A Return to Goa 25 years later

After boarding our overnight train from Mumbai, we awoke in Southern India.  A rattling night on the rails made sleeping not much more than a doze. It was however an improvement on the Amritsar to Agra train we took some weeks ago.

We pulled into Tivim 40 minutes late. We were beginning to think that a late arrival on long-distance trains was the norm.  A 40-minute Tuk Tuk drive into Calangute came with the normal scary traffic moments and a huge dose of Deja Vu.  How could 25 years have passed since we were here last?

For my husband, Goa holds his Heart and always has. He was talked into an ordinary life, by me.  Mortgages and commitments to being a father were never on his radar.  He gave up his dreams, replacing them with mine…. A career and motherhood.  Even now, 25 years later I am not sure I was right.  The passing of time has not made me sure I was right. Financial security over his dreams of travelling the world?

Feeling slightly overwhelmed we checked into the guesthouse which would be our home for the next three days. With some trepidation, we walked down to the beach.  Being October we were ahead of the main tourist season. We also knew our friend from 25 years ago still ran ‘Cafe Roma Beach Shack’.  Google maps, Instagram, Facebook all confirmed it.  But 25 years is a long time. Perhaps we are kidding ourselves that shack owner, Anthony Fernandez would remember us. He would have served thousands of faces over the years. Why would he remember two people who had come every year back in the 1990s?  

We had talked about it for years. My husband had brought with him ‘the hat’ that he famously wore at that time.  Faded and worn but still distinctive and perhaps a magical Time Machine?

Walking down this famous stretch of Goan coastline its beach shacks were in various stages of ‘build’.  All were fighting the sea. Unseasonably high tides would at night sweep away the efforts of the day. 

As we picked out the site of ‘Cafe Roma’, a tall Goan Man walked out to meet us. Remarking that ‘if there is hair under that hat then you are not who I think you are’. Embracing us like the long-lost friends that we were. I was an emotional wreck and within moments there were tears.

Beer (Kingfisher, of course) was produced and a catch-up followed.  Not much pre-season building took place that afternoon or the next three.  We had all lived a lifetime in the missing years.  The young boys who had worked at the shack were now all grown up, married with children of their own.  There were stories to tell. Deaths to report. A new dog to get to know, and regret…….that we hadn’t reached out earlier.  We learned Anthony had held a concern for us over the years. He had wondered why we had stopped coming. He wanted to know if we were okay. 

It was a lesson learned, but too late.  You never really know what impact your presence has on people. If it matters, they will miss you, and you have to let them know how you are.

That first day, sitting in the bar, with its unchanged view. The sun setting over a perfect sea. It was like no time had passed at all. It was the best of surprises and it couldn’t be more perfect. But then Anthony introduced my husband to his friend saying ‘This man has my heart’ and I was blown away.

We returned to the shack many times over the next three days. As we walked the beach from Baga to the Taj Hotel. We dodged showers popping in for beer or a coke. So glad that we had ventured back to Calangute outside of the main tourist season. Giving two old friends time to reconnect.

Of course, we didn’t want to leave. But we had bus tickets to Hampi and Hampi was on the ‘must do’ list. The boys hatched a plan on our last night that we would return in December.  Our circumnavigation of the coastline of India would have to wait. We would journey along the length of just the West Coast.  We would change the plan, travel to the southernmost tip of the country and ‘pop back’. Building Cafe Roma a website and taking some pictures for it. 

Somehow to build him a Website seemed the least we could do. Having left him with no word for the best part of three decades.  Goa also remained on our ‘could we retire here’? list’. To return for a longer period would give us time to review that option also.  

Three days after arriving we were leaving again, but this time we had promised to return.

It was late in November and we were in Gokarna when we finally started our second trip to Goa.  We travelled in by train and it was odd to see from our elevated position the places we had explored on a scooter just a few weeks previously.  In many ways, it seemed just so much longer than that.  This time our train arrived on time and we took a tuk-tuk to Benaulim.  For the next seven days, we were to explore Southern Goa.  Somewhere we had never ventured to previously and our home for the week was to be an Air BnB Villa in a gated complex. 

A sofa, Dining Table, two bathrooms..things you didn’t realise you would miss.  From the kitchen, our washing appeared fresh out of the machine and was hung on a line in the garden.  The downside was that the beach was a twenty-minute walk away but wow what a beach.  It goes on and on, miles of icing sugar sand.

Because we are in a gated community everyone thinks you are loaded and suddenly even the cost of a quick tuk-tuk ride escalates.  In the end, we hired a scooter which solved this problem and also considerably eased the distance to the beach.  Sunsets continued to be disappointing, with the sun hiding in the haze and here it stayed during our entire visit.

We visited an amazing old colonial house which belonged to one of the founding members of the movement to free Goa from the hands of the Portuguese.  Unfortunately dying before he saw the benefits of his efforts to the country of his birth,  Today that house which is oddly divided into two (you have to pay to get into each half) is owned by his descents and it houses a strange mixture of family artefacts and ‘exotics’ purchased by mail order.  

The journey to and from the house on our little scooter was fun and on returning, we followed the road our home for the week was situated on, just to see where it went. That’s how we found Varca Beach.  So much calmer than Benaulim with just one beach shack which served great prawn noodles – so it became a favourite haunt for a few days.

The Pool at Majestic Palms carried its own health warning due to the number of missing tiles – it also took the end off of Carl’s big toe which even weeks later continued to be a problem to him.  It was spotlessly clean however and I found myself catching up with my reading, swimming and lightly snoozing. 

Carl on the other hand traded his scooter in for a Royal Enfield. With his hands on the bike of his dreams and a smile on his face.

South Goa feels more native than North Goa but it is also more expensive.  The beaches here are ‘anticipation fulfilled’. Powdery white sands. Little tourism outside of the main centres so not too difficult to find some piece of beach to call your own.  North Goa seems to be suffering. 

The European tourists seemed to stop coming during Covid and they never returned in their previous numbers.  Tourism in North Goa now seems to be driven by the Indians who flock to Calangute and its neighbours for the beach descending in droves, in matching ‘I love Goa’ t-shirts.  Much of the tourism here is driven by freely available alcohol.  These two factors combine to keep the plentiful Lifeguards continually on their toes and on their whistles.

At the end of our second trip to Calangute, we reflected on the 17 days we spent in North Goa.  It’s so surprising how quickly 17 days can pass.  When you are working in a stressful situation or waiting for an exciting event 17 days can seem like a lifetime.  But the end of our trip saw us saying goodbye to Calangute for a second time and undertaking an epic 26-hour train journey to Delhi.  We decided to finish the trip in the way we had started, by train rather than flying. 

We had taken a taxi from South to North Goa and checked in to ‘Veronica’s”.  We had checked out this guest house when we had been here in October, as we had eaten frequently at their restaurant.  A conversation via WhatsApp whilst travelling had secured us room 105 for 17 nights at £18 a night.  This guest house was a fabulous choice and we would book to stay there again without a moment’s hesitation.  With all the staff fully engaged in work at all times the property was pristine.  The paintwork, perfect. The Swimming pool, crystal clear, the vegetation lush and the reception, always manned with pleasant helpful staff.  The kettle and free water allowed us to continue along our tea discovery journey.

Being in Goa our vegan, alcohol-free, lifestyle of the previous two months took a bit of a tumble. The lure of Kingfisher beer and White Rum and Coke was a perfect excuse to try and recapture our early thirties/late twenties.

Approached in the manner of a military exercise, by the time we had completed our 17 days back in North Goa we had also completed the website for ‘Cafe Roma’ and as a result of wanting to take some great food shots had pretty much eaten our way through the menu.

Carl continued to walk the beach almost daily.  On the first Wednesday he walked all the way to Anjuna Market and back.  We spent a day in Baga (which was always the bad boy of North Goa and it hasn’t improved with time).  We took a motorbike for a day and travelled to the top of the region. Where Goa meets Maharashtra. Here in Arambol we discovered where all the Goan hippies had relocated to. In Arambol we found enough variety to make some purchases of small gifts. 

It was also a Wednesday so Carl took me to Anjuna to see what I thought of the Wednesday Anjuna Market now.  

I had to agree it was a shadow of its former vibrancy, energy and variety.  It’s now just some standard tourist fare being sold from stalls in a field by the sea.  I doubt it will be long before they build a hotel on the site.

We also visited the Decathlon branch in Calangute.  On one of the hottest days of our trip, we found ourselves buying puffa jackets in their ‘Black Friday event’ and then went to the beach to take ‘Kevin and Perry’ style photos.  Our concerns regarding returning to the UK in December with no warm clothes had been addressed.

On a random Saturday in December, we took the local bus to Panjim.  Even from the road one of the main features of this town can be seen.  The floating mega-casinos on the river are a significant feature of this town.  I don’t remember them being here 25 years ago, but today the largest floating casino in India is in this town. Deltin Royal is Asia’s largest gaming and entertainment destination and has been for over a decade.  The town itself was not so very different from any other town we visited but we remembered it slightly differently, with more variety in the shops.  Overall we have been really disappointed in the retail options in India and we headed back to the bus station with the idea of revisiting a bar we had hidden from the heat in over twenty years ago.  

It was still showing on Google maps but when we arrived, the bar and the other businesses in the building were closed and locked and looked like they had been like that for some time.

However, I do love a local bus journey. I never feel time getting from A to B by public transport is ever time wasted.  The faces, stories, packages being transported, the disagreements between the locals over seat occupancy …….All of life you can find on a bus.

So much of these few last days were spent lying on a lounger looking at or swimming in the sea.  The waves had days when they were angry and you felt like the sea was trying to kill you with the ‘drag’ warning you that the sea was moody today.  

Most mornings we would stop by the hotels restaurant for a Paratha Breakfast and then a late lunch at about 3pm would see us fed until the next morning.  

Calangute itself is much changed.  The ‘All day Breakfast’ restaurants are replaced by ‘pure veg’ restaurants which perfectly illustrates the shift over the years from European to domestic tourism.  This shift is also evident on the beach.  Two decades ago domestic tourists would congregate at Calangute steps or the beach entrance at Candolim and whilst this is still very much true, the domestic tourist trade does now spread down the whole beach. Freed from ‘dry states’ parties of young men descend on Goa wearing matching beach outfits (of shirt and shorts in a Hawaiian fabric), drinking boots and beer goggles

Young families also arrive, somehow squeezing 4 adults and a few children in to a small room with two double beds.  I was told that if they can’t find a hotel they just sleep in the car.

Obviously the Route N66 high-speed road to this south, along with an overall rise in living standards has opened up the area. The train which we sat on for 26 hours to Delhi – the Madgaon to Delhi Express, first started in 2016 and will have made a huge impact on Goa and the tourists it receives.

You see the shift in the focus of North Goa to Domestic tourism everywhere. From the Indian’s inability to use a bin, to their love of neon strip lighting illuminating our journey off the beach each night.  The place is much changed from the Goa of 25 years ago.

When we were here in October there were a handful of ’shacks’ being built for the season and we felt this was a fair indication of the level of activity on this beach today when we returned we were shocked at the number of shacks that had been built,  many with loud music pumping out (even during the day when the shack would be empty).  All this commercial activity had sprung up in response to the increase in domestic tourism.  The European traveller was outnumbered, even by the Russians.  

It seems we have chosen to spend our money elsewhere.

We hope that we will find our way back here, we also hope that it won’t take another 25 years.  We left, with heavy hearts…… and tickets for Hanoi – to try and find out where all the European travellers went.