I am sore this morning. My upper arms have had a work out for the first time in about ten years. At dawn yesterday we were driven to the Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary, about nine km east of Palolem. We arrived just after the dawn with the most disinterested taxi driver in the history of tourism. Anthony’s only contribution to our trip was ‘I don’t know’. He took us deep into the virgin forest, thick with lianas, loud with bird song (‘I don’t know’), and then parked the car. We were ushered on to a trail, and dressed totally inappropriately in a long dress and flip-flops; I soon understood why you should NEVER enter a tropical rainforest in flip-flops.

I stopped to snap an elegant spider’s lair,

when suddenly my feet were moving in giant ants and I was bitten ferociously. I believe in Africa, boys are supposed to put their hands into an ant’s nest to prove their manhood; well’ all I can say is that I totally failed the womanhood test. The pain was red hot and went on and on and on. Anthony knowledgably informed me, ‘ants’.

So much for staring around for a sight of possible leopards, cobras or monkeys. All I saw was the forest floor and leaves and twisted roots and fallen branches.

After about a mile and a half we reached a clearing and a giant tree that had an iron ladder leading straight up 100m to a bird/animal watching lookout tower. Anthony told us to ‘get up there’. We did. Two elderly folk (!), and it was like climbing up to the Big Top in the circus.

The ladder went on and on, and I just concentrated on one rung at a time.

At the very top, it went totally vertical and then suddenly we were on the top of the canopy and the forest stretched on for miles.

I thought of David Attenborough communing with nature up so high, and I felt frustrated that we didn’t have a good guide like Shiva who would have identified the animal calls and point out elusive feathers hiding in the leaves. We have been spoilt with such a good teacher, and I missed him dreadfully.

Needless to say we got down after seeing nothing. All the monkeys and blazingly plumed birds were invisible, only the distant cries let us know they were there. I got two more vicious bites on the way back from the marauding armies of ants.

After two weeks here in Benaulim, we were getting restless. So, we packed our little bags and headed south to Agonda. It was fun, like going on holiday! We booked into a charming room high up in the palm trees, and discovered the most beautiful horseshoe beach fringed with coconut palms.

It was quiet, and we settled down on our recliners to read. I was quite disconcerted to see the lady next to me suddenly stand on her head, legs splayed, deeply into her yoga. It would have been fine, if she hadn’t been wearing a thong.

Later we walked along the inevitable street with the same jewels, the same scarves and dresses, and the same strident commands, ‘Come and look, look inside, cheap as chips,’ as we see everywhere.

The one different thing was a restaurant shack with the name: La Dolce Vita. Oh my, after five weeks of curries, it was heaven on earth to taste garlic and basil and olive oil! We gorged on bruschetta and pizza.

Later as the sun set we stopped on the beach at a shack for a Honeybee brandy and a G&T. We were attended to by Lilat: ‘It is completely my pleasure to serve you’.

We asked if we might have some cashews (Goa being the main grower of the nut) and he said he would check the price and tell us as they might be expensive, so John said not to bother. Lilat then began to sweep the beach. He smoothed it until it was immaculate, rather like himself. He was tall and slender with bookish glasses. I asked him where he was from and he was delighted to tell us, but only after serving the cashews, which had been pan fried so were hot and delicious. Lucky he did bother after all!

This was Lilat’s first foray into the tourist business. He is from the far north of India, in Ladakh, way up near the Himalayas. Due to an accident in the family that happened in Gujerat (he didn’t go into detail) he is being forced to seek employment. But his real hopes lie in the application he has sent for becoming a health coordinator. A job in government service would be his ideal. Meanwhile it has begun to snow in his village, he informed us, and he will work in the Agonda beach shack until March when he will go home and arrange his son, little Shiva’s first birthday party. 1500 people will attend, so there is much to see to. Not only all his village are coming but all the neighbouring ones as well. John and I were suitable impressed and were secretly wondering if we were in the company of a prince.

Lilat had an arranged marriage, but he told us that he is truly blessed with his wife, who is very able and manages everything, and ‘I am very humble to her’. They had nine hundred guests for their wedding. When we left him, sweeping his portion of the beach, other customers were afraid of spoiling the smooth sand, but Lilat just smiled and welcomed them in, knowing that his broom will soon smooth away their footprints.

From gentle Agonda, we made for Palolem, and suddenly it was as though we had been kick-started into the holiday mood. Young people were everywhere, dreadlocks, tattoos, bikinis, and backpacks. Palolem’s street vendors were neck by jowl selling pleadingly, ‘Please look, come inside, just looking, why don’t you – cheap as chips’.

We stayed in Ciarin’s hotel, set on the beach, with pretty little huts dotted under palm trees, around a lush garden. I fell asleep in a hammock all afternoon,

before exploring the beach, which was alive with the Christmas rush of holidaymakers, busy with boat hiring and Frisbee throwing. It was hectic, touristy, but not so charming.

John took a snap of one young yoga boy, busy meditating in the middle of a football game.

We walked to the end of the crescent bay and watched the sun turn peach and purple and the rocks and palms were just black and ancient and timeless.

In the evening we sat by candlelight and listened to a young lad serenade us on his guitar. Guests sat in sarongs with bare feet.

Today it is good to be back to the calmness of Benaulim. Here we are treated more kindly on the beach. We are served lime sodas, offered sun shades, and there is less of a frenetic feeling.

We only have a few days left, so a walk up the beach to have grilled snapper is a must, a haircut for £5 for me is a must, and I am just thrilled to bits with my new crown to my front tooth, which is just perfect and cost £100. I sat in the chair as she drilled, listening to ‘We three kings’, and ‘Come all ye faithful’. In the dentist’s sitting room John was seated next to a flashing Christmas tree. My tooth is perfect.

By chance we came upon Shiva, the great Bird Watcher Extraordinaire, as we stepped out to have dinner. We ‘high fived’ about a million times and he coaxed us to have one last foray out at dawn to see the birds. How could we resist?

As the dawn streaked the sky, we passed the Tamarind tree and a bush that provides a tincture of iodine;

we were already being treated to the great teacher’s knowledge, and it was lovely to hear the nightingale and the shrike (difficult to ‘suss’, apparently).

For the first time we saw minute flowerpecker birds,

like large bumble bees, flitting in the branches, and Shiva gave us a short definition of happiness.

‘When you are with someone you like, and they like you, you feel as though you have come home.’

And he went on, ‘You are happy as and when. You freeze with excitement at a wonderful sight, like a rare bird, seldom seen, but then it flies away – and you move on. You just get moments of happiness in a sea of sorrow.’

Shiva was very intent on telling me that John is a true gentleman. ‘Birds and insects fight, not like John – he is a gentleman.’ We heard that the common crow is a vehicle of the god, Saturn, and they are renowned for taking away the souls of the dead. In all cultures they are depicted with death, and I seem to remember O Henry writing a story about a raven (member of the crow family), and there were a flock of crows gathering around the death scene of Zorba the Greek. But here in India I associate them with fun, with lovely skipping jumps around the tide line, their funny poses on flag poles. Mind you, just the other day we watched a flock bring down a kite, chasing it relentlessly for a fish it had caught.

We saw so many birds, including a family of peacocks, and many that we had seen before. Pippets, white bellied sea eagles and marsh harriers, large pied bush chats, red wattled lapwings and the yellow banyan weavers.

I saw again two golden orioles, black whiskered bulbuls  and a white rumped munia.

But it was the birds that were here for their holidays that I was amazed with. We saw starlings and larks, but the large pied wagtail was the star,

it had flown 8300km from the Khasak Republic and had flown all the way from the Steppes of Europe. It sang like a bush chat.

So cormorants, egrets, mynahs, bee eaters and white ibis. All the beautiful creatures and Shiva knew them all; he could identify them by their songs and it was truly like being on a higher plain. We followed behind him, and looked through our binoculars, and followed the flock of blue rock pigeons, metallic purple in the sunrise, and Shiva shouted, ‘You know these? They shite on statues in the cities, big problems, just shite, shite and shite!’

Gentleman John and I just looked at each other and tried not to laugh.

And the sun rose in all its splendour.

Today, John is off at the Men’s Salon again, for a haircut and wet shave. Sadly our time is nearly over and we shall have to say goodbye to samosas for breakfast, and this beautiful garden that we look out upon. We shall miss the fishermen bringing in their nets and the flower seller in the street.

It has all been so colourful, and every time you blink you record a memory.

I am again saying Farewell to India, but who knows?

It is hard to leave.