Motorcycle Diaries - Page VI

Rains on the coastline are a thing of beauty. There'll be dark, leaden skies, full of dark surly and grey clouds. There'll be a light breeze, and a sharp, tangy coolness in the air, a portent of the downpour to follow. The trees will acquire a surreal hue, and you can practically sense the rain.

And then it starts. One little drop on your wrist, splat! A few more around you, and then hell takes off its seatbelt and goes into overdrive.

All of a sudden, right in front of you, the wind will drop, and it will start pouring with a nimd numbing consistency. Hours on end, a steady sheet of rain envelopes everything around you. Bedraggled birds, bedecked in miserably hung foliage, sit tight on resigned branches. Little rivulets of water that run along on the streets turn into miniature Amazons. Not a soul ventures out onto the streets, and thoughts of hot chai and kanda bhaji abound.

We kickstart the Suzuki and head back to Bangalore.

Normal is boring.

Because.

To be fair, we wited until around ten in the morning, hoping that the downpour that had started overnight would abate somewhat. But when there was no sign of that happening, we commended our souls to the same bunch that had seen us through a couple of days back, bade adieu to Goa and embarked.

And it just rained and rained and rained. Grey sleet, unending and unrelenting. Out of Corvorim, out onto Mapusa, and beyond towards the Maharashtra border. For the plan this time was to climb onto the plateau by using the Amboli Ghat.

Out into that part of Goa that is pretty empty, and certainly non-Goan. On and on and on, beyond the checkpost on either sides of the border.

Through the short but treacherous Insuli Ghat, beyond the last villages on the Maharashtra border and finally into the quaint little town of Sawantwadi.

To get into Sawantwadi from Goa, one passes through a particularly narrow stretch of road, that comes on out onto a particularly beautiful pond. Driving around it's circumference, one reaches the bus stand.

Which is where we stopped to eat cold misal pav and colder vadas. With lukewarm chai.

Prophets that we were, we had decided to get out in the rain wearing the same clothes that we had slept in the previous night. Knowing that we were going to get completely horribly and unbelievably drenched, we planned to stop once we had crossed the ghats, and then change into dry clothing, which would see us through the rest of the trip.

And so we sat there, cold and drenched, eating a cold and bravely cheerful breakfast.

Bangalore seemed a long long way away then. Far enough away to not countenance contemplation. But what I did contemplate, and with a vengeance, were my socks.

There is nothing... nothing, absolutely nothing... that is more depressing than wet socks. Wet anything else is bearable, but wet socks drive you mad. Because when you push your toe against the sole of your shoe, you can feel the water dripping out. When you wiggle all your toes at once, you can feel the water dripping out. When you scrunch your toes in, wishing that the constant shivering would stop, you can feel the water dripping out. And when you get up from the table, and out into the rain, you can feel the water dripping out.

For the next six hours, water was to drip out of the damn socks.

Ah, well. Life is the like that only. Now what is to be doing?

And so we moved out of Sawantwadi, at around 11.30 in the morning, out into the first gentle stretches of the road that leads up to that magnificent panorama of the Sahyadris - the Amboli Ghat.