There are three kinds of tourists to Goa: Those looking for a “trip”, who head straight to the northern hippie haven of Arambol; those looking for fun, who camp on the sands of Baga and Calangute; and those who come looking for themselves, and head to the southern idyll of Palolem.
Paradise found: Palolem at sunset. Arjun Razdan
Palolem’s story, like that of all tourist magnets, is one of hype and deflation. Long promoted by Western guidebooks as the secret tropical paradise, the fortunes of this quaint Goan fishing village were changed irrevocably by the influx of thousands of sun-starved, winter-weary Europeans. In the late 1980s, it had just coconuts and fishermen. By the end of the millennium, fishermen were letting out a few rooms to visitors. Now, there are restaurants with near-identical menus and clubs and Internet cafés and laundrywallahs and “Hello-friend-I-give-you-cheap-price” vendors and masseurs (“shakes” and spicy massages also available) and yoga packages and Silent Noise parties and, of course, fishermen accosting tourists for a dolphin-sighting ride.
After six trips over the last four years, I can say that much of Palolem’s popularity is well deserved. With a deserted island and a lagoon to the north and a perfect 2km-long crescent of white sand, it’s the prettiest part of the Goan coastline, and a gradual slope into the ocean makes it the safest beach for swimming too. Then there is Palolem at night, which presents the mesmerizing spectacle of an arc of a million illuminated candlewicks fusing into the purple coolness of the ocean. No, I do not agree with Lonely Planet’s latest classification of Palolem as “claustrophobic”.
Shopping ladies: Konkani women dressed in traditional attire near Chaudi bazaar. Arjun Razdan
For, it has another face that breathes its languid rhythm as nonchalantly as it always has, another Palolem where life comes to a halt for siesta, reviving with the amber light of sunset. A Palolem which may or may not exist for tourists and their guidebooks. A Palolem where Konkani women with fragrant flowers in their hair sit in mud courtyards, splitting mounds of salo (raw mangoes) on toe-held cutters, where brightly painted earthen stands for the sacred tulsi (basil) dazzle in the afternoon sun, where jackfruits rest on giant tree trunks next to ancient moss-covered stone wells, where the colloquial lingo’s sing-song stress on the last syllable makes all conversation seem interrogative, where the lush green paddy fields contrast fiercely with the red laterite soil, where dogs are too lazy to bark, and cattle too nonplussed to make way for anyone.