Anjuna Beach

I had come to Goa expecting to see Ibiza with a ritualistic, hippie and tie died twist. Gap year students and frazzle haired longstayers, pounding music and henna tattoos, heonistic and plastic and mildly stupid all at once.
So this evening, it being Friday, I decided to brave the beaches to see what the massed rows of bars that sentry the edge of it would offer up. Trance I presumed, and probably fire poi and dreadlocks and other such things. On arriving however I was non plussed, the beaches were all but deserted - the odd straggler and a couple of quietly speaking huddles of locals aside - and the bars mostly empty. A few had a bit of a gathering going, twenty or thirty folks in little groups chatting but nowhere near full. A couple of the establishments forlornly blazed green lazers out into the night sky, calling out to Batman or whoever to bring the punters in.
As I walked the beach front I found more of the same, hundereds of empty seats and dozens of aimless and bored waiting staff. It seemed somehow cruel that a beach this pure and a sky so clear and a man such as myself so willing to open my mind to hedonistic and titillating adventure should be so uttely wasted. It is th high season damnit! To stave off depression I rationalised that I had a very good meal (as all my meals have been) and a pleasent walk around town, and that I could just go home and do a bit of reading.
And then, just as I turned into the homeward stretch 2km up the beach a siren call drifted up into the night air. The amplified sounds of blues guitar heavily distorted walking a frenteic beat, accompanied by the wailing of an electric lead. Oh this was Anjuna I recalled, and this was where part of the sixties happend - nudist beach and acid and all. So I thought as I hurried hopefully, surely this was a group highly attractive young people with flowers in their hair and love in their hearts gathered to witness a jam, carrying the baton onward from their forebears.
I followed a sounds and a path to find The Searock Tavern, a wide squat building of blue concrete and densely packed with people that sits on the Cliff at the north end of the beach. It turned out that there were flowers, and from the enthusiastic jiggling and swaying and clapping I could feel true open heartedness, so my hopes in part had been answered. But these were no young people, no new hippie progeny. These were old young people, the same people as in the sixties, their spirits in stasis yet there bodis withering throught time. But wow - they were still here! Or had come back on holiday...
A crowd of Mick Jaggers and Joanna Lumley's sat and drank and smoked and crowed. Skin seared and pallored by thirty years of sun worship and a lifetime of smoking, hair thinining and tied by bandannas. Immediately it was obvious that a youth speant listening to the Grateful Dead does nothing for teaching you how to dance in time.
Yet this was the undisputed party champion of the strip. Dozens whooping and hollering, the crowd spilling out onto the street beyond, there was real energy in the air. And the music was good, very good, a duo lead by an emaciated and hunched guy with a husky voice treading a line between the Doors and Hendrix. At one point a guy with a trumpet came on and they started doing some latino numbers.  A couple of ladies who looked at least 60 writhed on the dancefloor. I stuck around for a beer or two and had fun soaking up the undimmed passion of it all.
Still, it being a Friday, I could have murdered a bit of drum and bass....