists off the road to his parcel making shop, where he packs and sews their parcels ready for the post office and overcharges them. He pays the police to harass the real parcel makers, so that they can't set up shop outside the post office, as they should. I only found all this out after I had let this man make my parcel - not very well. I hope it will arrive OK. Yes more saris. There should be a warning in Lonely planet.

Jodpur

I caught the night train from Jaisalmer to Jodpur with the same two German girls who travelled with me from Delhi to Jaisalmer. When we reached Jodpur at 5.15 in the morning (or should I say night) we decided to walk from the station into town. We were followed by a posse of rikshaws, who simply refused to believe that we actually wanted to walk. A hotel owner grabbed the girls and persuaded them to come to his hotel, only to find, when we got there that the room he wanted to let to us was currently occupied, until 10am. So we went up onto the roof to watch the sun rise and admire the fort, a formidable looking structure that dominates the town below.