Jaipur Literature Festival

The Durbar Hall, one of the venues for the Literature Festival

I am overflowing with happiness, like an overflowing cup of warm honey. I have two new friends, Dan from America and Arjun from Delhi, both poets, both in love with literature and all of us staying in the wonderful Vinayak guest house, they in the new dormitory, where all the bunk beds are shrouded in curtains, with capacious lockers underneath; I in a tiny, windowless room on the ground floor. We travel together early in the morning to the Indian coffee house to meet other friends for a convivial breakfast, then walk to the Dighi Palace to sit enraptured by the early morning music which starts the festival each day.

The Jaipur Literature Festival is free and to say it is well attended is a serious understatement. Last year a third of a million people attended. This year it cannot have been less.

First thing in the morning 

But first thing in the morning it is relatively uncrowded. The day before yesterday Dan and I went to see Amy Tan and Siddharth Dhanvant Shangvi, who sparkled, as they bounced off each other with their descriptions of San Francisco. Amy was inspiring, enlightening and amusing.

At midday we decided to go in search of new glasses, Dan because his were scratched, I because mine were unsatisfactory, so we headed off across town in an Uber to the Swadesh, Mansarovar, an optician, whose premises were so bright, clean and capacious that they seemed more like an apple store. The optician impressed me with the thoroughness of his testing technique and provided me with a far better pair of glasses than the ones they sold me in England. Then Dan and I took it in turns to try on frames, commenting on each other's look, until we each found the perfect frames. Dan's had special lenses in them, anti dust, anti rain, anti glare because he wears them all the time. Then the optician took his old pair of glasses and changed the lenses in them.
"Do you sell ordinary sunglasses?" I asked him.
"We have a scheme. We give everyone who enters the shop a free pair of sunglasses," he said. "Choose whichever pair you want."
"I can't because I can't see," Dan said, since they had taken his glasses to replace the lenses.
"Give me your prescription," the optician said, handing it to an assistant, who handed over two pairs of contact lenses.
"Use these to choose a pair of sunglasses."
Then we posed for photos with the optician.
How much did all this cost? I spent ten pounds and Dan spent thirty pounds.

Opening ceremony at the Jaipur Literature Festival

Kholva beach

"It's easy to get to Kholva, my neighbour in Agonda told me "just cross the river at the end of the beach at high tide, then go along the shore until you find the path."

I set off along the beach and crossed the river at low tide. I was confronted by dense vegetation on an almost vertical slope. I searched and eventually found a path running parallel with the river. After a while I found what I thought was a path heading straight up the slope. I scrabbled up it until I found myself in a dense forest clinging to this steep incline. The ground was covered in dry leaves that slipped and slid as I tried to climb up the slope. I grabbed a branch that broke off. I grabbed something with leaves attached to it and hauled one foot uphill, then sought another handhold in order to haul the other foot past the first foot.  I was almost parallel with the hill, I was wearing flip flops and encumbered by a shoulder bag with my notebook, book, purse and phone in it, which kept slipping in front of me, getting in the way of my attempts to get hold of branches to pull myself uphill. I disturbed an ant hill, hidden under the leaves and angry ants ran all over me.

Somehow I managed to get to the top of the hill, where I came to an impenetrable thicket of thorns, brambles, bushes and trees. Thinking that it would be worse to go back than to go forward, I approached the least dense part of the thicket, bent down and started breaking off twigs and branches until I had made a hole big enough to crawl through. I had to repeat this several times before I came to a place where I could stand up. Scratched, ant-bitten and still in dense forest, with thick tufts of dried grass on the ground and low bushes beneath the trees I picked my way through until I noticed some empty plastic water bottles.
"People have been near here," I thought, following the trail of rubbish until I came to a makeshift hut. Beyond this were the concrete bases of three small houses that had never been built. I discovered that I was in an enclosure with a fence and barbed wire, so I had to go back to the makeshift hut, then I followed the fence on the other side until I was once more in dense forest. I stepped over thorn bushes until I came to an area of burnt grass and bushes, a blackened desolate place, but easy to walk on.

I followed the blackened areas until I came to a track, then I followed the track that led to the edge of the precipice down to the beach. I looked down and saw trees clinging to the sides of an almost vertical cliff, between giant boulders. No path. I backtracked and swung round to another possible way down. Here I found fifty seven varieties of rubbish, including a half empty sack of charcoal, scrunched up tin foil, and a terrible smell. Round another bush I found a dead cow, its guts spilling out. I didn't wait to inspect it. I headed back up the track until it met another track heading north. Passing motor scooters kicked up huge clouds of powder fine red dust, so I realised I was, at last, on the right track to the beach.

Steep steps led down to Kholver beach, a pretty little bay with a river running through it and thatched huts climbing up the lower part of the terraced hillside. Last year there was a lake in the middle of the beach, but this year it has disappeared. The monsoon changes everything, washes away the huts if they are not removed. I sat in a thatched roofed bar/restaurant drinking water as I gathered my strength to make the return trip, via the track and the road, not the forest.

The track wound serpent like through the forest, a red ribbon of dry red powdered earth, up hill and down through lush vegetation, from time to time overlooking green hillsides, those same green hillsides that I had battled through to get to the beach, that looked so beautiful from this distance. Every time a vehicle came past it stirred up immense clouds of dust. Half way to the road a taxi stopped and wound down his window.
"No money" I said "No worry," he said "get in."
So I did. He drove slowly and gingerly over the rutted, potholed boulder-strewn track.
"Bad road," he said.
"Must be bad for the car," I said.
"First time here," he said
I didn't think he would be coming this way again. He dropped me at the bus stop on the road.
I set off walking along the road through more beautiful South Goa countryside until another taxi stopped. Again:
"No money"
"No matter. Get in"
And he drove me to Agonda.