Far out of the purple haze Telegraph.co.uk Goa, long known as a charming but shambolic hippie haven, also does a nice line in refinement for the discerning visitor, says Gavin Bell. (Filed: 18/02/2006)
Goa basics They must have thought they had discovered nirvana. When the first hippies drifted into Goa in the 1960s in a jangle of beads and bangles, they found themselves embraced by a land of endless unspoilt beaches, easy-going locals and plentiful ganja. Flower power was in the air, love was free and home was a bamboo shack among the palms. Of course they couldn't keep their haven a secret for long. Backpackers turned up and news spread of the gentle people, spicescented air and soft, moonlit nights. Eventually, in 1985 the first direct charter flight from Britain touched down at a little airport run by the Indian Navy beside the Mandovi River. In the past 20 years package tourism has transformed the sleepy villages and hippie communes north of the Mandovi into the Costa del Goa, an unremitting concrete strip of wall-to-wall bars, restaurants and lowrise, low-cost hotels and guest houses. But south of the broad, sluggish water lies a more peaceful world, where a few five-star resorts cater for a clientele keener on chilling than raving. Here the ethos is upmarket hippiedom, a return to the nirvana of the 1960s but with luxurious suites and attentive staff for those prepared to pay for them. Around these beachfront retreats is the amiable chaos of arguably the most laid-back and charming people in the whole of India. Goa's split personality was news to me. Friends who have been disappearing there every winter for the past 20 years omitted to mention it, so it was more by good luck than judgement that my partner Claire and I found ourselves in the comfort of the Park Hyatt resort on Arossim Beach. As a former foreign correspondent, who was briefly based in Delhi, I am fully aware of the importance of good accommodation in hot, dusty countries where Delhi belly is endemic. I am all for exploring off the beaten tracks, jungle bashing and river rafting and so on, but give me a cool, clean room at the end of the day, throw in a sundowner by the pool, and I am a happy man. My days of purplehaze beach raves are over. The first impression of Goa is of beaches like infinity pools. They stretch to the horizon in a broad unbroken swathe of soft palm-fringed sand and the surf of the Arabian Sea. The difference between north and south Goa is that in the south you can actually see the beaches. In popular stretches of the north they are buried beneath bars and bodies, with any gaps filled by hawkers carrying half of Mumbai's annual production of saris and T-shirts. By contrast, in the south the beach shacks are few and far between, and there are acres of space for barefoot cricket, cantering horses and outrigger fishing canoes. This is the place to sit and stare at the endless swells of the sea and ponder life's great mysteries - such as where to have dinner. Our first night was a no-brainer. On a recommendation we headed for Zeebop, a classy beach shack 10 minutes' stroll from the Hyatt. En route an enterprising restaurateur tried to tempt us into his establishment by setting off fireworks around it, but we were not to be diverted. We had been told about the prawns piri-piri at Zeebop. And they were every bit as good as we had been promised. Scrumptiously hot and spicy prawns were followed by a vegetable masala and accompanied by Indian beer, all for a fiver, as we sat barefoot in the sand beneath coloured lanterns swaying in a warm breeze. In an extravagant finale, Venus appeared in perfect symmetry with a crescent moon in the inky sky. We accorded them a standing ovation on the way home, while gingerly avoiding a chap waving cheerily to us as he puttered around the beach on an ancient motorbike. After the beaches, the thing that really strikes you in Goa is that people smile all the time - easily and unaffectedly, signalling a happy disposition best summed up by the concept of socegado. The word comes from the Portuguese, meaning quiet, but has been adopted as a catchphrase for the Goan philosophy of "don't worry, be happy". On the 25th anniversary of Goa's independence from Portugal, the then Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi , observed that "an inherent non-acquisitiveness and contentment with what one has, described by that uniquely Goan word socegado, has been an enduring strength of Goan character". There was lots of socegado on display when we visited the remnants of a once-magnificent colonial city - along with tens of thousands of pilgrims who had come to celebrate the life of Goa's patron saint on the holiest day of the local Catholic calendar. In the 16th century the Portuguese built a city on the banks of the Mandovi River that was said to rival Lisbon in magnificence, with missionaries vying with each other to erect the grandest churches and cathedrals. Great idea, wrong place: within a century cholera had wiped out half the population and forced the survivors to flee to a new capital downriver. Today, all that remains of Old Goa is a handful of churches and convents - an open-air museum that is decaying quietly in the tropical heat. On one day a year, on December 3, it comes spectacularly to life for the Feast of St Francis Xavier, which also happened to be the day we decided to visit. Think of a Delhi traffic jam diverted on to rural country roads and you have a picture of the mayhem of cars, trucks, buses and mopeds carrying entire families dressed in their Sunday best that converges on Old Goa on St Francis' big day. Stalls selling everything from saris to screwdrivers had been set out, and everybody was smiling and having a good time. A huge queue of pilgrims hoping for a brief glimpse of the mortal remains of their saint snaked around the Basilica of Bom Jesus. After the glass coffin of St Francis had been reverently touched there were picnics on the lawns and rides on a dodgy-looking ferris wheel. Two hours' drive south from the state capital, Panaji, is the region of Canacona. Here the land is wilder and the villages smaller; hills are cloaked by forests of cashew trees and palm plantations, and dirt tracks lead to deserted beaches. On Cola Beach - one of Goa's longest, although, strangely, it rarely appears on a map - a track leads to an encampment of Rajasthani tents, equipped with rustic mod cons. At one end of the bay a small river making a valiant attempt to reach the sea, is blocked by a sandbar, and eventually finds a way around it in shallow stream. The resultant fresh water lake framed by lush vegetation is the kind of place where Adam might have expected to find Eve. While lounging in this idyll, we saw a couple of local Eves strolling among the trees, one carrying a pink plastic bucket on her head and the other a blue stone jar that matched the colours of the saris they were wearing. As a duet they were poetry in motion, a vision of grace and beauty illuminated by flashing smiles as they passed us. There is little to do on Cola Beach but stroll in the shallows, explore rock pools and be mesmerised by breaking waves. At night you can watch village lads performing a maypole dance around a camp fire, and in the morning you can see their fathers casting fishing nets in the shallows. If you wish, one of them will take you out in his canoe to watch dolphins cavorting in the bay. Then it's time to pack up and head north again, having done not very much and feeling better for it. Not doing much is one of the great lures of Goa. It is an essential part of overnight excursions on the houseboat Floating Palace, which cruises up a saltwater tributary of the Mandovi River into the tranquil heart of the province. The curiously shaped boat, constructed of wood and bamboo, with just four cabins, feels like a floating hobbit house. Our sedate progress past a bird sanctuary gave us time to admire a succession of herons, sandpipers and kingfishers, and watch dogfights between crows and Brahmani kites, which I am happy to say the latter usually won. Upriver there were men building temples and catching fish, children singing in village schools, and butterflies hitching rides on our aft deck. Observing all of this from an open lounge amidships, with my bottom comfortably on an old cane chair, I felt like a character from one of the novels of Rudyard Kipling. In fact, I had glimpsed vestiges of a way of life familiar to Kipling that is gradually disappearing. Visions of it may be seen at Ancestral Goa, a kind of open-air Madame Tussaud's in the village of Loutolim , where life-size models of farmers, cobblers and basket weavers act out scenes of rural 19th-century life. The display is the creation of Maendra Alvares, an artist and owner of an advertising agency, who regrets the passing of old traditions. "In Goa it is happening very fast. People want to copy Western ways," he says. "Cultural values and the dignity of labour are being forgotten. The young man who opts for computers rather than carpentry doesn't know he is losing something that has been in his family for generations." But modern-day India still has women labouring in rice paddies, chariots of Hindu gods swaying in religious processions, and market towns that are defiantly dusty, demented and delapidated. In the north you might see a hippie ambling down a country road on an elephant, being overtaken by a free-spirited biker on a Royal Enfield, red bandana around the head in approved Easy Riders fashion. In the south I took a gentler route to nirvana, via an ayurvedic massage in a bamboo beach shack. I vaguely recall the scent of coconut and sesame oil, a chorus of birdsong and booming surf, and a jolly green dance mask on the wall that seemed to be wearing sunglasses. Strolling back to my hotel at sunset, sensing a rare lightness of being, I was aware that I had a beatific smile on my face. Peace and socegado. Goa basics Gavin Bell travelled with Jewel in the Crown (01293 533338, www.jewelholidays.com), which offers a week's b&b in the Park Hyatt Goa Resort & Spa from £909 per person based on two sharing, and two weeks from £1,335 , including charter flights on Monarch from Gatwick or Manchester and transfers. An overnight excursion up the Mandovi River on the Floating Palace houseboat can be booked through the hotel, on arrival, for about £72 per person. Zeebop is on Utorda Beach (0832 275 5333). Ancestral Goa, Loutolim (0832 777 034, www.ancestralgoa.com), is open daily, 10am-6pm. When to go Late October to February is best for blue skies, warm but not oppressively hot days, and calm seas. Guidebook Footprint Goa by Annie Dare (£12.99) ~(^^)~ Avelino
