Fear and Loathing in Goa – let the weirdness continue

It’s our first night in Goa. We’ve kicked the holiday off with a spot of weirdness at the airport on the way in – but that’s another blog post – and we’re at our hotel now (The Living Room) and things have settled down nicely.

Right, let’s get off for a walk down to the beach. Aside from anything else, we’re now slaves to our fitness bands and we could do with bumping the step counts up. So off we trot. It’s not a million miles, but it’s a fair jaunt

We get down to the beach and wifey can hear some beats wafting along and she’s homing in on them. OK, it has to be said, by now she’s had a few Kingfisher beers and I am fully acquainted with my old mate Jim Beam. She’s champing at the bit and off ahead. I’m calling her back and telling her to walk with me because ever the Boy Scout, I have a torch.

We’re almost at the bar thingy. Herself is out in front. She gets to this little low wall. It’s about a foot high. She steps up and over. It’s a seven foot freaking drop on the other side!!! From my view point, she has just disappeared. One second she is there in front of me and a split second later, she’s just gone. And not a sound.

I rush up and find it is a concrete sided drainage gulley an easy two metres deep. She is lying in the dark at the bottom. Face down in the sand and rocks. One arm twisted round her back. Not moving. Not making a sound.

At last count I was 50 something. Not a spring chicken anymore. This thing is deep. A good two metres plus. And the bottom has rocks and stuff. I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to jump down there. But I couldn’t see another way so down I went. My dodgy knee wasn’t having it so I ended up a snotty heap in the bottom of it. Take a moment to check I can still move all my bits and then focus on wifey.

Wow, massive sigh of relief I can get some moans out of her, she’s not dead. Can you move your toes? Check. Can you move your fingers? Check. Hey, we’re in surprisingly good shape here. It doesn’t seem like she’s broken anything, well no bones anyway. Bless her, she’s face planted seven foot but still kept her grip on her beloved iPhone 6. I took it out of her hand but didn’t mention it was smashed to bits.

I walked a good few hundred metres up the ditch/gulley thing to try and find a way out. I found a decomposing dead dog, but no easy way out. I walk back past herself and a bit down the other way and I come to some very nasty looking stagnant water. Good job she didn’t end up face down in that. In the end I find a kind of low bit and manage to get her out.

The place the music was coming from was Disco Valley. It is surrounded on two sides by this very deep gulley thing. Even from the inside there are no signs or barriers to stop people falling in to it. If we had been anywhere in the EU we would have sued them out of business. But this is India and it’s just not like that. But even so, the least they could do is put some lights up or a fence or something. It was like they had baited this trap with disco lights and music and we’re waiting for people to fall in the tiger pit. And their attitude sucked. Wouldn’t even help us get a taxi or anything to get her back to the hotel just gave it that “don’t understand thing”.

Got back to the hotel. Called the doctor out. Miraculously, just soft tissue damage. Lots of aches and pains and grazes and stiffness, but no major damage.

This one goes down as the luckiest bit of bad luck ever.

UPDATE: Divorce is a wonderful thing. Not only did the drunk ruin this holiday in Goa, she ruined the one the next year too. And all the other ones. So she had to go. And so did the pictures featuring her too. Oh happy days