The way to arrive in Goa is on board the Konkan Shakti … if it still sails. That was the main route south that traveling people took in the 1960s before the advent of package tours. If you got as far as Goa then you had already seen a fair bit of India by that time and you knew how to travel.
The vessel was old but seaworthy. It sailed out of what was Bombay in those days and took a leisurely 24 hours to make its way to Panjim where it tied up for the day before heading back north.
The passage was cheap no matter which class you chose but there was really only one, especially if funds were tight. Getting on board was the usual tussle, all elbows and knees, babies being surfed over the heads of everyone else along with goats and chickens and nondescript packages that wriggled.
I was travelling in November with little chance of rain but it wouldn't have matter if a storm had lashed down. I claimed my space on the deck on the port side so I could see the coast all the way. With my Gulmarg blanket spread out on the damp planks I built a low partition with my possessions between myself and the open sea as a windbreak. My possessions were meagre, but so fortunately was the wind, even at night when we were far from the warm influence of the land. There was a family camped beside me: father, mother and two children, all spread out on a blanket the same size as mine. They also had a chicken which lay with its legs trussed, accommodatingly quiet for the entire trip.
The boat pushed off and started to rise and fall as it left the shelter of the harbor and headed out into the open Arabian Sea. I love traveling by boat. I don't mind bad weather, I enjoy storms, but this was no more than a slight swell with a gentle sun falling down to bless us.
Towards evening my thoughts turned to food. I'd brought water with me but that was all. For the first time I took a good look at my ticket and realized that a meal was included in the cost and I headed to where everyone else seemed to be heading and found a large dining hall set out much like a school refectory.
Dinner was rice and fish. The man in the queue in front of me got the jackpot - a fish head, and he was well pleased. It was a substantial enough meal but could have done with a bit more flavor, maybe a vegetable or two in the fish stew. But I enjoyed it.
I lay all night on the deck, under the clearest sky I had seen since a trip across the Indian Ocean when I was so far from land. The stars were spectacular and I could see that they were not just stuck onto a black background, but that they were actually suspended in space. The other passengers quietened down and fell into slept: the two children beside me had slept from very early, exhausted from the excitement of the journey. Their parents spoke no English; no-one seemed to.
At some remote hour during that magnificent night the boat slowed and dropped anchor off the coast, some way from a small town whose few lights twinkled in the distance like low-hung stars. A small motor boat chugged out through the shallows bringing a few more passengers and parcels. They boarded with not much noise and the boat sailed on.
At dawn we were closer than I expected to the shore. The Western Ghats rose out of the misty surface of the water and the smoke from the funnel left a faint graying smudge against the colorless, cloudless, sky. For the first time I felt the air as something cold. I lifted the blanket from the deck and wrapped it around my shoulders and watched Goa come into view.
