Prawns by the Kilo

We are on Palolem Beach in south Goa, a beautiful crescent-shaped beach about a mile long, or maybe closer to two miles. I don’t really know how far it is; I’ve yet to make it to the other end. We like the food here, though we can’t say we’ve tried many restaurants.

I still can’t believe we’re here. We’d always sworn that we’d never come to Goa, because every traveler to India comes to Goa, it’s a cliché of Indian tourism, but here we are. We were in Rajasthan, headed for Nepal, but then a bomb went off in a Kathmandu restaurant, and another in a bank, both in the neighborhood where we intended to stay. The communist insurgency had invaded the city. So we came here instead, a spur-of-the-moment decision.