The colourful hippies of Goa playing in their carnival

Our last night in Goa turned out to be the most eventful. By a matter of complete coincidence it happened to be the day of the annual Arambol carnival. The array of colourful characters started at about three o’clock in the afternoon at one end of the beach and over a period of about three hours it slowly made its way along the shore with all types of little attractions on the way. We, who are normally quite extravert ourselves at events like this felt as timid as kittens. There were so many bright and beautiful characters that we didn’t really know what to do, especially after spending the last three months in conservative rural India where showing too much ankle is consider sultry we walked around with our chins on the ground at the site of so many half naked people running around with g-strings and body paint.

In addition to the free young bodies there were also, the slightly overweight Dutch man in the tu-tu, the Japanese fairy girl, an old depressed looking clown playing a flute and always smoking a cigarette, a black girl and a white girl wearing one costume with the black girl in white and wearing white face paint and the whit girl in black wearing black face paint, tribal looking warriors with spears to match, girls with ‘kiss me’ written on their backs, a man dressed as round as a ball, three girls wearing different coloured mosquito nets, a fake strongman (actually strong woman) and a musical cart that was the centre of the fiasco blowing different chaotic but harmonious tunes and was continuously surrounded by at least half a dozen people playing tabla, djembe and kettle drums. Although the drums were always present we’re sure the players of them changed quite often.

We spent that day and night playing with the other people in the parade. Watching the fire show performances at the night and dancing to the rave music on the sand. The music was only average and didn’t grab our attention completely so we snuck off to a small nearby restaurant to grab some food where we met the creators of the carnival (the Dutch guy in the tu-tu) and his friends. They turned out to be an interesting bunch who ‘sold joy’ as they put it (street performers) in Europe and had spent every winter for the last eight years in Goa – not a bad idea if you ask me!