To its detractors, Tinder is a sleazy sex app. To a solo traveller, it's a fantastic tool for meeting interesting local people. Here is my account of an encounter with an Indian Tinderella.
This is the third instalment of my overland backpacking travelogue from India to Germany.
Part one: Anxiety and Mayhem in India
Part two: India – From Chaos to Tranquility
I'm in Goa, India's party capital and epicentre of the country's electronic music scene. I may have touched down in Hyderabad a week earlier, but from an ideological point of view, this is the beginning of my journey. Goa to Berlin. One electronic music capital to another.
The problem is, it's June, which is off-season in Goa. Blame the torrential summer monsoon; there’s not much on at this time of year. I spend most of my time exploring the Candolim and Calangute areas and enjoying the local cuisines. Goa's best dishes are Cafreal and Xacuti. Cafes sell a sweet lime juice called Mosambi for 20 rupees.
I take a swim in the Arabian Sea, but the swell is incredibly dangerous, so I get out after 5 minutes. During my 5 days in Goa, at least 2 people die in the sea.
Calangute Beach - lots of people looking at the water, but no-one going in it.
I do meet a few Indian dance music devotees in my hostel. Mayank hails from Delhi, via Manchester, where he works as an agent for go-go dancers, in partnership with festivals such as Electric Daisy Carnival. He finds a beach party on Friday night, and tries to call me to give me directions. Unfortunately his phone can’t hold a signal, so it’s beers at the hostel for me tonight.
Cleanliness isn't India's strong point.
During a moment of boredom on Saturday afternoon, I sit in the courtyard of the hostel thumbing away on Tinder, and I match with a tall, slender local called Nu. We get chatting, and I tell her I'm in Goa to experience the electronic music scene. She promises to take me to a club where I can see the “real Goa”, the one that only appears in the off-season when the tourists disappear. Sounds good to me.
I jump in an overpriced rickshaw to the village of Vagator where Nu lives. Goa is quite a remote state; a collection of villages in the jungle, connected only by narrow, poorly maintained roads. I bounce along at a leisurely lick for about 40 minutes before arriving at Nu's apartment complex. Nu speaks English perfectly, with a high-pitched, musical accent, and she tells me that she considers English her mother tongue. From the second I meet her, I immediately sense that there's absolutely zero attraction between us, but oh well. I'm mostly here for the adventure anyway.
We pick up a few cans of Bira, the hugely popular local beer made from Belgian wheat and Himalayan hops, and drive up to a nice lookout overlooking the Chapora Beach and Chapora Fort. We sit up there drinking beer and talking shit for a while, before heading down to a local restaurant for some dinner. I eat Squid Masala, which is probably the spiciest dish I have during my entire time in India, but still quite pleasant and flavoursome (although I do have a very strong spice palate).
Photo credit: bombayreport.com
Nu takes me to an open air venue called Cafe Cotinga, not far from the world famous Anjuna Beach, so renowned for its parties that there's a record label named after it. Cotinga oozes class, with an airy socialite vibe reminiscent of Pike’s Hotel in Ibiza. A sprawling outdoor dining area features a small stage and a bar, populated by Goa’s young and beautiful, with a smattering of eccentric expats. I meet one girl from somewhere in Eastern Europe with a huge mountain of blonde dreadlocks tied up into a bun, balancing on top of her head like a gigantic turban. She introduces herself to me as “Gorgonzola”.
Cafe Cotinga. Photo credit: TripAdvisor
The drink prices are steep; I pay 750 rupees for a whisky (about £7.50). Despite this, everyone is wasted. Nu simply walks in with her can of Bira, and regularly returns to her car to grab another. No-one says anything about it.
Nu had promised me techno music. Instead, there’s a 2 piece rock band on the stage; a bass guitarist and a singer with a voice that sounds uncannily like Jim Morrison of the Doors. He also plays chords on a heavily distorted electric keyboard. Luckily for me, I'm a lover of a vast variety of musical genres. The band is unreal.
Nu clearly isn't particularly interested in hanging out with me, which is fine. She gravitates towards a few of her friends, while I simply absorb the fascinating crowd and mingle with randoms. The people you meet in clubs and bars in India are very, very different to the people you meet on the streets during the daytime. It's chalk and cheese.
When the first band finishes, another rock band – a more conventional 3 piece this time – plays for a couple of hours on another stage in a room inside. They are also amazing, and I dance away happily on my own until they finish at about midnight.
At this point, I haven't seen Nu for a while, and I presume that she's left. So I wander outside to try to figure out how on earth I'm going to get back to Calangute, when I bump into her. She is fucking wasted. “Let's go”, she slurs. I know that getting in the car with her is an awful idea, but it seems to be my only option. I follow as she drunkenly struts back to her car, praying to the road safety gods that I make it in one piece.
The drive is, as you can imagine, terrifying. Bouncing along a pockmarked jungle road in Nu's little hatchback, with her reacting late and subsequently jerking the wheel at every corner, I try to make peace with the idea that I may not make it back to my hostel unscathed. I'd offer to drive, but I'm not the most sober person in the world either, right now; although I do consider it when she almost sideswipes a car passing in the opposite direction. When she finally pulls up outside the hostel, I let out a huge sigh of relief, before dashing out of the car and straight to bed, where it takes me a good while to calm myself down before I can get to sleep.
What a night.