Go, Going, Going Back to Goa

I caught the 6:55 am train to Goa.  The most exciting part about this whole trip is my bag!  I don't have it!  I left it in Mumbai at the guest house and am traveling with my day pack! It is wonderful and it makes me want to send my big bag home!

The train ride was exciting in two ways.  First I read a lot of Biology, and second I blew my nose more than I ever have in any other 10 hour period!  I am most definitely allergic to either Indian cities or their musty hotel rooms... After wheezing asthmatically through the night (same as in Ooty) my nose didn't stop running....it was trying to keep up with the train and it did... 

The Snot Rocket

One of my favourite things about India is the acceptance of the snot rocket as a means of nasal clearing.  Pinch your nostril and blow!  This wonderful means of cleansing the sinuses is not looked down on here by the enlightened folk as it is at home....  And lucky for me.... My nose would have been redder than a rabbi caught in a bakery on passover....  The doors of all the train cars are always open,  and this along with a sink was to be my relief.

There is an art not only to the snot rocket, which for your sake I will not go into, but also to sticking your head out of the door of a moving train...  Apparently there is some large number of people who annually fall out of trains, but the enjoyment of having the open door is too much to keep them closed!  Can you imagine via rail allowing you to hang outside the train....
Thinking about it the art might just be common sense....hold on very tight to the handles, and then slowly stick out your head...be prepared for a passing train to scare you half to death and then open your eyes!  If you are successful, and you will know this as you are still alive, then you can slowly remove one hand from the handle and place it on your nose... the rest you can guess....
So the people near me must have thought i was the owner of the worlds smallest bladder, I got up and went for a walk every 10 minutes for the whole ride... I felt like an old man who just seems to always have water dripping out of his nose and I am not looking forward to returning to any city soon!   I hope to ask an Ayurvedic doctor about these allergies....  The only thing my western doctor ever did was tell me I had asthma and give me a puffer... (long story short, as soon as I moved out of my parents' shag carpeted home my 'asthma' was gone)  So we will see if eastern ideas can help.

I arrived in Goa, cabbed with some Italians to the beach and went to find the Seaview guesthouse and Babu....