Welcome Lady!

Phoofff!  

HI!!

Mumbai airport .. what a treat.

Such a friendly place … especially the female security guards, they really are delightful.  

Makes Bangkok airport like a long lost home.

'ONE' would have to be really desperate to sleep on a bench in Mumbai airport for the night.  

I am relieved I have been in India before and know what to expect.  I suppose for some bizarre reason thats why I came here for the last leg of my trip.  To push my own boundaries and suck in the madness of this big, bad and beautiful country.  Its a hard kick up the ass kinda place and you gotta keep your whits about you in a relaxed a way as possible.  

Had a four hour wait to look forward to in-between flights but I am really glad as it was quite a trek from the international to the domestic on  a clapped out old bus.  

Straight smack into the heart of India with slums all around spilling over into the airport grounds.  Crazy crazy.  Advertising posters for useless meaningless products giving people shelter. The irony.  Whole communities scraped and squashed together with corrugated sheeting, plastic, ripped black bin liners anything to hand.  The occasional oddly placed billboard for some ridiculous huge shopping centre advertising commercial shopping happiness smack bang in the middle.    

Crazy textured patterned slums - the basest you can get, all around the rusty barbed wire slum of an airport … and there flying up from the middle a small pink kite with ribbons fluttering around.  

Aghhhhhh India.

Indiaaaaaaaahhh.

I love Indiaaaaaahhhhhh.

I am now sitting in a hammock for the first time at Agonda beach where I have a few days to do some drawing, watch the large red glowing sun float into the sea and chat to my Indian possie.  And whoever else potters around.  Goa attracts allsorts.

I was last here three years ago staying in exactly the same place with Sandip the beautiful Beach Maharaja.  

Well … obviously he's not a maharaja but he has the face of one except when he is sucking chicken bones for lunch or smoking a fag.

He has run this place for 5 years lying down.  Quite literally.  He is the most relaxed and honest man you have ever met in your life.  He has a staff of 6 lovely young and gorgeous Nepalese men.  Ramu, Rabbi, Krishna, Gavinda, Senu, Kamal and now me.  Ha Ha.  

I am there very first guest this season, NUMERO UNO. 

I think it wasn't for me they would have taken a couple more weeks to get get the place together but my arrival kicked them up the bum, it meant business had started and the slow relaxed preparations have begun.  

Putting table cloths on the tables, combing the beach,, a very indian thing, putting new light bulbs in, preparing the base curry paste of cashews, ginger, garlic, sesame, star anise, cloves and cinnamon, bringing in the Honey Bee rum, the onions, the eggs, the water, the Kingfisher, the equipment, painting the huts and thats about where we are up to at the mo.  When I arrived, I had already contacted Sandip about a room and I expected the place to be pretty much as I left it.  I walked through and found darkness and a group of Nepalese men having torch lit meeting.  I think I had some of the best nights of my travels the past two nights.  Arriving after roughly 20 hours travelling from Bangkok …   Arriving at Goa airport and finally, after a long bumpy taxi drive in a clapped out old Peugot in the GOA rush hour (which involves a lot of random cows standing in the road and a multitude of motorbikes and bicycles piled high with god knows what.

The sweet smells of spice, sweat, dung, dirt, vegetables, the sea….  a cocktail of the unexpected, the emotional and the shocking.  India gets under your skin… whether you like it or not.  It demands your attention.  It subtly takes a hold of your heart and your mind and shakes them around and you just 'FEEL' differently. Everything, who you are and how you feel seems very real, raw.  People might not know it but they come to India for a reason… I have but already the reason I came has changed and I have to just let things happen.  Its the only way.

You just cant plan India.

  

This is going to be fun.

Last Leg Lou.