The Golden Age of Arambol
By: Daithi Neavyn
Tags: Travel, Travel Writing, Tourism, India, Spirituality

‘The north coast of Goa, India’

From the outset Arambol has occupied the ‘spiritual’ niche, satisfying the desires of ‘new age’ travellers, seekers and lovers of easy-going bohemian living.

If you want casinos, 5-star hotels, floating restaurants or an air-conditioned taxi to take you from Dabolin airport to your pool side resort, you don’t come here.

Arambol is all dirt roads and bamboo structures. Cheap cinder block restaurants draped in Ganesha cloths. Roadside Chai walas and cows nonchalantly walking by as streams of mopeds pass like frenzied fish.

I needed to rent a moped for two months myself and am waiting for a man named Guru at the agreed time outside Sri Baba’s convenience store. In expectation of a drawn out contract I have brought money, proof of address and my passport,

Guru pulls up on a bright orange moped. With noticeable disinterest he pushes his leg off the bike and removes his plastic shopping bag full of vegetables. He drops the bag on the curb and proceeds to keep his chin low and his eyes moving from the curb to the odd sound or person passing by that takes his interest. He has a perfectly bald head and is wearing a faded purple t-shirt with a collar and three buttons.. It looks almost business like, but the three buttons are open. Eventually he looks at me.

‘You pay R3000 a month. Call me when you want to return the bike’

‘Where is your office Guru?’ I ask.

He flaps his hand over his left shoulder with the vagueness of swatting a fly away.

‘It’s over there’

Not long ago Arambol was a remote area with a few empty beaches and tiny villages. A place where fishermen pushed their boats out in the dawn silence. Where one bus went to town in the morning and one came back in the evening.

Then the travellers started to arrive.

Today you will find wall to wall posters of therapists and hypnotists, shamanic breathwork, Tantra circles, festivals of Tantra, tattoos and hiphop, soul journeys and Ayurvedic massage. Just steps away from lines of drying clothes and a burning pile of rubbish being sniffed by homeless dogs there’s a branching path that will lead you to a serene Yoga centre.

The engine of tourism in Arambol is loud. I decide to buy some supplies for my new apartment. Across the road from me, the name painted in red lettering on the facade above the door, is Ali’s Hyper Market.

I cross over, dodging the mopeds and taxis, enter the store and am immediately taken aback. It’s tiny. I could stretch my arms out and touch both walls.

But in India, space and its borders are relative terms. In this owners eyes he was the proprietor of a vast warehouse and he packed it accordingly. I had the sense there were parrots for sale in this shop but I just couldn’t see them behind all the boxes.

The owner could have been Guru’s brother, but only in appearance, because unlike Guru he greeted me with a great welcoming smile. His eyes lit up as though my entrance heralded the opening tune to his favourite sitcom or had brought back to mind a long cherished memory of his childhood. It was absolutely inconceivable that I would leave this shop without buying something.

‘Hello hello, yes, namaste namaste’ Ali was upon me like a friendly bear.

There was just enough space in the corridor for me and Ali to dance a few salsa steps without any spinning, if we so wished. He started moving boxes for no particular reason.

“Incense? Ganesha?’

He was waving Elephant headed Demi gods in front of me.

“Coconut oil? Fresh!’

I was obviously not used to such lavish attention. Back home you could get more reaction from the cereal boxes than many of the shop assistants .

I knew I needed to concentrate, to centre myself, but Ali’s attention was unrelenting.

‘Good rice!!’

If he offered me a parrot in that moment I could have bought it. Our dance had begun. The only question now was how much would I buy and how much would I actually need. Part of me just wanted to surrender. To give Ali all my money and just tell him to fill my bag.

I did my best, and eventually I did leave with some useful things for my apartment before being deposited back out onto the street.

There was no time to catch my breadth. Brightly coloured Indian women holding long sticks with hooks, tending to stalls draped in t-shirts, hanging bags and dresses, were calling to me. I found a plastic stool in a roadside chai shop and ordered a sweet chai. When the chai came I held onto that cup with both hands. I could imagine Shackleton or Tom Crean holding their cups like this as they sat watching the Endeavour being crushed by the immense sea.

I considered my problem. You see, I did want a t-shirt, and the Indian women tending the stalls could see that fact in my eyes. They were still calling to me.

‘You come in?’

‘Sir, sir, come in’

I tried to ignore them and thought instead about where I had decided to spend the next two months.

Arambol. Development here doesn’t reach high. From a 4-storey balcony I could look out over its entire expanse.

You could say it develops in concentric rings. First there is the ocean; warm with heavy waves rolling in. Then the sand, a wide flat expanse, a thoroughfare, a playground for performers, morning yogis, night markets and corn on the cob sellers.

Facing the sand, a line of restaurants and music spots, workshop and festival spaces, chill out couches where you can sip papaya juice and watch the waves. The Love Temple is there, full of glowing goddesses taking good care of themselves. A reggae bar, beach huts and swaying palm trees.

Behind this there is a wide expanse of scrub land. More venues sparsely laid out with no obvious route between them. The Source, a bamboo enclosed circle under a massive Banyan tree where people ecstatic dance. Restaurants with no walls, just a roof of leaves propped on timber poles.

Onwards onto dirt roads and the back streets of Arambol, accommodation blocks painted in bright greens and pinks, vegetable shops, a German bakery, a cafe or two, a convenience store where Russians empty vodka into Sprite bottles beside smiling young girls buying yoga mats.

And on into Arambol town centre, a few main roads, a busy junction, commerce and movement, traffic, stopping and starting, horns laid onto horns, more cows walking amidst the endless stream of mopeds.

And Indian women tending stalls. If I wouldn’t go to the t-shirts the t-shirts would come to me. Two of them now were in front of me. Again I was confronted by Ganesha, this time in cotton form, and another Shiva sitting on his throne.

‘Sir, you buy from me, yes?’

I found myself missing Ali in that moment, the friendly bear. These women hovered over me like angry bats. I finished the last of my chai, the sweetest drop sliding down the back of my throat and took the keys for my moped from my pocket. I apologised and drove on. The t-shirts would have to wait for another day.

Yes, the engine of tourism in Arambol is loud. Numerous Indians making their living from Westerners with money to spend. Catering to their every need. Keeping them mobile, fed and clothed. The backbone of life here is made possible by the working poor. Your fruit salad breakfast was harvested by the old Indian woman carrying a basket on her head. Your fresh coconut by the man with a machette swinging by his side and torn flip flops hanging from his feet.

I pulled in for a glass of sugar cane juice. An old man with a baseball cap pulled sideways on his head was bending the canes and pushing them into the metal grinder. The rubber belt on the motor was shaking violently as the grinding discs squeezed every last drop of sweetness from the canes.

‘Have you lived here all your life?’ I asked him.

‘Yes’ he said, and didn’t speak again.

Alongside this rurality the Westerners bring their creativity and their flair. The high definition posters advertising concerts, happenings and events in the numerous venues with enticing names like Twice in Nature, Golden Pyramid and This is It.

Some say that the Golden Age has passed. The time when the hippies had it all to themselves. When they built shelters by the beach and the word started to go around that India was the place to be. Others say the Golden Age is happening now. There is much more integration. Many Westerners have built lives here now. There’s a stronger community and an effort for more meaningful connections with the locals.

There will always be winners and losers. Many locals have benefited from the increase in commerce coming in, others can no longer afford land in the area. Resentment, acquiescence and joyful tolerance are all present.

The local fishermen still haul their boats out in the morning, but now when they return they pull them up the sand between the sunbathers and walkers, and rest them beneath the restaurants and bars setting up for another day.

Not long ago the ocean kissed an empty shore. Not anymore