As we enter into the winter holiday season, I find myself looking back to some of the unusual places where I have spent past Christmases. The first that comes to mind is Goa, India, in the mid-1970s. I had spent the summer hitchhiking around Europe; as I was enjoying Greece late in August, wondering what I should do next, knowing that the hot weather would soon wane, I began to hear of other young budget travelers heading across the Middle East to the Indian Subcontinent. This was in the days when the Overland Trail, also known as the Hippie Trail, was still open, and you could travel by hitchhiking or on cheap public transportation across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan all the way to India and beyond.

The idea deeply appealed to me. I had come this far partially due to the example of literary progenitors such as Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller. They had got as far as Europe, but if I struck out farther east, I’d be accomplishing something that even they had never attempted. The problem was that I’d almost run out of money. So I first hitchhiked back up to a friend’s place in Holland, where I worked in factories for a couple of weeks and saved up two hundred dollars. I then set out on my journey through Holland, Germany, Austria, and communist Yugoslavia and Bulgaria to the Turkish border. I managed to hitchhike with European truckers all the way to Kandahar in Afghanistan before I switched to buses and trains. By the time I made it to Bombay (what Mumbai in India was then known as) I had heard from numerous travelers that they were headed for Goa to celebrate Christmas. Goa was on the coast south of Bombay, and because it had been a Portuguese colony, there was still a strong Catholic influence.

And so, as Christmas approached, I found myself in a warm tropical paradise with incomparable sand beaches, coconut palms lining the shores, unimaginably beautiful sunsets, and friendly welcoming people. Oh, and quite a few of the foreign women would sunbathe in the nude, oblivious to the crowds of Goans who would observe them from polite distances. It wasn’t exactly the white Christmas that Bing Crosby sings about, unless you count the color of the sand on the beaches, but it bustled with activity and its own version of holiday cheer. The accommodations and food were dirt cheap, and many Goans were eager to extend hospitality to the foreigners who had come for the season.

All went well for several days. However, it was on Christmas morning, as I recall, that I was strolling from the room in a thatched hut I shared with several other foreigners to the seashore when I passed a shack with a makeshift kitchen where a Goan was preparing and selling masala dosa. These are folded-over pancakes with potato curry inside, and when they are prepared properly, as these were, they are delicious. I had three, and then continued on my way to the beach. I did not, however, account for the cook’s lack of sanitary precautions. Later in the day, I began to feel uneasy, and not long afterwards, my stomach erupted in pain. For the next three days I lay on my bed too weak to move, except to make frequent trips to the outhouse, where the resident pig waited underneath to noisily consume whatever I discharged. Finally one of my roommates called an Indian doctor, who stabbed me in the ass with a needle-full of what I presumed was penicillin. I was soon able to travel again, although my stomach was tender for several days.

All in all, despite the malady, my Christmas in Goa was a wonderful interlude. After all, as a budget traveler on the Subcontinent I expected to catch some sort of illness now and again. It was one of the prices I paid for a glorious adventure, and it was well worth it.