We flew into Goa airport on a hot and lazy afternoon. The flight had been brilliant. It left on time and the aircraft was brand spanking new. Well that is to say it had nice carpets and a fresh lick of paint and, as everyone knows, when you are travelling at 18,000m above sea-level, that’s what’s important.
Goa has in contemporary history (i.e. mine) been hitherto known as a party place. In the 80’s and 90’s it was renowned for its marathon psychedelic parties pumping away for days on end, around the beaches of Anjuna, Palolem, and Benolium. At the end of the 90s however this
became too much for the local inhabitants, not to mention the local tourism board. Although they welcomed the steady influx of tourism and money, they were becoming increasingly fed-up with the decadence, the vices, and the lack of respect for their culture and religion. The Goa that exists now still has a good party vibe and is still a fantastic place to visit, but it is much more chilled out and relaxed. There is a curfew on beach parties set to 10pm. There are, as always, exceptions but they are done on the sly - and every now and then there are full moon parties, or so we were led to believe. Funnily enough there was one due a couple of days after we arrived. What a coincidence!
We got a taxi from the airport past the city of Vasco da Gamato to Anjuna beach. Goa is divided into the northern and southern areas. The river of Zuari serves as a demarcation point between the two. The north is more famous for its parties, the south is more of a chill out area. Anjuna is about 25kms north of Goa town. We rocked up in the late afternoon. We’d gotten some
suggestions for a hotel from two Russian guys we shared a cab with. We tried the popular place recommended in the Good Book but that was full. So we took a chilled out place down by the beach. We dumped our bags and I sauntered down to the shop to get some sundries. Marcus was still ill at this point. I got accosted by a guy from Moscow drinking shots at the shop. Yes the shop sold shooters. He was definitely not on the same planet as me and I was looking forward to joining him there later. Things were looking pretty good.
Marcus dragged himself out of bed, despite feeling manky, and we wandered along the beach. It was dotted with bars, shacks, cafes, and pool dens. It was also beautiful. We spent an enjoyable afternoon adjusting to our new surroundings. After some food and some beers we wandered up to the next beach to check out the paragliders Marcus had spotted. To our surprise we discovered an afternoon rave going on.
… We are sitting in the afternoon sunshine on Anjuna beach. The sun is warm and the sand is golden. The sea laps around the beach gently. Around us is a multitude of people partying in the sunshine. Techno music thumps out of a giant marquee to our left. Happy, happy, dancers bop away to the beat worshipping the music, and the sun. A miasma of smoke hangs in the air. Huge freezers sit by the dance floor selling soft drinks, beer, and spirits. You could be forgiven for thinking you are at a free rave in England on one of its southern beaches.
I am sitting taking in this human tapestry of wonders. This isn’t your normal raving crowd. The age ranges vary from 18 to 80. I have been watching a middle-age lady smoking a huge chillum and doing some very interesting moves on the dance floor. She looks like a librarian. She has nothing on the guy dancing on the sand though. He is in his late 40s, wearing a pair of Speedos and spinning around and leaping into the air in a shamanistic frenzy. Marcus and I peg him to be a primary school headmaster from Preston. He really has had one too many mushrooms. Back at the tent there is a guy with dredds down to his arse wearing a crop-top t-shirt. He has a huge belly hanging over his jeans. The list goes on. It’s amazing. Marcus is pretty ill and is going to have to go and lie down soon. But I am going to sit and watch this circus late into the night…
The next couple of days were spent in much the same fashion as usual - beach, food, beer, reading. There were a lot more cows walking around on the beach. As the bovine family is sacred to Hindus you will find them everywhere. They have carte blanche access to just about all public places including roads. Marcus continued to be a festering disease-ridden organism for most of the time. He also continued to extend the follicles on his face to obscene lengths. The next morning We were thrown out of our hotel as apparently someone had booked in advance. Nice of the owners to let us know. We checked into another quiet little beach front and stayed there for a couple of days.
When Marcus was feeling better we decided to hire some mopeds out and go exploring. Bikes are really cheap – about 200 rupees a day. After fecking around for an hour trying to find some half decent ones we finally headed off. We decided to head north to visit the beaches of Mandrem. It was a gorgeous day and zipping along the coastal roads was great fun. When you first encounter the roads in India, it is a pretty terrifying experience even if you are just riding in a 12 ton bus. In much the same way as the Middle East, chaos rules supreme. Bicycles zip in and out of cars. Horns beep continuously. People shout and scream. Nobody wears seatbelts and no cyclists wear helmets. Entire families pass you on motorcycles: A father driving with his two four year-olds riding pillion on the fuel tank, and his wife on the back riding side-saddle. Upon closer inspection however, you begin to see a method amidst the apparent madness. Because there are so many vulnerable people riding cycles motorists are hyper-aware of what’s going on around them. After a while it actually seems safer than the UK.
The beaches were almost deserted and glorious. The season was coming to an end here and we had our pick of the best beach chairs and nothing but peace and quiet. When we got to Mandrem we stopped and had lunch. I ordered a fish tikka masala and it tasted wrong. I now know it was wrong as I was ill for a week after eating it. We sat and watched some people learning to kite-
surf. This type of surfing I had seen in Tel Aviv. The surfer rides a board and is also attached to a rectangular parachute – much like paragliding – they ride the waves at breathtaking speed in and out of the wind. Today’s surfer was just beginning though, and spent most of the time being dragged on their arse down the beach as the wind was pretty fearsome.
We dropped the bikes back and went walking through the village to the next beach that night. Someone gave us five chillums in a row. I laughed like a maniac as I skipped in and out of the surf all the way back to the hotel.
The next day I began to feel pretty disease-ridden myself. Today was also a full moon and rumour had it there was supposed to be a full moon party going on. We hunted up and down the beach but there were no raves going on anywhere; however we did hear the party was to take place inland at a place called the West End.
We had a couple of quiet drinks and then were heading home when we bumped into two lads from Sweden. They convinced us to share a taxi to the West End so we all headed over to the all night rave. It turned out to be a nightclub. Now any other night I would have been happy to party my arse off but that night it was all I could do to stop throwing up. I had to duck out early in the end and Marcus – being not overly impressed with the place - did so also.
Goa has in contemporary history (i.e. mine) been hitherto known as a party place. In the 80’s and 90’s it was renowned for its marathon psychedelic parties pumping away for days on end, around the beaches of Anjuna, Palolem, and Benolium. At the end of the 90s however this
became too much for the local inhabitants, not to mention the local tourism board. Although they welcomed the steady influx of tourism and money, they were becoming increasingly fed-up with the decadence, the vices, and the lack of respect for their culture and religion. The Goa that exists now still has a good party vibe and is still a fantastic place to visit, but it is much more chilled out and relaxed. There is a curfew on beach parties set to 10pm. There are, as always, exceptions but they are done on the sly - and every now and then there are full moon parties, or so we were led to believe. Funnily enough there was one due a couple of days after we arrived. What a coincidence!We got a taxi from the airport past the city of Vasco da Gamato to Anjuna beach. Goa is divided into the northern and southern areas. The river of Zuari serves as a demarcation point between the two. The north is more famous for its parties, the south is more of a chill out area. Anjuna is about 25kms north of Goa town. We rocked up in the late afternoon. We’d gotten some
suggestions for a hotel from two Russian guys we shared a cab with. We tried the popular place recommended in the Good Book but that was full. So we took a chilled out place down by the beach. We dumped our bags and I sauntered down to the shop to get some sundries. Marcus was still ill at this point. I got accosted by a guy from Moscow drinking shots at the shop. Yes the shop sold shooters. He was definitely not on the same planet as me and I was looking forward to joining him there later. Things were looking pretty good.Marcus dragged himself out of bed, despite feeling manky, and we wandered along the beach. It was dotted with bars, shacks, cafes, and pool dens. It was also beautiful. We spent an enjoyable afternoon adjusting to our new surroundings. After some food and some beers we wandered up to the next beach to check out the paragliders Marcus had spotted. To our surprise we discovered an afternoon rave going on.
… We are sitting in the afternoon sunshine on Anjuna beach. The sun is warm and the sand is golden. The sea laps around the beach gently. Around us is a multitude of people partying in the sunshine. Techno music thumps out of a giant marquee to our left. Happy, happy, dancers bop away to the beat worshipping the music, and the sun. A miasma of smoke hangs in the air. Huge freezers sit by the dance floor selling soft drinks, beer, and spirits. You could be forgiven for thinking you are at a free rave in England on one of its southern beaches.
I am sitting taking in this human tapestry of wonders. This isn’t your normal raving crowd. The age ranges vary from 18 to 80. I have been watching a middle-age lady smoking a huge chillum and doing some very interesting moves on the dance floor. She looks like a librarian. She has nothing on the guy dancing on the sand though. He is in his late 40s, wearing a pair of Speedos and spinning around and leaping into the air in a shamanistic frenzy. Marcus and I peg him to be a primary school headmaster from Preston. He really has had one too many mushrooms. Back at the tent there is a guy with dredds down to his arse wearing a crop-top t-shirt. He has a huge belly hanging over his jeans. The list goes on. It’s amazing. Marcus is pretty ill and is going to have to go and lie down soon. But I am going to sit and watch this circus late into the night…
The next couple of days were spent in much the same fashion as usual - beach, food, beer, reading. There were a lot more cows walking around on the beach. As the bovine family is sacred to Hindus you will find them everywhere. They have carte blanche access to just about all public places including roads. Marcus continued to be a festering disease-ridden organism for most of the time. He also continued to extend the follicles on his face to obscene lengths. The next morning We were thrown out of our hotel as apparently someone had booked in advance. Nice of the owners to let us know. We checked into another quiet little beach front and stayed there for a couple of days.
When Marcus was feeling better we decided to hire some mopeds out and go exploring. Bikes are really cheap – about 200 rupees a day. After fecking around for an hour trying to find some half decent ones we finally headed off. We decided to head north to visit the beaches of Mandrem. It was a gorgeous day and zipping along the coastal roads was great fun. When you first encounter the roads in India, it is a pretty terrifying experience even if you are just riding in a 12 ton bus. In much the same way as the Middle East, chaos rules supreme. Bicycles zip in and out of cars. Horns beep continuously. People shout and scream. Nobody wears seatbelts and no cyclists wear helmets. Entire families pass you on motorcycles: A father driving with his two four year-olds riding pillion on the fuel tank, and his wife on the back riding side-saddle. Upon closer inspection however, you begin to see a method amidst the apparent madness. Because there are so many vulnerable people riding cycles motorists are hyper-aware of what’s going on around them. After a while it actually seems safer than the UK.
The beaches were almost deserted and glorious. The season was coming to an end here and we had our pick of the best beach chairs and nothing but peace and quiet. When we got to Mandrem we stopped and had lunch. I ordered a fish tikka masala and it tasted wrong. I now know it was wrong as I was ill for a week after eating it. We sat and watched some people learning to kite-
surf. This type of surfing I had seen in Tel Aviv. The surfer rides a board and is also attached to a rectangular parachute – much like paragliding – they ride the waves at breathtaking speed in and out of the wind. Today’s surfer was just beginning though, and spent most of the time being dragged on their arse down the beach as the wind was pretty fearsome.We dropped the bikes back and went walking through the village to the next beach that night. Someone gave us five chillums in a row. I laughed like a maniac as I skipped in and out of the surf all the way back to the hotel.
The next day I began to feel pretty disease-ridden myself. Today was also a full moon and rumour had it there was supposed to be a full moon party going on. We hunted up and down the beach but there were no raves going on anywhere; however we did hear the party was to take place inland at a place called the West End.
We had a couple of quiet drinks and then were heading home when we bumped into two lads from Sweden. They convinced us to share a taxi to the West End so we all headed over to the all night rave. It turned out to be a nightclub. Now any other night I would have been happy to party my arse off but that night it was all I could do to stop throwing up. I had to duck out early in the end and Marcus – being not overly impressed with the place - did so also.
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