Posts Tagged ‘Friends’

Strange economics in South Goa

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

Couple of days ago we went for an overnighter to Patnam beach. It’s not a very populated beach, being that it’s right at the end of Goa. Anyway, we had ten litres of urrack in the boot, and a few bucks in hand to have a merry night. But I won’t bore you with ‘how much fun we had’ and stuff like that. Here, is a curious case of strange economics, that I’m having a little trouble understanding.

patnem-beach

At the beach are these cottages, built out of wood and bamboo. They’re usually quite cheap (yet awesome) so we found one a little off the sand. It was 1000 for the big room, and 800 for the smaller room. At the end of the bargaining session, we got the smaller room down to 600. Then followed a long conversation, which has been highly shortened for your reading pleasure. Note that I’m not really part of ‘we’.

We: There’s 8 of us.

The idiot: Hmm. You will have to take two rooms then.

We: Okay, how about we pay you 800, and all of us stay in one room (add some extra mattresses).

Idiot: Not possible. Boss will fire me. How about this. I’ll give you two small rooms, for 1000.

We: Not possible. How about this. You give us two small rooms, for 800.

Idiot: Okay.

Idiot ends up giving us two of the big rooms, for 800.

It is at this point of time that I respectfully asked myself, what the fuck is going on here! If I were ‘we’, we would definitely have paid something to the tune of 2000, and thought that we got an excellent deal out of it. I’ve got to commend my friends. They are the cheapest bastards I’ve ever known, and I’m proud of them!

*It was an awesome trip, one that we didn’t want to spoil by snapping pictures.

A guide to having an awesome urrack trek

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Many of you must be knowing by now that I’m the urrack expert. Some have even gone on to bestow respect upon me with salutations like drunkard, bewda, and the like. It so happens that I’m also awesome at urrack treks. Urrack treks are like regular treks the same way small cat is like a regular cat; it’s not. An urrack trek is the ultimate respect you can give to this amazing drink, and must be done at least once in your life.

You start with a bunch of friends. Awesome ones. Sometimes a sore loser will try to stick his head in, but you should faithfully reject any such freetards. “5 PM my place” should do just fine. You will end up leaving at around 6:30, which is perfect. No later than that though, as you won’t find bars open later on in the night.

Hit the first bar you see. In our case, we went to Eric Clapton’s bar. He serves the best of urrack. It is important to know where the urrack is from. Eric said the urrack was from Siolim. It was good. After a glass of mixed urrack down your stomach, you are ready to start walking. Fill up a 2 ltr. bottle of Limca with one bottle of Urrack. You will learn how to do this amazing feat.

Destination: Are you going on a urrack trek? There is no destination, only the journey. Visualise a path where you know there are bars on every turn. If you don’t, you will find yourself sober, and suddenly the aching in your legs will be very real. As for walking itself, while you don’t have a destination, you have to be determined enough to continue walking. If you rest too much, the urrack will hit your head and you’ll feel sick and drowsy. Keep walking and you will be surprised at your capacity.

Somewhere along the way we lost our shirts

Do not carry expensive gadgets along. It’s very likely something will happen, like you throwing it inside a pond or something. Urrack sets your mind free. If you like to generally wrap it around worldly objects, I highly suggest leaving that iPhone at home. You can carry along a Nokia crap-phone for making emergency calls.

Stay away from dangerous areas like cliffs, steep climbs, or deep rivers. The last time, we tried to shake down this little wooden construction at the side of the river, and I ended up falling 8 feet into a river. Apparently the sight was very ‘matrix like’. I wouldn’t know as I only realised I fell after I hit the water. Luckily I’m light enough to have escaped out alive. The sharp rocks were just a few inches deeper. As I walked to the shore I ended up cutting up my feet badly. I later came to know my back also got a good scrub against those rocks. Trust me and the cuts on my back, stay away from dangerous areas.

Carry a sufficient amount of money. If you carry less, you will curse yourself for find yourself sober in the middle of your awesome trek. You could also be very hungry with nothing ‘cheap’ to eat. But don’t carry too much money. Know that any amount of cash you carry, will get over.

Make sure you have transportation back to your place of rest. Even if you plan to sleep the night on the beach or camp out in the forest, the next day you are in no position to walk back. Make sure you drop your brother to the airport when he asks, for you never know how useful he will be.

That’s it for that. Don’t overdo the treks. Once a year is good enough. Have fun.