Goa, Gone--My Visit to the Indian Resort Epicenter

Despite the title of this post, I'm very positive about Goa, my recent solo destination and quite a passable working environment while Misha was in much cooler climes on a business trip in Europe.

This former Portuguese colony only reverted to India in 1961 and maintains much higher standards of housing stock (the Latinate villas are not crumbling like they are in Bombay's Bandra, where we live), cleaner roads, and general tourist infrastructure. Speaking of the latter, however, I was lucky to visit its most crowded beaches outside of the tourist season, which meant that 80 percent of all the restaurants, shops, etc. were closed (including one store with the intriguing name Original Fakes, which I was mildly curious about--is it Goa's Chinatown?), and not every face was white.

The state of Goa has lovely beaches that emerge out of the jungle, great Baroque churches from the 16th and 17th centuries--and some elaborate Rococo ones from the 18th--and a Mediterranean, lost-in-time feel to its capitals, Old Goa and Panjim. It also has great seafood, many pork dishes that were brought over from Spain and Portugal, and some unique desserts, such as the delicious bebinca, a 16-layer pudding made of flour, sugar, coconut milk and ghee (the local clarified butter, apparently deadlier than its Western cousin).

If you can rent a moped--the main mode of transportation here--get some wind in your hair to stave off the omnipresent heat and humidity, and escape the New York transport prices and the tourist industry Lotharios offering you anything from a tour of the spice plantation to a date, you're in luck.

The photographs here are of two private mansions (on the right is the private church of a respected and wealthy member of the community in North Goa, called Dr. Monteiros) and the many churches (Church of St. Francis, Se Cathedral and Basilica de Bom Jesus) of Old Goa--a town that was once greater than Lisbon.

Incidentally, I did not see a single local parishioner at any of these although there were people praying at a miraculous cross on the roadside and there is definitely a belief in the curative power of religion, as my landlady told me. Yet most of the local population is now actually Hindu and ethnically Indian because of the post-1961 migration. Those mestizzo ladies in flowery, robe-like Portuguese dresses are there, but outnumbered by saree-wearers.

Goa is definitely more than just a resort and the authenticity is there, but, when the tourist season gets going (late October to March) one has to escape the madding crowds into its less populated regions to get a feel for what the place used to be like before the tourist boom of the 1990s--and the Indianization of 1961.