PARADISE REVISITED

I’m just back from a trip to Goa – land of susegaad (bliss). This was our third visit, and the spell of Goa has not dispelled….we are still as much in love with the place as we ever were.

This time we went to stay for five-days-which-seemed-too-short-a-holiday at the bang-on-the-beach L’Amour Resort on South Goa’s Benaulim beach.

The hot summer of Goa made us lazy; so, in the mornings, we mostly lolled about on the golden sands at the sun-molested (rather than sun-kissed) beach, elder daughter and spouse splashing about in the white-surf-green-waves, I sitting with my younger daughter (she’s going through a scared-of- waves/won’t-step-on-sand phase) and a book in Concy’s coconut-leaf-thatched shack, watching the para-sailers and jet-skiers whooping it up, the fishing boats in the far distance, and the changing colours of the sand, sea and sky.

In the evenings, we would venture out – to see the sun dive smoothly into the sea. We scuttled back from crowded-Colva (epithet-ed ‘the queen of South Goa beaches’), but we loved the empty white sands and blue water at Varca (which is more of a private beach for the Taj Exotica – where we had gone for a day to meet up with a cousin and her family).

We would coax the autorickshaws to drop us to Madgaon, the nearest town, where we explored the streets lined with charming, colonial-era, Portuguese-constructed buildings, tall churches with wrought-iron gates and stained-glass windows or small, bright bungalows with sloping roofs and sit-outs in the garden where hens/pigs/geese poked about the flowerbeds.

We also poked about in the winding alleys of Madgaon's ancient New Market, buying bebinca (a Goan dessert), a toy Spanish guitar and a seashell-decorated, keepsake bottle of feni (a Goan cashewnut-fermented drink).

One evening we drove down the winding, well-maintained roads of Betelbatim village with a friend and his family, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the red-tiled, picture-postcard-pretty cottages along the way to gorge on the seafood at the popular (going by the full tables even on weekdays) Martin’s Corner.

The Goan fish-curry-and-rice (laden with coconut-milk, sour-kokum and tomatoes) at our Goa-baari (‘Goan house’, according to my younger daughter), L’Amour, was also pretty good, as were the roast-beef-and-onions, beef-vegetable-soup and squid-garlic-butter. I don’t know what vegetarians would do in Goa, but for us the scenic and the gastronomic delights merged into one awesome synaesthetic experience. Helped, no doubt, by urak, a fruity-flavoured, full-bodied, local liquor distilled from, what else, cashewnuts.

My senses are still reeling from OD-ing on Goa’s beauty, the natural loveliness of the beach-dotted, surf-lapped coastline, fringed with coconut trees; the calm rivers winding around the mangrove wetlands; the hills in the distance, green in summer with rocky outcrops jutting out here-and-there. And all this cradling quaint old buildings, confectionery-white churches and friendly, laidback people.

We’ll be go(a)ing back again, hopefully!

04 June 2008: I'm now sending this post on a journey to Scribbit's June Write-away contest on Going Places.