German traveller takes route taken by hippies in 60s The road route taken by the hippies from Germany to reach Anjuna in Goa way back in the 60s was revisited by a German traveller last week to mark the four-decade of the community's arrival in this beach haven.
Niels Melves, 50, along with his wife and two children, arrived in Goa by Volkswagen (VW) Bulli, a car-model that was chot-favourite with the hippies in those days. "Melves travelled for almost a month with his family before touching Goan soil this week," Aurobindo A P G Xavier, President, Indo-German Friendship Society, Goa, said. The German traveller will lead the symbolic motorcade drive from Panaji to Anjuna on December 8 as part of the 3rd German Cultural Week planned in Goa. Hippies from European countries first arrived here sometime in the mid-60s putting Goa on world tourism map. They would take a tedious road route that went through countries like Iraq, Iran and Pakistan before entering Indian territory and then to Goa. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/German-traveller-takes-route-taken-by-hippies-in-60s/720501 * * * 4 Dec, 2010, 06.51PM IST,IANS 'Filthy, expensive Goa no longer attracts German tourists' PANAJI: Goa is no longer a favoured tourist destination for Germans because it is "expensive and dirty", the Indo-German Friendship Society Goa (IGFSG) said on Saturday. Speaking to reporters here at a press conference called to announce a weeklong celebration to mark the arrival of the first German hippies to Goa sixty years ago, IGFSG president Aurobindo Xavier said Goa's inability to tackle the garbage disposal issue had affected Goa-bound tourist traffic from Germany . "A lot of the feedback that the society gets is that Germans no longer want to come here because Goa cannot solve its garbage problem," said Xavier, who teaches at a university in Munich. Garbage and other waste is disposed in the open in Goa, which has no garbage processing plant. Strewn garbage and heaps of litter is an ugly, but common site along the state's roads and near sites of tourist interest. "A lot of German tourists, who have come to Goa in the past, say that it is now time to bid Goa goodbye," he added. The earliest wave of tourism in Goa, which evolved with the coming of the hippies in the 1960s, contained a majority of German tourists who in the 1970s were attracted by the pristine beauty of its beaches. British tourists got the Goa-bug in the early eighties and after a couple of decades, Russians outrank every other nationality when it comes to foreign tourist numbers here. The number of German tourists over the years have witnessed a steady decline, according to Xavier. "The garbage situation and the increase in the number of Russian tourists has led to the decline of German tourists here. Also, other beach destinations like Thailand are much cheaper than Goa," he said. Goa in 2005 received nearly 15,000 German tourists, but the number has shrunk considerably over the last five years, according to Xavier. Goa received 2.4 million tourists annually, out of which nearly half a million are foreigners. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/German-traveller-takes-route-taken-by-hippies-in-60s/720501