My Time in India is Ending

So, I have booked a flight out of India! I will leave very early Tuesday morning to fly to London, and I will stay with Grandma Joy there until mid-March. I am very excited!

Yesterday I went to Old Goa (creative name, right), an old city in this region of Goa. There were many museums and churches there, as this was where the Portuguese were based after the colonized the area. It was interesting to learn of this history, but it was not pleasant to be followed around by some older Indian man on a motorbike for an hour--he even waited for me when I went to the toilet to try to escape him--so I left without seeing the entirety of the city. This was fine by me, as it was boiling hot and my stomach wasn't sure how it felt.

Two nights before, my German friend Denis and I--after last blogging at that Internet cafe in another beach town--returned by taxi to where we stay in Anjuna, and then we decided to climb a nearby mountain. He grabbed us some blankets and sweaters from his room, and we hiked by the full moon to the top of the cliff overlooking the Arabian Sea to drink a bottle of wine. There were countless stars, and you could see the lights from nearby towns and the ships out to sea. We slept out under the stars, and I have never felt so free.

Sidenote: a few days before as I was looking into the ocean, I saw many lights and wanted to know why so many boats were out to sea. I asked a waiter.

"They are Pakistani warships." Uh, no, I don't think so.

I ask a second waiter.

"They are fishermen. They are getting fish." Uh, no. I don't think there are ships as big as the Titanic out to sea to get fish for us tourists.

A third waiter. "They are digging iron out of the sea, and then they sail to other parts of India and the world to have it manufactured to make steel and other metals."

Possibly.

Anyway, I will take an overnight bus this evening, and arrive in Bangalore tomorrow. I can spend the day there and then go to bed early, and get to the airport at an awful hour on Tuesday!

Hope all is well back home. Be jealous of the 80 degree weather here by the sea!