In Goa, most of the group accommodation was located in a sectioned-off area of a down-market hotel in the beach town of Colva.
We were initially put into a dark, humid, unbearably hot room in the back quarters - where the temperature was 35 degrees Celsius during the night (& we could hear absolutely every disgusting noise from the bathroom next door! The awful noises continued but we couldn't hear them in quite such graphic detail in our upgraded room.) The youngsters stuck it out for the full term, but one by one, & two by two in our case, the more mature members of the group moved out to air-conditioned rooms (with TVs, we confess!), reckoning the extra costs incurred were saving our lives!
We still returned to base camp for meals - although some couldn't face that either. The cooking was not up to much, a rat family & a mouse family were frequent visitors & there were flies buzzing around constantly. Revolting smells emanated from the open drain (possibly the maternity home for the flies?) running alongside our eating area. The staff also decided to dig a ditch on the other side of the dining table - for monsoon drainage they said, but we managed to fall in a few times! The electric wiring looked rather lethal too & a couple of people sliced their fingers on the ceiling fans when resident on top bunks - oh & did we mention the cockroaches?
Did we like it? Not much!
2 comments:
The wiring in the photo and other wiring I saw there leads me to think Prince Philip was being less offensive than everyone thinks when he said, "Looks like your wiring was done by an Indian" when he visited Edinburgh University's union building.
The other theory is that he meant cowboy. Anyway, in that case I don't think he was being an old bugger.
There's an almost total lack of regard for health & safety rules in this country, as far as we can see - surprising in view of the Indian government's love of bureaucracy(our passports have never been so well-aired!). They could have a field day with regulations............. but then we'd probably see even more unfinished buildings - we're never sure whether they have partially fallen down or are only half completed.
Heaven forfend, though, that we should end up sounding like the Duke of Edinburgh - would that be worse than the rapid onset of Victor Meldrew syndrome?
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