Dec 25th to Jan 5th Beginnings - Spending A Few Days in Goa

At Reis Magos Fort

Cattle on the beach

So I arrived with my parents on a long flight from Manchester via Abu Dhabi. Horrendous journey due to heavy mist over Goa, which meant the aircraft couldn't land so we were rerouted to Mumbai, where we sat on the runway for 4 hours before it was deemed safe enough to fly and land at Goa. So we ended up arriving in Goa around 8 hours or so later than intended, which was exhausting and meant we were kind of washed out for the next couple of days. But the staff in the hotel were extremely kind and helpful, and gave us some useful tips about the places to go during our stay.

Our arrival coincided with an attempt by the Indian government to reduce the amount of so-called 'black money' (i.e. monies that have not been taxed) in the economy by suddenly taking out of circulation high denomination banknotes. This announcement had been made in November, but the effects were felt for a number of weeks. People were provided with a narrow window in which to deposit their 'old' 500 and 1000 rupee notes into their bank accounts, or to exchange their 'old' notes for new ones and I suppose the plan was that people would be deterred from turning up to their banks to deposit huge sums of money that had been loitering under their beds for fear of having to explain where it had come from, given their declared earnings.

There had been large queues at the banks for a few weeks, and although this had subsided by the time we had arrived, there was still a big shortage of cash as the banks hadn't been issued with sufficient new notes. So we found ourselves in a kind of Kafkaesque scenario where we couldn't buy things as nobody seemed able to provide change! The government also severely limited cash withdrawals to around 4000 rupees per day and this was dispensed in shiny new 2000 rupee notes, which didn't help! So we spent the first few days shuffling from one ATM to another with other tourists and locals trying to find one that would dispense cash.

Most of the tradesmen in Goa we spoke to, despite acknowledging the problems this had created for their businesses, had only good things to say about Prime Minister Modi. It seem he is seen as some kind of man of the people in standing up to the corrupt practices of the rich and powerful and sticking up for the little guy, and his own humble origins is a significant advantage and appears to play well to the masses. Or is it just a cynical ploy to get the people on his side before the crucial state elections in the spring? Who knows. There have been some infrastructural improvements in recent years, with local people telling us how much the roads in particular had improved, and these were regarded as valuable.

Mixed thoughts on Goa, some lovely beaches like Siquerim and Candolim, as well as Morjim and Anjuna. But there was a sense that tourism had not been as controlled as it might have been, with a number of international-standard hotels like Radissson springing up, and you wondered what the impact would be on the local ecosystem of what are essentially a series of small coastal resorts given the huge demand for water that such hotels demand?. A common refrain from taxi drivers and other locals was of how much the place had changed in recent years, and if only we had visited a few years ago we would have seen the "real" Goa of palm trees and not much else and how fewer people worked on the land now as greater numbers of Goans are drawn into tourism.

The most vivid beach was probably Ozran Heights, a lovely place to look down to and enjoy the sunset from a Greek restaurant, Thallasa, on New Years Eve followed by a late trip to the Saturday night market, which was a bit of a let-down after all the hype. Food-wise we found a fantastic vegetarian restaurant near the hotel - 'Varsha' - that became a staple for us in Goa, just the most fabulous Punjabi and South Indian food completely off the tourist trail. The owner, who had run a big kitchen out in Dubai for 8 years, was justifiably proud of the place.

Reis Magos fort was another lovely place to visit. The place had been recently restored to how it was in the 1850s based on a series of drawings from that time, and had a lot of information about the history of Portuguese settlement in Goa. Amazing how the historic occupations of these forts tell their own stories of one era of political and religious domination being supplanted by another. Today the landscape of Goa seems to be a happy cultural / religious mix, with Hindu temples and Christian churches blending comfortably in the more urban areas. The political parties did not seem to be split along ethnic or religious lines, which was good to see.

I was surprised at how many Russian tourists there were, zipping around on their scooters, and I wondered what they made of it all with the cattle and dogs ambling around on the beaches. Certainly seemed like a home from home for them, with restaurant menus printed in English and Russian. All a bit bizarre.

Varieties of rice for sale at Mapusa market

Verdant landscapes