We followed in their wake, and overtook. Passing beneath a long stretch of gentle gothic arches, we entered Aleppo’s World Heritage listed souqs, where pedestrians battled donkeys and donkeys battled trucks. “Welcome!” hailed a barber, his razor blade steady over another man’s throat. “Salaam!” wailed a butcher, his toothless grin visible behind chunks of hanging offal – liver attached to lungs, lungs attached to heart and spongy stomach, its inside out.
Goa
Vagator, one of Goa’s coastal tourist towns, was said by our guidebook to have “long been the hot location for the outdoor rave parties that made the Goa party scene famous.” But on the day that we arrived, with only a week till Christmas, and accommodation supposedly jam-packed, it was deserted.
The restaurants were all empty, and shiny Christmas decorations hung feebly from the rafters. Rows of clothes and souvenir stalls stood redundant, their proprietors calling out from shaded straw mats, “Hey, how you doing? Just have a look…” in feigned American twangs, or “Yes yes, have a look… please madam!”
The guesthouses and hotels were only half full, but still charged exorbitant “high high season” rates – the locals believed that the regular horde was still on its way. We settled into a spacious tiled room, bright and clean; a delight compared to Mumbai’s Samrat hotel and its midnight vermin visitors.
