In the sixties and seventies Goa, a small state on the mid western coast of India, was the place to be. Thousands of young people from across the world made their way to Goa in search of spiritual enlightenment and a life of community with other like minded people. The seemingly endless supply of cheap cannabis and other mind altering drugs may also have been a draw.
The ready supply of cannabis is still there and so are some of the original hippies, but the 21st century pilgrims to this part of the world come with less loftier aims and Goa is now rather more the 'kiss me quick' capital of the east.
With three main areas, being the northern beaches, the central state capital Panjim and the southern beaches, Goa still has miles and miles of fabulous beach. Each mile however is now coated with wooden sun loungers underneath umbrellas provided by Coca Cola, Kingfisher beer and other drinks producers. The sea is filled with happy swimmers and jet skis, sometimes in too close a proximity to one another for comfort, and the skies are dotted with paragliders being towed behind speedboats. Behind the loungers are endless beach shacks, wedged cheek by jowl along the entire length of the beach serving food and drinks at reasonable prices.
Visitors are predominantly european, though perhaps a quarter of the tourists here are Indian. The europeans are mainly British, on package tours, and Russians, probably also on packages tourski. The tourists seem to be mainly couples so, thankfully, there are very few small children to irritate me and to disturb my spirit.
The entire focus here seems to be on serving the tourist. There is little evidence of any other commercial activity. There are hundreds, nay thousands of restaurants, hotels, bars, clubs, and discotheques. Alcohol is widely available and relatively inexpensive at about 80p for a pint of beer and about 60p for a large spirit so its unsurprising, if not particularly pleasing, to see people hopping into the grog at 10 o'clock in the morning and staying on it for the remains of the day. There are scores of hawkers and beach vendors that want to sell you anything from a newspaper, to fruit, to pirate DVDs and jewellery. Off the beach every second man is a taxi driver looking for the one fare he needs per day to make a living.
And this, where we are staying, is apparently the more sophisticated part of Goa. We did scamper about 3km up the beach to the 'less sophisticated' part of Calangute's main beach. Never again. It was mayhem. cars, buses and trucks intermingled with thousands of sunburned europeans scrapping over cheap tourist tat in hundreds of little shops. A nightmare. Don't go there.
Which brings us to the tourists themselves. The people that live here must think that all British people are fat and have northern accents. It seems that they almost exclusively come from the northwest or merseyside and the men are, virtually without exception, significantly overweight. The women have finely painted nails and mountains of cellulite. Even the younger women have paunches. On the upside though the 'Brits' seem jovial and good natured, but I do wonder what the locals think of us.
The Russians seem to follow a different pattern. The men are big, but muscular and they almost all seem to have tiny, slender, pretty girls at their sides. They smile rarely.
Then there is Kathy & me. I don't think that we have ever spent so many days doing nothing other than sitting around in the sun, reading books, listening to music and taking it easy. 'Kiss me quick capital of the east' of not, you cannot help but relax here as there is simply nothing else to do. It is fabulous
I've also got a little sunburnt, and put on a few pounds. All I have to do now is to start speaking with a Manchester accent and I'll fit right in!
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