Goa Travel Guide
Nirvana for dropouts, flower children, and New Age travelers since the late 1960s, Goa's hippie invasion peaked in the '70s, when Anjuna Beach became a rocking venue for party demons and naturalists who would sell their last piece of clothing at the local flea market for just enough cash to buy more dope and extend their stay. For many, Goa still conjures up images of all-night parties and tripping hippies sauntering along sun-soaked beaches. But there is more to the tiny western state than sea and sand, coconut palms, and hedonists. A living museum of colonization, Goa is a rich amalgam of Portuguese and Indian influences. The Portuguese arrived in 1498 and stayed for almost 500 years (kicked out, finally, in 1961 -- the last Europeans to withdraw from the subcontinent), leaving an indelible impression on the local population and landscape. One in every three Goans is Catholic, and you'll meet Portuguese-speaking Mirandas, da Sousas, and Braganzas, their ancestors renamed by the colonial priests who converted them, often by force. Garden Hindu shrines stand cheek-by-jowl with holy crosses, and the local vindaloo (curry) is made with pork. Dotted among the palm groves and rice fields are dainty villas bearing European coats of arms and imposing mansions with wrought-iron gates -- built not only for European gentry but for the Brahmins who, by converting, earned the right to own land.
Today, Goa is colonized every winter by white-skinned tourists here to indulge in the rather commercialized trance culture, joined increasingly by loud middle-class puppies (children of yuppies) from Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore. While local farmers still plough their mud-soaked paddy fields with water buffalo, hip youngsters cruise from beach to beach, legs wrapped around cheap motorbikes, credit cards tucked into their Diesel jeans. Goa is very much "India Light," a cosmopolitan tourist-oriented place of five-star resorts, and in many ways this is the perfect introduction to a country that, elsewhere, can be very challenging indeed. Of course, when the crowds arrive, Goa's beaches and markets are anything but tranquil. Sun beds and shacks line the most commercial beaches, and hawkers haggle ceaselessly with droves of fresh-off-the-charter-plane Europeans here to sample paradise at bargain prices. If it's action you're after, you will run into endless opportunities for all-night partying and reckless abandonment, but Goa's true pleasures are found away from the crowds, on the more remote beaches to the far north and south, or on the beaches adjoining expensive luxury resorts. Come for at least 3 days, and you may end up staying for a lifetime -- as a number of very content expats from around the world have done. However you decide to play it, live the local motto -- "sossegarde": "Take it easy."
