From: udcrusd@meaddata.com (Sylvia D'Cruz)
Subject: Travel: Goa
Keywords: Goa
Organization: Mead Data Central, Dayton OH
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 18:25:45 GMT
Distribution: soc.culture.indian

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                 Copyright 1992 The Sunday Telegraph Limited
                                Sunday Telegraph

                             August  2, 1992, Sunday

Travel: Beauty and the beastly Gill Charlton revisits her beloved
Arabian Sea paradise of Goa - with grave misgivings

By GILL CHARLTON

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   MY LOVE affair with Goa began six years ago. Since then, I have returned each
December to spend a few days on its beaches before exploring another corner of
southern India.

   Those who used to hang out in Goa after the rigours of the hippy trail bemoan
the days when they could squat in boat shelters, openly smoke dope and have the
beaches pretty much to themselves. Goa's awakening to the charms of the
tourist dollar was gradual at first, carried out by enterprising locals rather
than by investment from  Bombay  or abroad. Many changes were improvements.
Western visitors, and an increasing number of Indians, rented cottages or stayed
in simple, friendly guest-houses run by families called Braganza, Pereira or da
Souza, who washed their clothes and rented out bicycles.

   In Calangute, a half-hour journey north from Panjim, the state capital, shady
verandah restaurants, positioned to capture the setting sun, served delicious
seafood. It was a village with tourists rather than a tourist village. Three
years ago I felt a strong wind of change. Property developers had become
over-excited about the new winter charters from England and Germany, and the
increasing number of Indian holidaymakers. Between Calangute and Baga beaches,
Portuguese-style bungalows lay empty awaiting development into two-storey hotels
and apartments of dubious quality. Ignoring its own regulations prohibiting new
buildings within 200 metres of the high-tide line, the Government has built a
shopping complex on Calangute beach, denying sunlight and business to the
well-established restaurants and shops clustered behind.  Now, groups of
bleary-eyed young men drink cheap Kingfisher beer from dawn to dusk,
occasionally rousing themselves to walk in search of scantily-clad Westerners.
It is a depressing scene. In the face of disturbing rumours of large-scale
resort development in the south of the state, I went to see what was happening.

    Goa has 60 miles of golden sand beaches backed by grassy dunes and groves of
coconut palms. South of Panjim lies Colva, a 17-mile swathe of cream-coloured
sand. Four years ago there were only a handful of small hotels and guesthouses
in Colva village, and rooms to rent in nearby Benaulim.

   I returned to find Colva busier and scruffier, its beach full of crude shacks
selling trinkets and fruit, and the freshwater pool behind choked with debris.
In Benaulim, pop music blasted out from beach restaurants and young men rented
motorbikes for L3 an hour so that they could scream the length of the beach. To
the south the dunes are being flattened to create development land.

   Several resort hotels are already up and running. The Ramada Renaissance is
pleasant, international, and of a kind found all over the tropics today. Its
neighbour, the Dona Sylvia, is less grand but has kept within the law, its
gardens set well back in the dunes. I spent a night at the Leela Beach where a
double room costs L65, the most expensive in Goa. The Leela's brochure promised
a 252-room hotel which "recaptures Portuguese architecture and character", but
the reality is a collection of ochre concrete boxes overhanging a small lagoon,
created at considerable expense. The rooms are pleasantly furnished, the food
and service good, but, like its neighbours, the Leela is simply another tourist
playground segregated from the real charms of Goa. I headed for Calangute beach
again, for it is part of an eight-mile strand which contains my favourite
village, Candolim. Here, small clean guesthouses blend with palm-shaded villas
and smallholdings, all invisible from the beach where a few dozen visitors lie
peaceably in the shade of fishing boats. The well-established Fort Aguada and
Taj hotels lie a mile south, the former a rather dreary, sunless place favoured
by Germans. The Taj, an attractive collection of villas and apartments set in
pleasant grounds, has character, although it would benefit from a facelift. It
remains the best of Goa's resort hotels.

   Baga used to have a pleasant beach too, but has now become a roving bazaar.
Sunbathing tourists provide a captive market for the hawkers. Each year their
numbers and persistence increase. I took my fears and disappointments to Mr
Kenmare, marketing manager of the Goa Tourist Development Corporation. Yes, he
agreed, it was illegal to build right above the beach, but everyone disregarded
it. What could he do? Like tourism development managers the world over, he saw
salvation in the Japanese. Golf courses were planned, and more luxury hotels,
one on a beautiful village beach in the south. "If we want to provide jobs and
encourage economic growth we have only two options - tourism or heavy industry.
Which would you choose?" asked Mr Kenmare.

   I couldn't help feeling that Goa was aiming at the wrong market. The big
spender is a fickle creature, and Indian Airlines does its best to make flying
to Goa via  Bombay  or Delhi as frustrating as possible.

    For the interested package tourist, however, it is a delightful, inexpensive
winter sun destination. When Sri Lanka slid into civil war, Goa should have
attracted a large slice of its European market, but tour operators complained
that there were not enough well-designed three-star hotels like the Ronil Beach
Resort near Baga, run by hospitable Goans. Luxury international hotels with
indifferent staff from out of the state are not the solution.