Cleo Odzer - Goa Freaks - My Hippie Years in India

The next afternoon we were to leave for Goa. I spent the morning looking for a place to leave my enormous suitcase, so full of clothes they'd called me Hippie Deluxe in Europe. I wanted to bring only the minimum with me—a few outfits packed in a sleeping bag. I also needed a safe place to leave my portfolio of modelling pictures. If I lost that, I wouldn't be able to work.

By ten in the morning, Bombay's heat had baked my bones. Though it didn't take long to find a hotel storage facility for my luggage, I was at a loss over what to do with my pictures. After hours of unsuccessful inquiry. I parked myself in six square inches of shade under a traffic signal. Sweaty and exasperated, I was sure I'd scream if one more beggar touched me.

"You are lost?" an Indian man asked when I remained under the traffic signal after everyone else had crossed the street.

I moaned and stamped my foot. "UH! I don't know where to leave my portfolio; my feet are killing me; it's too hot here; it's too crowded; my bus is going to leave any minute; and these beggars are driving me CRAZY!"

The man smiled tolerantly and gave me his card. "I work for Indian Airlines. You see there—it is just down the roadway. Would you like for me to show you around the city?"

"I'm heading for Goa soon," I told him. "Do you know where I could leave my portfolio? It's my most valuable possession and I don't want to take it with me."

"Why, I will hold it for you if you wish. You can find me in the office every work day. Perhaps on your return to Bombay you will let inc escort you to dinner."

I looked him over—gray tie; pointy, polished shoes. Perfect! Where could I find a safer place than with this nice business man in his nice suit? "Great!"

I handed over the portfolio. He looked so reliable, I didn't bother to ask where he'd put it. Hidden behind a picture were two hundred dollars in traveller’s checks, half the money I had left in the world. I wanted to set that aside for an emergency.

That afternoon our bus began the final lap of the journey. It took fifteen hours from Bombay to the border of Goa and would take another ten to Calangute, our destination. A colony of Portugal until 1961, Goa revealed itself to be different from the India we'd seen so far. No desperate poverty, for one thing. And the countryside—wow! All we'd seen previously had been dry desert land; Goa was green and lush with vegetation. Giant leaves hung over the road, periodically skimming the roof of the bus.

"YEOW!" yelled a surprised passenger as a super-leaf slid in the window and poked her in the cheek. We drove through the oversized greenery in awed silence. Having travelled, cramped and hurled about, for six weeks, we'd finally arrived in Goa.

The road lay bare except for the occasional ox cart, a few bicycles, some cows, and chickens—lots of chickens. At a ferry crossing, we had to get off the bus. From a mound of dirt on the side, we watched the old-timers Paul and Pam direct the big vehicle onto the small boat.

Apparently the government was in the process of building a bridge across the river. Steel structures strode a hundred yards into the water and ended abruptly, looking as if their construction workers head just then for lunch.

"It's been like that for years," said Pam, "and I've never seen anyone working on it." Nothing happened fast in India.

Half an hour after reaching the other side, we arrived at the ocean.

Tall palms leaned over the calm water, and pastel Portuguese-style houses could be seen through bushes. Occasionally, a dog would run out and bark at us for disturbing the quiet.

In late afternoon we pulled into Calangute. My fellow travellers collected their gear and dispersed in twos and threes. I'd never noticed before—was I the only one travelling alone?

"Bye," I said, waving to the German women as they dragged away a duffel bag. "Ciao," I said to an Italian couple after lifting a backpack onto a back.

Now what do I do?

The blue Mercedes bus seemed friendly and familiar. I hesitated to leave it. I looked around. It was parked in a paved square near the sea. The sun was almost down. Soon the drivers, Tom and Julian, with whom I'd barely spoken during the voyage, were the only ones left by the bus. Tom, an American, with red hair and pale skin, leaned against the rear of the vehicle. Julian, an Englishman with shoulder-length brown curls, stood next to him. I knew they'd been driving Freak buses back and forth from Athens to Amsterdam, but this was their first trip to India. Suddenly alone after weeks with fellow trail mates, I began to find Tom appealing. I looked once more around the empty square and back stepped to where he stooped over a rear wheel.

"Is it okay?" I asked.

He knocked the tire with his sandaled foot and looked up. "Sure. We're just, you know, checking that everything's tiptop for the trip to Delhi."

"When are you going?"

"Tomorrow."

"So soon?"

"We'll be back in ten days. We plan to, you know, return here for a vacation after making a bit more money driving."

I hung around until they locked the bus, and then the three of us went to an outdoor restaurant. We watched the sky darken pinkish over the beach. I leaned toward Tom and asked, "Where are you staying tonight?"

"I guess you know, find a room somewhere."

"Can I stay with you?"

The freckles on his cheeks shifted as his face crinkled in delight. "Sure."

After dinner the three of us took a walk to the beach and then back around the square. Palm leaf shacks, called chai shops, edged the asphalted area. Chai means "tea" in Hindi, and though they probably did have tea, from their many misspelled signs I gathered that they specialized in milkshakes flavoured with the fruit of the season, the current one being mango. The chai shops were full of travellers, barefoot, tanned, with hair that had that bristly, salt-water look. As we strolled, Julian kicked along a coconut shell. A curl fell in front of his eyes when he looked down. Cute. Meanwhile, Tom's arm leaned heavily across my shoulders. Annoyingly, he kept trapping my hair under his arm.

When Julian left us, Tom beamed at me. "I've been, you know, waiting to sleep in a real bed for six weeks now."

"Me too," I answered, as much aroused at the thought of stretching out as by Tom's body.

We found a guest house on the sand behind a chai shop. After weeks bent into a seat, I lolled luxuriously on the narrow bed. Red designs on the bedspread matched the red freckles on Tom. India—I'd made it to India, to Goa. Wow. Even the ocean air smelled of impending adventure. I couldn't wait to wake up in this new place. But, disturbingly, as I lay anticipating morning, I couldn't stop thinking of Julian.

The next day, after breakfast and a quick look at the wide, empty beach extending in both directions, Tom and Julian boarded their bus for the trip to Delhi. Time for me to find my own place to stay. Paul had told us a house in Goa could be rented for as little as seven dollars a month.

"Hey," I shouted to the bus window, "I'm going to find myself a house. You guys can stay with me when you get back." They smiled and waved and drove away, leaving a trail of red dost.

Now what?

I made a tour of the chai shops. Actually, the people there seemed touristy. They reminded me of the backpackers in Europe, vacationers who'd soon return home with a couple of stories and crates of photographs. Tourists! Where were the Freaks I'd heard about? This was not what I'd expected. Was this it? Was this Goa? Where had Pam and Paul gone?

"Try Anjuna Beach," suggested a man with a camera around his neck and white cream on his nose. "That's where the parties are."