It was a beautiful evening in the coastal town Malvan, and we were sitting at Chivala beach watching the sunset. Early on we had befriended a local fisherman named Bhi and we would see him working every day when we went to the beach. He barely spoke any english and we didn't speak any of his local language but that didn't stop us from having a good time.
As we watched the sunset and sipped our freshly opened ice cold King Fishers, we heard a motorcycle pull up. It was our friend! He wanted to take us on an adventure but we had just opened our beers so we almost said no. But finally after some convincing, we agreed to go.
We finished our beers and the two of us hopped on the back of his motorcycle. This might sound crazy outside of India but we've easily seen 4-5 people on one bike so this was actually quite comfortable.
First he took us to an amazing view point where we finished watching the sunset. A place we never would have found on our own so thanks for that Bhi! But after that he took us somewhere even better.
His bike pulled over on the side of the road and we had no idea where we were. The only thing we saw was a tiny makeshift shack. We went inside and there was a group of men sitting on the floor clearly having a good time. "Coconut juice!" they said enthusiastically. We decided to take a sip and it was absolutely delicious. It clearly tasted fermented so we asked if there was alcohol in it. "NO!" the men said in unison. But after hearing them later call it "slow poison", and doing a little research we later learned it was definitely alcoholic. They must have meant there was no ADDED alcohol.
The drink is formally called Madi, which you can read more about here, but we definitely prefer "coconut juice" :)
