"There are three things you need when driving in Goa", Mario, our guide for the day, informs us as our rickety old bus puffs and wheezes its out of the port of Mormugao on the temples and spices tour. "A good horn, good brakes and good luck."
This is the fifth port in India that Silver Wind has visited on this Silversea around India and I reckon I have seen it all when it comes to driving in this country.
Drivers who fit their vehicles through gaps as long as there is a paper width of space on either side, overtake in the face of oncoming traffic, hoot horns in the hope it will save them from meeting their maker, and motorbikes that weave in and out of cars and tuk-tuks, often coming to a sudden stop when there is no more space.
Yet it all seems to work.
Mario was full of interesting information about Goa, which was Portuguese rather than British, and only got its independence in 1961 - 14 years after the rest of India.
Part one of the tour was a Hindu temple, which was interesting, but the highlight for me was the spice farm. I've been there before and knew that after a walk through the spice plants they serve a proper spicy curry - something I have been dying for every since joining the ship.
This poor man has to shin up and down a beetle nut tree every time tourists walk by to show how it's done...
...and this is Sandhip, our guide at the plantation, with a cashew nut flower. It's soft and smells of peaches. The skin is used to make the local fire water, which was not bad. but it smelt vile.
The food on Silver Wind has been really very good, but why oh why, on a cruise around India, is there not at least one curry option on the menu each evening?
I had a curry on the galley lunch day (this is an amazing event on all Silversea ships where they open the galley as a self-service restaurant) and another a couple of evenings ago, which French executive chef Laurent Austrui squeezed in among the veal and duck due to popular demand.
I have always thought cruise ship menus should better reflect the places they visit - spicy jerk chicken in Jamaica, tapas dinners in Spain, crispy duck in China, and so on.
Seems a lot of passengers might just agree with me.
Jane Archer
