Gone to Goa Stanley Stewart discovers there's much more to India's famous hippie hang-out than full-moon parties, sun-baked Europeans and crowded beaches
GOA, everyone tells me, is spoiled. It is not what it was 20 years ago. It is crowded and noisy. But on the way south to Palolem, winding through the coconut groves, it is so quiet in the depths of a somnambulant afternoon that I feel I could hear the dogs panting on the verandas of the old Portuguese houses. Despite the naysayers, the Indian state of Goa merits a bit of exploration. At Cabo da Rama, I stand on the ruined ramparts of the old fort, watching the swallows dive in the trade winds that bore the Portuguese caravels here 500 years ago. For as far as I can see, the coast looks as pristine as it would have done to those early sailors. A line of surf curls beneath gangly palms where weathered fishing boats are drawn up on the white sands. Goa's equivalent of Surfers Paradise is Calangute, a confusion of concrete hotels, beach bars, souvenir shops and sun lounges adorned with pink Europeans. I get out of Calangute immediately. I want to find the parts of Goa that package tourism has not reached. I didn't expect it to be so easy. I rent a scooter and set off down the back roads. In 20 minutes I am in another world, on a rosewood love seat, in a long gallery of Chinese vases and oyster shell windows, having tea with Mrs Pereira Braganza. The house contains all the finery of a vanished imperial age: glass paintings from China, furniture from Macau, silver from England, marble from Italy. Mrs Pereira Braganza ushers me through the ballroom, beneath the Belgian chandeliers, to the family chapel. "We have a most important relic," she whispers. "The fingernail of StFrancis Xavier." A Portuguese colony, marooned in British India, Goa has always been a place apart. Goans still speak, a trifle disparagingly, about India as if it is a separate country, and Indians as if they are another race. In town squares, where one might expect chai stalls and curry houses, there are small bars and fish stalls. In the palm groves, where one might expect temples and adobe villages, there are white-washed churches and old Portuguese villas with genteel balconies and shuttered windows. Goa is South Asia's Latin Quarter: indulgent, tolerant, capricious, steeped in a tropical lassitude and wedded to the sea. To explain themselves, Goans speak of susegad, a term whose translation depends upon whom you ask. It comes from the Portuguese word socegado, meaning quiet, which doesn't really do it justice. For Goans, susegad identifies a laid-back attitude to life. When I ask Mrs Pereira Braganza for her translation, she replies a trifle disdainfully, "indolence". When I ask her niece, Sharmila, she grins and says, "Relax, take your time, enjoy life, be happy. That's susegad." Susegad must have appealed to the Portuguese, a people inclined to take their time. Within 100 years of their arrival on these fabled shores, they had created one of the richest and finest cities in Asia. It was also one of the most decadent. The sea breezes, the white sands, the tropical languor, that old susegad, conspired to make Goa an oriental fleshpot. Which is where St Francis Xavier came in. Dispatched by the Portuguese king to reverse Goa's moral decline, St Francis spent 10 years in the East before dying of a fever while trying to sneak into China. When the body was returned to Goa, its state of perfect preservation was greeted as a miracle. I go to pay him a visit. He resides in Old Goa, the haunting remnants of the former capital abandoned in the 17th century due to malarial infection. Ensconced in the great Basilica of Bom Jesus in an elaborate tomb donated by the last of the Medicis, St Francis is taken out for public display every 10 years amid hysterical scenes that would not be out of place in medieval Rome. "You have just missed him," the guide shrugs. "They put him back last week. You will have to wait until 2015." "Did he lose any toes?" I ask. The good saint has lost a few body parts. In 1614, his right arm was dispatched to the pope, where it allegedly wrote its name on a pile of papers. The left hand went to Japan, intestines to Southeast Asia, and the Pereira Braganzas are quite proud of their fingernail. But toes have been a fatal attraction. In 1634, a Portuguese noblewoman, presumably deranged by devotion, bit off the little toe of his right foot. She was found out by the trail of blood that led to her house. And on his last outing, in 1995, a deranged devotee bit off the little toe of his left foot. She smuggled it out of the church in her mouth. She was apprehended only when she removed it in the queue for the ferry. Happy in Goa, the Portuguese took their time leaving, lingering in colonial lassitude until 1962. A few years later the hippies arrived on the overland trail to Kathmandu. They, too, were seduced by susegad, a vibe so akin to their own sensibilities that Goa might have been invented for them. For the Goan hippies, a hammock, a good lady, a spliff and a badly tuned guitar were all they required. For a time they had the beaches of Goa to themselves. But eventually word got out and the backpackers arrived, the ravers came for full-moon parties, artists checked in for the marine light and cheap accommodation, and finally tourists arrived. The word got out that Goa had been spoiled. But Goa is only spoiled in the places everyone goes to. Winding through the coconut groves, on the road south to Palolem, I can't see the problem. If this is spoiled, I don't know what we would call Ibiza or Ko Samui or most of the Caribbean. I am following the coast of south Goa, where the beach runs for kilometres, most of it surprisingly empty. Colva is the only spot where too much development has tarnished the Goan paradise. But you can rent a bicycle there and ride north or south along the hard sand at the water's edge to whatever beach bum's ambience suits your mood. North lie Velsao, Arossim, Majorda and Utorda beaches, all broad, flat and gorgeous. Beach shacks cluster around a few resort developments, but otherwise the beaches are yours. South of Colva is Benaulim, where a couple of up-market developments briefly intrude on an otherwise uninterrupted strand of palm trees and fishing boats. The only place to avoid there is the extreme southern end of this endless beach, at Mobor, south of Colva, where too many resorts have made the dunes unlovely. Palolem is one of the latest beaches to acquire a legendary status in Goa. Cradled in a curving bay, between rocky headlands, it is also one of the most picturesque. It is not undiscovered but the travellers there are young and independent and low-key. There are no resorts, only a scattering of bamboo and thatch huts for rent, lots of good beach bars and cafes, and a great laid-back vibe. For seclusion you only need walk south over the rocky headland to the sandy cove of Colomb, where a few long-stay travellers hang out. South again brings you to the lovely sweep of Patnem Beach where a limit on the number of beach shacks has kept the place relatively quiet. Or go north to Agonda Beach, a long pristine strand with only a few places to stay. When I stop for a swim and a stroll on the beach in the late afternoon, I am completely alone. But my favourite Goan destination lies at the other end of the state, at the extreme northern tip. The journey is half the fun. Once across the Chopden estuary, tourism seems to fall away. Along the rural lanes, old farmhouses are enclosed in latticed palm shade. When tourism reappears, on the coast at beaches such as Morjim and Asvem and Mandrem, it is a low-key, relaxed affair with a scattering of beach huts, a few up-market villas buried in coconut groves and hectares of white sand bordering the Arabian Sea. This is what Goa was 20 years ago, the essence of susegad. Beyond Arambol, one of the last great hippie beaches, tourism disappears altogether. The road twists northward through areca palms and banana plantations and rice paddies. The main traffic seems to be pedestrian. Women in saris carry sacks on their heads. Startled roosters dash back and forth across the tarmac. The bread delivery man passes on his bicycle, ringing his bell. On the banks of River Arondem, I find a ferry just large enough for a battered truck, a convoy of schoolchildren, me and my scooter. The north bank of the river is the state of Maharashtra, except for the strategic headland at the river's mouth, which is an outpost of Goa. In this tiny parish of cashew trees and orange blossoms is a single village where, in midafternoon, people and dogs are all deep in siesta. Above the village is a splendid 17th-century fort that has been revived as a small heritage hotel. From the courtyard, unexpectedly occupied by a white church, I climb to the ramparts where there is a modest but elegant cafe with a heart-stopping view of the river, the sea and the shore curving southward in the form of the empty white sands of Querim beach. It is the finest panorama I have seen anywhere on the coast of India. This is Goa as it was not 20 years ago but 100 years ago. This is Goa unspoiled. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16839414%255E35815,00.html