An Exotic Wallet

Walking through Goa, India, my friend Deon decided he needed one of the leather wallets at a small store on the main street near Siquerim Beach. Little did either of us know that we were about to encounter one of the world's truly unique items.

While Deon perused the selection, I wandered over to look at the knock-off items on a back shelf. Ookley sunglasses, Doir purses and Calvin Kleen colognes were all remarkably cheap. I was laughing at the spelling when Deon called me over.

He had a wallet in his hand, and I asked him if he was going to buy it.

"I need you to put it in your pocket and sit on it."

I stared at him, trying to figure out if this was an oddball negotiating tactic he needed my help in.

"I need to know if it's comfortable to sit on," he persisted. "I'm wearing a swimsuit, and I don't have rear pockets. You've gotta sit on it and tell me how it feels."

I laughed and did as I was asked, then pondered whether I was level before finally deciding I was and told him it was "probably OK."

That wasn't good enough for Deon, who wondered why I'd said "probably."

I rolled my eyes, took the wallet out of my pocket, set it on the chair and told him to sit on it and pretend it was in his pocket. He did, decided it was OK, then offered the seller half of the asking price.

This was when we found out just how desirable the wallet was.

"No sir," the vendor said. "You must pay full price. This is special wallet."

"What's special about it?" Deon asked.

"It is real Italian camel leather," the vendor offered.

I looked up and frowned. "Real Italian camel leather?" I asked.

"Yes, yes. Finest quality," he answered.

"Where, if I may ask, does one find camels in Italy?" I really wanted to know.

"You must not have been to Italy," he said.

"But I have. Twice. And my sister lived there for three months," I said. "And I never saw a camel."

The seller, unfazed, told me very seriously that I had simply not visited the right places, and had I gone to the spot where there are camels, I would have come across Italian camel leather.

Deon made the seller promise him that the wallet was really made from Italian camel leather, then negotiated a price and bought it. I think he paid something like $5. I'm really not sure if the seller was blatantly lying, or if he truly believed that his wallet was made from leather harvested from slain Italian camels.

Mumbai - One year before the terrorist strikes

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai (Bombay) Nov. 25 were terrible, and hit home with me, as I was in many of the same spots almost exactly a year ago.

The current evidence points to the gunmen as having come by boat and landing at the Gateway of India.

My first nights in India were spent in the Hotel Suba Palace, which is a two-minute walk from the Gateway. When I took a day trip to Elephanta Island, home of a complex of caves dating back to the 600s, I embarked from the Gateway, which was built to commemorate the British Royal Family’s visit to India in 1924.
The next target for the terrorists was the Taj Mahal Hotel. Close to the Gateway of India, the hotel is one of Mumbai’s icons. Resplendent in fancy decorations and excellent restaurants, it was out of my price range, but the story behind it was fascinating.

An Indian man wanted to stay in one of the nicer hotels. The British operators of the hotel said it was only for whites, so he built the Taj Mahal Hotel next door and eventually put them out of business, then bought their building and made it the “cheap” rooms of his.

On my second night in India, my friends and I ate at what is probably one of the nicest restaurants in India – the Golden Dragon inside the Taj Mahal Hotel.

With excellent Indian wine, a round of cocktails, an appetizer plate of prawns and main dishes of Beijing duck, lemon chicken and lamb, we certainly left satisfied, albeit lighter in the wallet.

Another target for the terrorists was the Chhatrapati Shivaji train station, also called the Victoria Terminus, or VT Station. The building’s exterior is one of the nicest in Mumbai, and combines several styles of architecture. While I didn’t go inside the station, I did spend a fair amount of time walking around it.

On my visit to India, I was struck by how peacefully the major religions lived among each other, without overt tension. In Goa, one of my friends, a Christian, was shopping for his father, a Hindu, at a woodcarver’s shop. The Muslim woodcarver suggested an idol of a Hindu god, explaining the god’s significance and why he should choose that one over any others for his father.

I watched Christians from an orphanage caroling through Goa’s streets, and everyone was making plans to celebrate the Muslim holiday that was fast approaching. My overriding thought was that I wished the religious sects could get along so well everywhere.

Though India has been home to much religious infighting, I get the impression that most of it is due to the extremists on both sides, as well as the tension between India and Pakistan.

When I saw the attacks on TV, I was shocked. Terrorist attacks, by their nature, are always shocking, but the fight in Mumbai took place somewhere I have actually been. The bombings of the London metro system came with a similar feeling, but even though I had used the metro many times while I was there, it didn’t come as close as seeing the attacks in Mumbai.

After all, I had eaten in the hotel, stood at the Gateway of India and walked along the grounds of the Chhatrapati Shivaji station. It was only a year ago that I was there, and seeing all those places I can still remember vividly now being a war zone just makes me angry and sad. Had they attacked a military target, I would have disagreed with it, but at least I would have had some respect for their courage. As it is, they’re just a bunch of cowards, and in using those sorts of tactics, I can’t imagine they will ever win.

Misadventures - When Monkeys Attack

Going to India, I really looked forward to seeing monkeys. I don’t know what it is about them that fascinates me, but I’d always wanted to see one.

Reading up on what, before the trip, loomed as an exotic, wild land draped in stereotypes, I was amazed at some of the stories I encountered, especially those regarding monkeys.

The most ominous of those stories was about a pack of monkeys murdering New Delhi’s deputy mayor. OK, maybe murder is the wrong word, but they pushed him off of his balcony, and he fell to his death.
In other news, I read about the problems New Delhi was experiencing with monkey break-ins. There were several reports of monkeys rummaging through refrigerators, then slapping women who tried to stop them. I couldn’t help but laugh at that one.

Possibly the most intriguing story I read regarding the furry little bipeds was the effect they had on New Delhi’s transit system. Apparently, small, mean monkeys frequently rode in the passenger cars on the trains, forcing passengers to ride on the roof by chucking…stuff…at them.

While many countries would find a way to eradicate the problem with varying degrees of damage to the monkeys, Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, is sacred, making monkeys protected.

What, then, to do?

The answer authorities came up with was rather creative. A larger breed of monkey was drafted into city service. These larger monkeys, Langurs, are friendly to people, but scare the little tyrants out of the train cars.

I did not see this firsthand, but read on a reputable news site that passengers and Langurs ride the cars in harmony.

With so much monkey mayhem evident in the place I was about to spend two weeks, I read up on how to get them to leave me alone.

Don’t make eye contact, and don’t show your teeth, as these are seen as challenges, and the monkeys simply aren’t afraid of people. If you’re holding food, and the monkey asks, then the monkey should get. The “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” phenomenon apparently doesn’t apply.

Being the conscientious travel companion I try to be, I sent off an e-mail to my friends so they, too, would know how to avoid confrontation.

It was on Elephanta Island, in Mumbai’s harbor, when I learned that my friend, Peter, hadn’t bothered to read.

Home to a handful of villages, a cave complex dating back to the 600s and a colony of small monkeys, Elephanta Island is a must-see for tourists. Its caves are one of India’s many UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Walking through the bazaar on the way to the caves, we saw monkey after monkey. Some sat, some played with each other, one stole a vendor’s water bottle and one attacked Peter.

I tried to warn him. About the time I said, “Don’t—” he was dodging the surprisingly agile little beast.
He managed to dodge the attack and retreat in time, but the monkey then stood in the path like the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Peter stomped his foot, and the monkey held his ground.

None shall pass, indeed.

After a few seconds, the monkey found something more exciting than the standoff and swung through a tree.

We had no more trouble with monkeys for the rest of the trip. In Ranthambore National Park, famed for its tigers and 10th-Century fortress, we saw several. These ones had apparently “gone green” as they drank from the taps and conscientiously shut them off when they were finished.

Down south, in Goa’s capital city of Panaji (Panjim), I was excited to see the bright orange temple to Hanuman. While the sight was certainly impressive, it was oddly devoid of monkeys.

I got my fill of the little creatures on that trip. I still think their antics are hilarious, like watching a semi-human society acting outside all the laws of civility, but I have a new respect for them. They’re noble in their own way, and, being so genetically close to humans, I can see why so many people choose to study them.

Lodgings: The Villa Ludovici

One of the benefits of traveling in India is the fact that the value of the dollar hovers around 40 rupees. If you can avoid the tourist traps and indiscriminate extravagances, you can travel and stay for a bargain.

The Villa Ludovici in Goa is the perfect example of excellent service with low costs.

When I stayed there with a friend of mine in December of 2007, five nights - with omelets, papayas and toast for breakfast each morning included - the stay only set us back $100.

We arrived in Goa at the middle of a long day that started when the sun was rising and involved a four-hour taxi ride (where our driver got cited for speeding) and a flight, with the necessity of arriving at the airport two hours early so we could hop on a flight that lasted less than two hours.

Not having researched Goa very much – at all, to be honest – we didn’t really know where to stay. We asked a bunch of travelers in the airport, and settled on the Siquerim Beach area, since it was close enough to the entertainment at Baga Beach to the north and the capital, Panjim, to the south.

Cruising through the Lonely Planet guidebook, I selected Villa Ludovici for its economy listing. A quick phone call settled the rates and reserved a room, then it was a 45-minute taxi ride through beautiful tropical scenery juxtaposed with poverty-stricken villages to arrive at our home for the next five nights.

We were greeted by the friendly owner of what turned out to be not a hotel, but a house. It was actually the first house built on that section of the coast a few centuries earlier. The plaster walls, elegant wood doorways and interlocking clay tiles on the roof all attested to its age. The antiquated electrical work running through the interior struck me as having been original to the 1940s or so.

After dropping off our bags, Deon and I decided it was time to hit Goa’s legendary beaches. As “our” house was right across the street from the beach, it should have been a short walk.

Only it wasn’t.

Not sure about trespassing laws, we hunted and hunted for public beach access until we decided it didn’t exist, and we just walked through a neighborhood, past a construction site and alongside a trash heap to reach the strand.

Turning around, of course, we saw an easy access route we’d somehow missed, but would have allowed us to avoid the hassle we’d just gone through.

After filling up on 85-cent beers and a dinner of fried prawns for a few bucks at a beach shack run by British expats, we headed back to the room for bed.

The mattress was nice and firm, and the blankets were light enough to cover up with and not get too hot in the absence of air conditioning. That’s right, there was no air conditioning. I wasn’t worried about that, as I’ve stayed in condos in Hawaii without AC, and it never proved necessary. The same was true for Goa.

Breakfast the next morning was excellent. I’d slept like a rock, and with absolutely nothing planned for the day except gorging on prawns and tossing back several bottles of Kingfisher beer, I was in seventh heaven.

Deon, on the other hand, was suffering from a plethora of mosquito bites. I made fun of him, and incurred some bad karma that ended with my lily-white skin turning a distinctly reddish hue after the SPF 20 sunscreen utterly failed me during the day (Seriously, it’s all they seem to sell over there. If you need your extra protection, bring your own).

Not wanting to end up with an army of insects feasting on my already-abused body, we asked for, and got, mosquito netting. By the next morning, Deon’s bites were in recession and my sunburn was healing.

That night, it poured. I groaned, lamenting the fact that I’d remembered being able to see sunlight through the roof tiles during the day. Sitting on the patio reading a novel, I knew I was in for a rough night.

And I was completely wrong.

Somehow, the tiles from generations earlier kept the rain out entirely. The restaurant I worked in at home in California had been built seven years earlier, and leaked like a sieve. This house proved far better at withstanding the tropical rain it sees so often.

For the next few days, while eating breakfast, Bessie the holy cow stopped by the gate, always mooing to get in. Cows are sacred in the Hindu religion, and traffic will stop for them if they lie down in the road, but their sanctity doesn’t guarantee their admittance to breakfast. Each morning, after several minutes of gawking, Bessie left.

Paying the bill at the end of our stay, I still couldn’t believe it had cost us each a measly $10 per night. Part of me felt guilty at getting off so cheap, but my rational side won out, reminding me that if it wasn’t profitable, they wouldn’t be in business.

For great value, a decent location and friendly proprietors, I couldn’t have been happier with the Villa Ludovici.

The River Princess

The River Princess sank eight years ago, and has become something of a permanent fixture off Siquerim Beach in Goa, India, as it holds a few mysteries.

My arrival in tropical Goa was refreshing after the chilly weather near Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. Something about wearing shorts and a T-shirt in December has a certain allure, even for a guy from "Sunny California."

A 20-minute taxi ride (much safer than this one) brought my friend Deon and I to our hotel across from the beach. As soon as we'd finished the check-in process, we headed to the sand and were met with our first sight of the River Princess.

I was initially under the impression that she was at anchor, but realized she was way, way too close to shore for that. She was clearly sitting on the bottom, and repair crews were all over the superstructure working under floodlights in the setting sun. I shrugged, figuring it was nothing more than the result of a helmsman asleep at the wheel.

Eating prawns at one of the ubiquitous beach restaurants the next day, I asked a few British expats about the massive container ship sitting in 20 feet of water.

"Oh, the River Princess? Yeah, she's been there since 2000, when she hit some rocks near Panjim. They towed her over here to sink."

I was astonished. Though not in the market for a container ship, I could imagine they are fairly expensive. "Why haven't the owners done anything about it?" I asked.

"No one knows who owns it."

"How is that? It must be registered somewhere." To that, the Brits just shrugged and told me an Indian company was working on taking her away, but they weren't holding their collective breath, as that was an old rumor circulating for years.

I took a closer look at the vessel and decided she may have been smuggling arms or drugs - hence the reason no one has claimed it. Whatever the case may be, her presence is definitely altering the currents around the beach, and a small sandbar is forming.

"You know, that would make an awesome night club and hotel," I said.

"Yeah, a lot of people say that," a woman replied. So much for originality.

Whether the River Princess will continue to rust away in the sea or will finally be cleaned up is still up in the air. I hope someone had the foresight to remove the fuel and oil and somehow minimize the environmental damage, since a spill would be rather unfortunate. However long the she does sit there, she will be lamentable to the locals as an eyesore, and of passing interest to tourists who naturally wonder at her mysteries.

Or, perhaps, the Brits were having a joke at my expense, and there is no mystery at all.