Shirley Mancino's Travel in India

"Gujurat Fish Vendor" new painting by Shirley Mancino

Excerpt from Shirley's travel notes in India
Mandrem and Panaji Goa, Jan 06-09
Flying Dolphins, cobras, pigs, and falling coconuts
We sit on the beach and watch the dolphins leap right out of the water. Foreigners were invited to view a cobra which had fallen into an open holding tank and couldn't get out.We didn't see any and haven't encountered any since. We do have pigs that snuffle around our house and sometimes wake us up in the night.They do eat pork here but so far we have not been able to order any.

Death by coconut
We are staying in a cement and brick house but we regularly hear coconuts and big coconut branches falling from the sky and exploding on our roof. Apparently, on other beaches, young foreigners get drunk or high on other substances and go sleep it off under the coconut palms...some never wake up. Getting hit is a regular occurrence.

Flying Security
There was apparently a threat against Goa at Xmas and New Year (we never experienced anything untoward) but we did have navy helicopters, coast guard aircraft and rapid deployment army units patrolling the area. We also saw a sandbag bunker on the beach at Arampol and apparently at other major beaches and road junctions. Beach parties and night markets were cancelled. The Taj hotels and other major hotels were double checking luggage and hand bags of every customer who came thru their doors. Needless to say, this scared away many visitors, tourism is down 50 % so everything is nice and quiet for us and people are hungry to rent out at cheap rates. We have been very well treated by all the locals in this little place.

Christmas eve, we attended a blow out dinner with a bunch of Swedes, Danes and Brits.We had 6 kinds of fish and tandori chicken plus appetizers and 5 different desserts.We stuffed ourselves,then discovered that the bill was $55 USD. Were we surprised! We have also found some local wine and cheese and have been imbibing a little....their rum/whiskey is much better. We had our house cleaned for 150 R...about $3.00 and beach towels are laundered for about 20 cents.
I have completed about 14 paintings and am happy with most of them.
Shirley Mancino.
Images of new paintings by Shirley Mancino below "Ganga Mendicant" and "Rajkot Pipe Smoker". Shirley is a professional artist from Westport Ontario represented by Tay River Gallery in Perth.