Goa was our party getaway. We had not partied properly for a few weeks now. We went to Club Cubana ladies night that was happening the day that we arrived. We had no idea what the Indian party scene looked like at all. When we entered the place after having paid our rickshaw driver a few rupees for the lift we looked up the hill and the place resembled that of a massive tree house divided into different levels. A cool place. We started at the pool level and had some drinks in the bar before we headed up the hill past the VIP area and finally reached the top where we hit the dance floor. It was packed with people mainly Russians and a mix of other travellers from various countries. There were very few locals around. We had a hell of a time, dancing, singing, shouting, flirting, sweating, drinking. The night didn’t seem to have an end to it. We had entered the matrix for sure that was the Goa party scene. It was good.
We’d met sugardaddy a guy from Glasgow and his team when we arrived at Asterix hostel. Sugardaddy was booking a table at a Greek restaurant for the following day and he invited us to join them whilst on the phone. I was very pleased with the suggestion and we agreed to tag along straight away. I was longing for some western food already as my stomach didn’t fully agree with all the different spices yet and I was suffering from a mild Delhi belly. Thalassa was stunning with all white washed walls and a massive terrace facing the ocean. I had pasta with seafood and white wine. It was yummy. The sunset over the Arabian sea was unreal, incomparable to anything I’ve ever seen before. The scooter ride back to the hostel was not safe at all and we had a few wobbles on the way accompanied with loud giggles and lots of fun. I was hitching a ride with sugardaddy and as you’ve probably already figured out there was certainly another vivid story behind that name. He was wonderful, the most caring person I’ve ever met. It so turned out that he hosted one of my best mates in his home in Scotland a couple of years later, a girl that I met in Thailand.
It was obvious that Goa had been a hippie paradise in the 60s and was still a place where old hippies congregated in order to live their alternative lifestyle of peace and love with the occasional tripping out. Basically they gathered to relive their memories as much as they wanted to keep the lifestyle alive by practicing the ideals which they believed in and by doing so reinforcing the profound influence they’ve already had on the culture. The hippie culture was most certainly still alive and had been both replenished and renewed with a younger generation of hippies. All night raves was the new trend where beaches such as Anjuna and Vagator were settings for these sort of parties and Goa trance created and played regularly.
We loved Goa, we loved the hippies, we loved travelling, we loved the vibe, we loved the adventure, we loved the vibrant subculture. Goa the tiny former Portuguese enclave in the South West of India had lit a spark in us and all we wanted to do now was to keep going, to keep trying, to love, to explore, to share, to live, to dream, to discuss, to learn, to find ourselves. This was life, where only the sky was the limit.
E.J.J
Virgin Horizons 