What lots of people know about Goa is beach and tourism, and maybe a dash of hippie wannabes, dope and trance music. And they're all here, hippies in the north, charter tourists in the south. And the beaches are beautiful, temperatures fantastic (while it's cold and snowing back in Norway) and life seems good.
But how do the other guys make their living in this little Paradise state of Goa? The answer is, as always in India, a little bit of everything. But the main areas seem to be mining, fishing and shipbuilding.
Iron ore is mined in lots of open works, legal as well as illegal, in the interior. It doesn't look too good, and environmentalists are not too happy, but it pays for a lot of food. The low-grade iron ore is transported down to the nearest river, loaded onto river barges, and taken down to port where it's transferred to the big deep-sea ships, normally bound for Far East.
Tuesday this week I signed on to the "Nitya Sushil" for a trip up the Zuari river to the loading site.
Nitya is, and looks like, an old lady, but she does her job day in, day out.
The captain, Gurudas Naik, suits the ship - not a young man anymore, slow moving and relaxed. And he knows the river as his own pocket.
A long, slow, hot and dusty journey upriver lies ahead.
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