Our final destination in India was what has become a resort town called Goa. Goa was only an hour flight from Mumbai but the two worlds felt completely different. Lush, rolling hills, beautiful large manors that had been built during the Portuguese who first landed there in the 16th century. Goa is India’s smallest state but is well known for its beaches, world heritage buildings, temples and churches. India annexed Goa from the Portuguese in 1961.

We arrived just at the final days of their monsoon seasons which made the area especially more lush and also less touristy which was nice. We had a cute, spacious, apartment-like space to live in for the 5 days we were there.

OK, time for our normal hotel check. Running water: check, bugs on the floor: nope, clean sheets: you can’t win them all. Unfortunately the entire complex smelled like mold including our sheets, pillows, couches and even our suitcases and clothes by the end of our stay.

I was, to both of our disappointment, still sick. We took advantage of the rain to stay inside most days to rest. We were seeing that if I kept pushing myself to be a tourist that I was just going to continue to extend my sickness. The ‘resort’ had a small spa that offered massage and other treatments. They also had a resident ‘doctor’ who would see anyone free of charge. We decided to take advantage of this, my Mom had told me incredible stories of the Ayurvedic doctors who seemed to have tricks that Western medicine had not yet discovered.

First the doctor took a quick history and then put his hands on my wrist. He would touch my wrist with various combinations of his fingers. Then he began to tell me that I was a fire sign, or something of the sort. He said that I am easily tempered and when I am angry I get really angry. Seeing as Ofer and I had already had some trying times on our trip he unfortunately was hitting on some truth. He also said that I love spicy food. Nope, I told him...in fact I have a very hard time eating spicy food. Doctor: 1, Shayna: 1. Then he said that I have back and neck pain. Nope, I never have any pain there. Doctor: 1, Shayna: 2.

He listed a stream of more potential qualities all which were quite far from being the truth. I then outright told him what my symptoms were: sneezing, blowing my nose constantly, sore throat, ears popping and extreme fatigue. He then grabbed a pamphlet and began to ‘prescribe’ spa treatments like massage and a treatment where the pour an oil into my nose. Considering how wrong he had been so far I was not about to let him pour anything down my nose. I did end up doing a massage which actually made all of my symptoms worse since my head was facing down which didn’t help.


After my reading by the doctor he moved over to Ofer. After inspecting his wrist he told us that he was an Air sign, which apparently was much better than a fire sign. He then said that everything looked good and healthy. He didn’t try any guessing games about Ofer’s lifestyle or ailments, he just said everything was normal. We concluded that he had taken enough losses that day and wanted to level the playing field by saying something we wouldn’t disagree with.

Toward the end of our stay I was beginning to have a little more energy and was feeling pretty restless from being in so much so we decided to hire a taxi for the day and take a day trip to see the sites around Goa. We walked along the a beautiful beach and drove through the historic parts of the town. We went into churches, temples, and saw little neighboring towns while our driver told us about the history of the region.

We saw that most of the mansions left over from Portuguese rule are still standing however in most places they are over run by brush and trees and the paint is fading and cracking. It was like looking at the houses from The Secret Garden and Great Expectations.

We also visited a spice plantation. We were shown how all different types of spices were grown such as pepper, cloves, chocolate, coffee and saffron. We also learned about which were the most expensive spices in the world and that they were classified as so because it took so many plants to produce a small amount of spice from them. The top three most expensive spices are saffron, pure vanilla and cardamon.

At the end of the tour they kept with tradition and dumped a ladle of water down our backs as is customary in those parts. They fed us lunch and gave us each a shot of very very strong alcohol. I wasn’t going anywhere near the alcohol and somehow Ofer managed to get them both down his gullet.

We really loved Goa and were so happy to have had a chance to explore this small resort town. We were sad to leave India, I was so disappointed that I had gotten sick in the area I was looking forward to seeing the most. But this is what comes with a long term trip, there are going to be things our of our control that will not always allow things to go as we would have wished. I genuinely hope that Ofer and I find our way back to India in the future since we both felt like we only got to scratch the surface and had so much more to see and learn.