Tbilisi to Goa

 So, I think my last post was from the airport in Tbilisi. I flew through the night to New Delhi. I paid for the exit row, only to get on the plane and realise many, many other rows only had 1 or no people, except the exit row. I was sat next to a 7 year old child in the body of a 60 year old Indian man. He was actually probably more like 50 years old, but as I'm 42 now that seems too close to my age, so he was 60. He would constantly shake his legs back and forth, which would in turn shake the seats. That's why I referred to him as a 7 year old. When he was in rest mode his natural leg position was a definitive man spread. I always thought the "man spreading" thing was a bit unfair as it is a bit more challenging for blokes to sit with their legs closed, but unless this bloke was rocking a pair of bowling balls, he was flat out selfish. His wife was sat on the other side of him and I tried to make eye contact with her to embarrass her for marrying a giant child, but I failed. Thankfully the fat adhd bastard slept and only did his chooky dance a few times after take off.

I tried to sleep but basically didn't. I gave up towards the end of the flight and instead looked out the window, which was amazing. I've not had a flight with such a good view. All the lights on the ground seemed unusual. I've never seen so many towns, and it just kept going for 100s of kilometres. They are towns probably the size of Kempsey, physically, but I'd say with more people, and they are located only a few km apart. Right across the landscape. There was one point where a line of brighter lights went right across the landscape, with a little section of darkness on the north side as a buffer. I'm not sure but think it may have been the border with Pakistan. There was also a weird, large square of lights, with a smaller square inside and another smaller square. I puzzled over that for a while and think it may have been a mine. 

We we arrived in Dehli, I was full of beans. The India part of my trip has been hanging over my head the entire time. It felt certain that something would go wrong. Strangely, getting off the plane was smooth. People don't jump up like morons when the plane lands in India. That really surprised me. I got off the plane and made it to passport control quite quickly. When I got there I was told I needed an arrival card. I knew I needed one, but as there wasn't any, I figured maybe she fills it our. She sent me to get one from a table. There were no arrival cards on the table. I asked her what table and she pointed out the same table. We were both standing there looking at the table, both seeing that there were no arrival cards at the table, yet she tomd me to get an arrival card from the table. I had to walk way way back in the terminal to another table, where a lady had just started putting out arrival cards. I filled it out with the most basic information possible and went back to line up in a line that was now 3 times longer. In the line I noticed everyone had these printed out visas. My visa was an evisa, and when they sent me the email confirming I had it, it had a section that said "this visa is not a paper visa", yet all these peoe had paper visas. I asked a fellow traveller and she jumped on my phone and found the website where the visas are kept, I entered my application number and passport and sure enough there was a visa there waiting for me. I showed the useless idiot at passport control the visa on my phone and it turned out I didn't need it printed. But I did need it.

I went through and found my bag. One good thing is I didn't have to wait, the carousel had stopped by that point. A helpful taxi driver pointed me in the direction of terminal 2 and I headed off in that direction. I was told the walk was 20 minutes, but it was more like 5. I had to scan my boarding pass to enter the terminal. I have no idea what I would've done if I didn't have a boarding pass, but they seem so inefficient that I imagine they would've let me in anyway. The bag drop was packed, but I managed to drop it off with no problems then headed through security. At security, they had to go through my bags. It turns out vapes are illegal in India, and I had 6 of them. 2 were working vapes that were in my pockets and I threw out before I went through. The other 4 were old ones that were finished that I'd left in my bag. I had to pull everything out to find them. They were also concerned that I had a torch, for some reason. I found the vapes, had my stuff scanned again and was allowed to leave. My boarding pass said gate 23,so I started heading there, but then the screen said 30,so I headed there. Each section of gates had their own little screening section, so changing gates wasn't easy. I got to gate 30 and it said my flight had had a gate change. I didn't know if that meant it was changed to 30,or from 30,so I asked the guy working there. He scribbled out 23 on my boarding pass and write 20,so I went there. When they screen you to go to a gate, there is a little side lane. As I hadn't yet successfully got through their automated scanning machine, I decided to not even try and just walked through the side lane. Nobody cared. Gate 20 was obviously not the right gate, so I went back to 30. When I was in my way back, I tried to get money out at the atm, but it didn't have any. A security man found me and asked if I was Mr David. I felt like Larry David so I said yes. I had left half of my stuff at security. When I had emptied my bag, they had split it into 2 seperate tubs to go through the scanner again. When it came through I put the first tub worth of stuff in, but not the second as I didn't know there was a second, so I'd left it. They realised I'd left it straight away, but had been searching for me at gate 30.

So I collected my stuff and headed down the side lane to gate 30. The little bastard that sent me to gate 20 was long gone. I had booked the emergency row in this flight too, and it was actually a spot with an entire row free in front of me. I could stretch my legs as far as they could go. Unfortunately there was a little Indian bastard behind me banging on the seat. He actually pulled my hair once and I gave him a death stare so it didn't happen again. I thought about threatening his dad, who sat there like a dumb idiot. Another little arsehole had a complete meltdown I the aisle while his moronic mother and father did moronic mother and father things. The a third one repeatedly jumped up in his seat down the front to press the call button, giving everyone on the plane a good view of what a shit haircut looks like. A few times this trip, when people have annoyed me, I have had the bizarre wish that JR from work was with me. JR is a little girl with absolutely no inhibitions, manners or fear. To be able to unleash her upon these Clayton's naughty boys would've been amazing. I mean, she is worse than them by orders of magnitude, but I feel like she would be my superpower. She quite possibly would be too outrageous to unleash on these poor people. Without JR there, I decided that Indian kids are awful. I fantasised about dropping them from the emergency exit, which remember, I was in charge of. I thought about how there are so many street kids, maybe they could drop these shit ones off and pick up a good kid instead. Just do a straight swap. I eventually decided that if I see a street kid begging for money off me, I'd spit in their face and laugh at them. 

Anyway, I got off the flight, got my bag, got the hell out of there. The taxi driver was a nice guy. The drive here took an hour and a half. Cost $40, which is far better than the alternative. They drive like lunatics but somehow don't crash. We stopped at some lights and a beautiful little girl came down from the bushes and up to the window, motioning that she needed food. I remembered the kids on the flight, but couldn't bring myself to spit in her face. Instead I left her to starve. 

I slept when I got here, then slept a good part of the following day, and have slept a fair bit of today. Breakfast here is pretty good, the bed is comfortable and the beer is very, very cheap. The beach is actually pretty nice although they have filled it with the usual crap. Stand up paddle board hire, boat hire, kayak hire, restaurants, massages, yoga etc etc.

I've been swimming, eating, reading on the hammock and sleeping. I went down for the sunset yesterday and it was spectacular. Will definitely try to get some photos of it. I actually took my camera out this afternoon, but didn't get down to the beach. I was talking to a lady from Yorkshire at the restaurant. The restaurant was recommended by the lady selling crap in the beach. I happened to be in the market for some crap, and she was showing it to me. She actually said I could take it then and there without paying, just drop the payment in to her shop later. Strangely trusting. I think it was a calculated risk, as she later told me she had seen me buying stuff from the store next to hers. I think she knew I don't know how to haggle and thought she'd take me to the cleaners. I didn't take the stuff on the beach, but promised to come by her shop. I did, and I bought the required crap, but figured I'd use her as a bit of an advisor seeing as she definitely ripped me off. Her husband took me to a money place as there are no ATM's here, showed me where to buy beer and which are the good restaurants. I pretended to know things about cricket. They seem to be largely nice people here and not as hell bent on ripping people off as other touristy places. They are really casual about ripping people off.

 I should point out, yesterday I was at a restaurant and the bill came and it was for someone else and was cheaper than mine, so I paid it and left. I'm not adverse to ripping people off either. Also this lady said "how much did I say on the beach" and I told her 650 rupees (she'd said 850)and she said "hahaha no I didn't, I said 750! Nice try (head wobble)", so that is sort of me haggling for something that was probably worth 200 rupees.

Alright I've been writing this for a bit. I can't be bothered with photos so I'll just put them at the end.