Soon after 9 on the morning of the 28th I left Belgaum on a bus bound for Panaji, the capital and principal city of Goa. The bus first headed south for a little over 30 miles, passing lots of trees and some agriculture, all at elevations over 2000 feet. At the little town of Londa we turned west and made a lunch stop about noon before making the steep drop on a curvy road with great, though hazy, views of the densely forested hills below We descended over 1500 feet in maybe five miles. The Goa state line was near the top of the steep descent. I can see why Goa was usually cut off from the rest of India. After the descent we traveled through forested, hilly countryside and small towns before arriving at Panaji, Goa's state capital and principal city a little after 2. Panaji is on the south bank of the wide Mandovi River and on our approach we passed the former capital of Goa, now called Old Goa, about five miles upriver from Panaji. (It seems almost everybody calls Panaji by its old Portuguese colonial name, Panjim.) I walked to an hotel in an old colonial era building in Panaji's Fontainhas district, full of old colonial buildings, some decaying but others kept up, and got a very comfortable large room with a high ceiling and shutters on the glassless windows. The owner told me it was built in 1880 by his great grandfather, who was a lawyer. There is a photo of him with his wife and children.
Goa was ruled by a Hindu dynasty for centuries before conquest by Muslims from the north in the early 1300's. Later that century, the Vijayanagar Empire conquered the area and ruled it for about a century, followed by the Bahmanis about 1470 and later Bijapur. The Portuguese, under Afonso de Albuquerque, arrived in 1510, defeated Bijapur, and made Goa the center of their Asian empire. Despite attacks by Bijapur and later the Marathas, and threats from the Dutch, they held on to Goa until 1961, when India invaded and took it over.
After resting in my room for a while I walked down the street, the Rua 31 de Janeiro (the date Panaji became capital), to the Hotel Venite, where I stayed in 1979. (I have an old aerogram with its name and street name.) It is now just a restaurant, with small balconies with tables over the narrow street below. I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the town. Panaji was made the capital only in 1833, after Old Goa became inhabitable because of malaria and cholera epidemics. The Viceroy had moved his residence to Panaji earlier, in 1759, when he took up residence in a palace along the river built on the site of a Bijapuri palace. The building, which was the Viceroy's residence until 1918, is still there and now used as government offices. I walked past it and past other old colonial buildings, with many Portuguese names on shops. In front of the former viceroy's palace is an unusual statue of a priest, Abbe Faria with a hypnotized woman at his feet. He was a Goan born priest who made quite a sensation hypnotizing people in France around 1800. There are great views across the wide river, with forested hills on the north bank. I remember leaving Goa by ship on that river in 1979 on a 24 hour journey to Bombay, which included sleeping on the deck on a chilly night at sea. Panaji is India's smallest capital city and a very pleasant one, with only about 100,000 people.
I walked away from the river up the slight slope to the Largo da Igreja, the central plaza, with a forty foot column in the center that until 1968 had a statue of Vasco da Gama on the top, now replaced by the four lions national symbol of India. Nearby is the bright white Church of the Immaculate Conception, originally built in 1541, but rebuilt and considerably enlarged in 1619. It was very large at the time considering that Panaji was just a village, but Panaji was the first stop for ships from Europe before heading upriver to the capital and those on board are said to have rushed to the church to give thanks for a safe journey. The church has two baroque towers and a baroque interior, with beautiful gilded wooden altars. The Indians entering removed their footwear, but when I asked the attendant if I needed to do so, he shook his head no.
From the church I walked uphill past a mosque and a Hindu temple, the latter dating from 1819 when Hindu temples were allowed after three centuries of repression by the Inquisition. I took winding streets up Altinho Hill and then steps down the other side to get back to the Fontainhas neighborhood. I walked past Fontainhas' whitewashed San Sebastian Church and many old colonial buildings back to my hotel. For dinner I went to a restaurant just in front of the Immaculate Conception Church and had shark in butter and garlic, which was very good. Back at the hotel I had a hot shower, the first one I have had on this trip to India. I almost always wash with bucket baths, and I haven't had hot water for a while. Hot water is not really necessary here on the coast and wasn't inland on the plateau either. Goa's highs seem to be about 90-95, with lows in the high 60's. I had a comfortable bed in that lovely high ceilinged room and slept well.
The next morning I walked around the Fontainhas neighborhood in the early morning to look at all the old buildings. Many are colorful: red, yellow, blue, green. It was the law during the colonial era that you had to paint your house after the monsoon every year. The old houses are built of laterite, a pockmarked red stone, and then plastered. I had a late breakfast at the Venite, an omelet with very good, chewy bread served with lots of butter, and read the newspapers at the restaurant, The Times of India (which I just read is India's most popular English newspaper with seven million daily readers) and Goa's Herald. I spent the early afternoon in an internet cafe and in the late afternoon walked along the wide Mandovi River, which is an estuary and tidal. I took the ferry that goes to the other side back and forth without getting off. There are several huge casino boats anchored in the river, plus Goa's fishing boats are all anchored in the river near the bridge upstream from the city center. They were striking because they wanted their fuel to receive a higher subsidy. Towards the west there is a nice walkway along the river and a large colonial building, built in 1871, I think. In colonial days it was the Vasco da Gama Institute, but now has a new name. In the entry hall are beautifully painted blue and white tiles, from the 1930's I think, illustrating passages from Camoes' Os Lusiades, Portugal's 16th century national epic. I walked along the river to the park on the west side of town with views of the mouth of the wide Mandovi. Sunset was at 6:30 over a big ship far away out to sea, with the high cliffs of the north bank of the Mandovi to the right, site of the old Portuguese Reis Magos Fort.
The next morning after a leisurely breakfast at the Venite I took the bus east along the river to Old Goa, five miles away. It is quite a large site. There was a city here, an important port for importing Arabian horses and for Mecca bound travelers on the haj, before the Portuguese conquered it from Bijapur. At its height during the Portuguese era, about 1600, the city is supposed to have been as large as Lisbon, with estimates of 70,000 to 200,000 inhabitants. Its golden age was the end of the 16th century, when Portugal ruled the Indian Ocean. In the next century the Dutch largely displaced the Portuguese, and malaria and epidemics of cholera depleted the city. It was all but abandoned by the 19th century. At the center are several big churches, all but one whitewashed. I went into the unwhitewashed one, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, first. It is made of laterite stone blocks for the most part. In fact, all the churches are made of laterite stone blocks, but most are then plastered and then whitewashed. Bom Jesus, raised to a basilica in 1946, was finished in 1605, with an impressive Renaissance stone facade. Inside it is mostly fairly simple, painted white, but with beautiful gilded altars with twisting columns and a large gilded pulpit. The main altar has a huge figure of St. Ignatius Loyola hovering over the baby Jesus.
Off to the right from the main altar is the elaborate tomb of St. Francis Xavier. Born in 1506, he came to Goa first in 1542, spending only a few months here, and then heading off to evangelize in Ceylon, the Moluccas, Japan and China, with short returns to Goa. He died of dysentery on an island off China in 1552, was buried there, but the body eventually dug up and brought back to Goa. It was said to be in a perfect state of preservation. The corpse is now in a tomb built near the end of the 17th century and paid for by Cosimo III, the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany. The tomb has three levels and is made of marble and jasper, with a crystal enclosure on top with the body. I think it is covered with cloth, but there are photos of the body in a room nearby. The corpse is taken out every ten or twelve years and brought to the nearby Cathedral for display. There are some great stories about the corpse. One is that its right arm was taken to Rome to show the Pope, where it wrote its name with a pen. Another is that once while on display, a woman bit off its little toe, but was found out when blood began gushing from her mouth. The saint is venerated not just by Catholics, but by Hindus, too, and there were plenty of them that morning in the church, many more Indians than western tourists. Piles of shoes were left outside the doors of the Basilica.
I walked through the adjacent cloisters, and then to the huge Cathedral across a wide expanse from the Basilica. In fact, adjacent to the Cathedral is the Archbishop's Palace, and adjacent to that is the Church and Convent of St. Francis of Assisi. The Cathedral, dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria because the battle that won Goa for Portugal was fought on her day, November 25, is said to be the largest church in Asia and larger than any church in Portugal, about 260 feet long and 170 feet wide. Its facade, unlike Bom Jesus, faces east and is said to be of Tuscan design. One bell tower collapsed in the 19th century, but the other remains. The Cathedral and other churches were much less crowded than Bom Jesus. Inside the Cathedral is white and fairly plain, but with huge aisles and very high ceilings. Construction was started in 1562, but the constant running out of funds delayed completion for 90 years. It has a gilded altar with scenes from St. Catherine's life, including her beheading, and several side altars. Apparently under the whitewashed interior are painted walls. I heard a guide say that because the laterite stone is so porous, moisture seeps in and it would be far too costly to maintain the painted surfaces, so they were whitewashed over. A portion of the paintings is still visible, though, in one of the side altars. On the floor are many interesting tombstones, some badly eroded and some not, and I could read quite a few. Nearby the Cathedral are the ruins of the Palace of the Inquisition. Apparently, it was St. Francis Xavier, upset by the immorality of Goa's populace, who brought the Inquisition to Goa. The Portuguese rather brutally suppressed Hinduism and many autos de fe were held just outside the Cathedral.
From the Cathedral I went into the Archeological Museum and Portrait Gallery in the former Convent of St. Francis. It has quite a bit of interesting stuff, both Hindu and Christian. On its walls are about 70 life size portraits of Viceroys and Governors painted on wooden boards dating from the early 1500's to the 1950's. A Viceroy who arrived in the 1540's had portraits painted of all his predecessors and himself and started the tradition. They are very interesting, showing the changes of dress over more than four centuries, with many very stern, tough looking guys in the early years. A chart showed something like 180 viceroys and governors and governing councils all together, so some portraits are missing.
Next, I went into the adjacent Church of St. Francis, dating from the 1660's and replacing an earlier church. It, too has a gilded altar, with St. Francis stationed next to Jesus on the cross, and a gilded pulpit. The floor is covered with tombstones, more than a hundred of them. Just to the west is the small chapel of St. Catherine, built at the old city gate by Afonso de Albequerque in thanks for his victory, but redone since. By the time I got there, it was 4:30 and I sat in its shade and ate some peanuts I had brought.
I realized I wouldn't be able to see everything I wanted in one day. I walked back to Bon Jesus and then the Cathedral and on to the large, whitewashed 1651 Church and Convent of San Cayetan, east of the Cathedral. It is domed and was deserted in the late afternoon. It, too, has a beautiful wooden altar and pulpit set against the whitewashed interior walls. Close by is a ruined archway said to date from the Adil Shah Bijapuri era.
On the way to the river landing is another arch, a ceremonial one that the Viceroys used to pass through on their arrival by river to the city. One the side facing the river is a statue of Vasco da Gama while on the other side is a figure with his foot upon a recumbent figure. The former is said to be Portuguese and the latter Indian. I walked through the arch and down to the river, where a ferry crosses to the other side. The river is lined with coconut palms, mangroves and other vegetation. Finally, I walked back to Bom Jesus, where a poorly attended church service (maybe 30 people) was going on. I caught the bus back to Panaji about 6 and was back before dark.
The next morning after breakfast at Venite I took the bus back to Old Goa. It was already late in the morning, about 11, but I walked through the center and then east up a road to Our Lady of the Mount, a small church on a 200 foot high hill with great views. I could see St. Cayetan with its towers and dome, and beyond it the Cathedral, the Church of St. Francis, and other whitewashed buildings. Bom Jesus was hidden behind a little hill. Further were several churches west of the center. The whitewashed churches seemed to be rising out of a sea of coconut palms. I could also see down the river to Panaji and upriver to a bridge, with jungle all around. It was quite a view and I spent more than half an hour enjoying it before walking back to the center.
I went back through the Cathedral and revisited the Archeological Museum and Portrait Gallery and then climbed up Holy Hill, the small hill west of the center. I passed the renovated Church of John of God and the Convent of Santa Monica, with large buttresses holding up the high walls, and went into the Museum of Christian Art located in part of the old Church of Santa Monica, adjacent to the convent. This museum had a very interesting collection, all from Goa, and its pieces were very well presented. They are still renovating part of the large church, with the museum occupying perhaps a third of it. A man at the museum told me there were about 100 nuns in the convent. He also told me Goa's Governor was coming to the museum that afternoon.
I walked further up the hill to the crest and the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary. From this hill Albuquerque is said to have watched his troops conquer the city from the Bijapuris. The church is Goa's oldest church, dating from 1526 in a style called Manueline, after Portugal's king at the start of the 16th century, the century when Portugal reached the peak of its power. It is simple and whitewashed, with turrets flanking the undecorated facade. Inside is the interesting tomb, of Gujarati design, of a woman said to be the first European woman in Goa.
I walked down, past the museum, and noticed by all the security that the Governor had arrived. On another part of the hill are the ruins of the Church and Monastery of St. Augustine. The complex, built in the mid 17th century, was huge, but was abandoned when the monasteries were closed in 1835. It fell into ruin, with its roof collapsing soon thereafter, though apparently the walls and facade were intact until the 1930's. Now remaining is a five story, 150 foot high portion of a bell tower. Less than half of it remains, towering over the other ruins of the complex. I walked all around inside. There are many gravestones on the floor and a few tiles remaining on the remaining walls. From there I walked up a bit to the Church of St. Anthony, with a locked gate. Young women were watering the flower garden next to the church with pots of water drawn from a well. I walked down to Bom Jesus ( the Governor's entourage, about six cars, passed me on the way) and watched the mass going on for a while. There must have been 200 to 300 in attendance. The mass was in Konkani, the local language. I took the bus back to Panaji about 6.
The next morning, after my usual breakfast at Venite, I took the ferry across the Mandovi River from downtown Panaji to Betim on the opposite bank and from there hopped on a bus heading west along the river for only a few miles to the village of Verem. From there I walked for about 15 minutes along the river to the Church and Fort of Reis Magos. The big whitewashed church was closed, but the 16th century fort has recently been restored and was open. Its walls climb from the riverbank up to the crest of the hill. The site is very interesting, with great views back to Panaji and out to sea and along the coast to the north and south. It's not a big fort, but it withstood a two year siege by the Marathas from 1739 to 1741. On the opposite of the river was another fort on a lowland position that has disappeared. I enjoyed both the views and the displays inside the fort, including one on a Goan cartoonist famous throughout India who died recently. His cartoons on his life at a young man in Goa in the early 1950's were funny and interesting.
I walked back and caught a bus heading to the beaches north of Panaji, getting off at a beach town called Candolim and walking south along the very crowded beach, full of westerners, many on chaise lounges, to the southern end, where there are the remains of another fort, Fort Aguada. This beach runs for something like five miles along the coast from Fort Aguada, ending at the Baga River. I looked around the seashore ruins and then climbed the hill to the massive upper fort, built in 1612 and once supplied with 200 cannons, to protect the Mandovi estuary from attacks by the Dutch. The fort is on the northern headland of the estuary, 200 feet or more above the water, with a moat cut into the rock below the walls, similar to the Portuguese fort at Diu, though that fort was at sea level, not 200 feet or more above sea level. On the north side, facing the estuary, which is miles wide at this point, the walls run all the way down to a lower fort, now a very scenic prison, on the shore. There's not much left inside the upper fort, though they are restoring it. Underground is supposed to be a water tank with a capacity of over two million gallons. Needless to say, there were great views from the fort. After walking along the walls, inside and out, I walked down the way I had come, down a scenic path rather than the paved road.
At the base I boarded a bus and took it north, paralleling the beach, a few miles to Calangute. There is almost continuous development along this route, the heart of Goa's package tourist industry, fueled by charter flights from Europe. It's all shops, restaurants and hotels. The signs are all in English, except for some, mostly menus, in Russian. On the bus I got to talking to an English guy who has been coming here for 20 years and he told me that 20 years ago the road was dirt and there were few facilities. I remember taking the bus from Panaji to Calangute in 1979 for a day on the beach. It was nothing then like it is now. These beaches 50 years ago hosted only fishing villages, with some beach homes from the upper classes from Panaji. Goa was discovered by backpackers in the late 1960's and became a sort of hippie haven. Mass tourism, with charters from Europe, followed in the 1980's and after. And Goa is now very popular with Indian tourists. The development is really fairly ugly. I got off briefly in Calungute, where I'd been in 1979 and now the preferred Goan destination for Indian tourists and it is a mess. I took a brief look at the beach after braving the traffic on the way to the beach, and then caught a bus back to Panaji, a trip of less than an hour. On the way back, I did spot several old Goan homes, with red tile roofs and columned verandas. Some were in considerable disrepair. They are lovely old buildings. The bus crossed the long bridge over the Mandovi and arrived in Panaji just at dark, at 7.
I headed north again the next morning on a bus to Mapusa, the main town of northern Goa, less than ten miles from Panaji and set in a little valley. From there I took another of Goa's ubiquitous little buses west to Vagator on the coast. Vagator has several beaches set in scenic coves. The village seemed a nice place, especially compared to the development further south, and I walked through it to the northernmost beach, with Chapora Fort on the mostly barren hill above it. I walked along the not too crowded beach, with a cool breeze from the sea, and made the steep 200 foot climb to the large fort, built in 1617. The walls are mostly intact, but there is almost nothing inside the fort. Still, the fort ruins are much more atmospheric than the restored forts at Reis Magos and Aguada. I walked all around, in the noonday sun, but with a cool wind. There are fantastic views. You can see Vagator's beaches to the south; to the north is the wide mouth of the Chapora River, with beaches and palm groves on the far side. I could see quite a ways up the coast. One section of beach a little north of the river was filled with sunbathers, at a village called Morjim and nicknamed Morjimograd as it is almost completely monopolized by Russian tourists and supposedly controlled by the Russian mafia. The wide river narrows going inland, though with a wide sweep below the fort with the fishing village of Chapora just below on the river. Further up the coast is the northernmost of Goa's forts, Terekhol, just south of the Maharashtra state border.
I spent a couple of hours wandering around the fort and the hills around it before walking down and walking the short distance to Chapora. In the little village I walked along the palm lined riverbank, with fishing boats out on the water. The center of the village was busy, with several dozen actual hippies, or clever disguised imposters, sitting at two juice bars near a banyan tree. I guess the package tourists have pushed them his far north. There were also quite a few Indian tourists around, mostly on noisy motorcycles. I stopped in a little restaurant and had a cheese and avocado toasted sandwich and a banana lassi and then walked back to Vagator, where I caught a bus to Anjuna, the next village a short distance south. I got off and looked around. Anjuna was famous as a hippie resort, but is badly overbuilt and ugly now. The beach appears to have been eroded in part, too. I didn't spend long there before catching a bus back to Mapusa and then to Panaji, getting back about 5.
The next day I spent sightseeing south of Panaji. I took an express bus about 20 miles south to Margao, Goa's second city with about 100,000 people. (There are only 1.5 million people in the state. Goa became a state only in 1987. It was a territory before that. It is a small state by Indian standards.) About halfway there we crossed the very wide estuary of the Zuari River. These Goan rivers rise in the Western Ghats, no more than 30 miles from the ocean, although with their twists and turns their lengths are greater than that. Apparently at high tide the Zuari and the Mandovi are linked by an inland watercourse. This made Old Goa even more defensible.
I got to Margao shortly before 10 and walked to its Largo da Igreja, with the large and whitewashed Holy Spirit Church at its eastern end. People were pouring out of the church after Sunday mass and at 10 another mass began, with the pews full and people standing outside. I took a brief look inside, but with the mass starting didn't want to stay long. I walked around the neighborhood, full of old colonial buildings, including the large da Silva Palace, dating from 1790 with three of its original seven peaked sections remaining.
From Margao I took one of Goa's little buses further inland, to the east, to the little village of Chandor, less than ten miles from Margao. I got off by its whitewashed church and walked to the nearby Braganza Palace. This two story palace, with 28 large windows lining the front, dates in part from the 16th century. It was built for two brothers, half for each one. It has remained in their families ever since. The Menezes-Braganza (at one point there was only a daughter to inherit) west wing was closed. It used to be open on Sundays, but the 95 year old lady who lived there died last year. No one lives there now, but a lady opens the wing for visitors every day but Sunday. The Perreira-Braganza (again, no son to inherit) east wing was open, and I was shown around by a young woman. This wing is not supposed to be as beautiful as the west wing, but it still was pretty impressive, particularly the ball room, 350 years old. It has marble floors and a painted zinc ceiling, the ceiling now in great disrepair. The furniture is old, too, but not that old. I was shown two chairs given to an ancestor by the King of Portugal as a reward for his service as a consul in Spain and a wooden toilet near the old four poster bed in a bedroom. There is a chapel with a relic in a monstrance, the fingernail of St. Francis Xavier.
The family lives in the wing and my guide introduced me to her mother-in-law, who speaks Portuguese. I spoke briefly with her. The guide told me the family is Indian, with no Portuguese ancestors, and was given the Braganza name when they converted in the 16th century. That seems a little odd to me, as Braganza was the family name of the Portuguese royal family. The areas of Goa closest to Panaji are called the Old Conquests and are more heavily Christian than the New Conquests, which Portugal acquired after the fervor of the Inquisition had passed. I think Goa's population is about 20 or 25 percent Christian. It's about 70 percent Hindu and there are Muslims, too.
Leaving the Braganza Palace, I walked past the village church again and headed east out of town, passing rice paddies fringed by coconut palms, about a mile to the Fernandes Palace, part of which is about 500 years old but most of which dates from 1821. It is not as large or as magnificent as the Braganza Palace, but still was very interesting. I was shown around by a young man who introduced me to his mother, with whom I had a pretty interesting conversation in Portuguese. Goanese pronunciation is much closer to the pronunciation in Portugal than in Brazil. The guy showed me gunholes in the oldest part of the house, in one part of the ground floor, for firing at intruders. He said there used to be an escape tunnel to the river 100 feet away, but it has collapsed now. He also let me wield an old sword, which was heavy.
He was a friendly guy and gave me directions to my next stop, the little town of Quepem. While waiting for a bus to come along I walked further east, passing more beautiful rice paddies and a decrepit colonial building with stone lions on the gateways. A little bus came along and I took it further east, passing over the here narrow Zuari River, hemmed in with jungle on either side, to the town of Sanvordem, where I hopped on another little bus southwest to Quepem. In Quepem I walked to the Palacio do Deao (which I think means Palace of the Dean, as in Dean of the Cathedral in Old Goa) on the river. It was built in 1780 by a Portuguese priest who arrived in Goa in 1779 at age 18. He stayed until his death in 1835 and is buried in the Cathedral in Old Goa, where he was Deao (again, Dean, I think). It was in ruins, but an Indian couple have restored it, are living in it, but allow visitors to look around. I walked through the house, full of old furniture, and the lovely gardens.
I had a small snack in a little cafe on the town square before taking the bus back to Margao, where I walked again to the Church of the Holy Spirit. A wedding was about to start at 5, but I looked around inside before it started. The original church was built in 1564 and sacked by Muslims in 1589. It was rebuilt in 1675 and is beautiful inside, with a large gilded altar and a splendid gilded pulpit, with painted figures on it. The church filled up while I was looking around. I noticed several women wore saris while most wore western dress, some of the young women in short skirts. All were dressed very well, the men in suits and ties. The bride wore a white wedding dress and proceeded down the center aisle. The service was in English. I sat and watched for a while, then took a walk around the neighborhood again to see the colonial era buildings before coming back to the church and catching the end of the sermon, the vows and the beginning of a song. I left before the end and caught a bus back to Panaji soon after 6.
I finally left Panaji the next morning, but only after a walk around the Fontainhas neighborhood and breakfast at Venite. About 10:30 I took an express bus to Margao. Unlike almost all other buses I've taken in India, for this bus you have to buy your ticket from a little window before boarding and, much to my surprise, there was a long, orderly queue that morning for tickets. None of the usual Indian scrum of cutting in line and pushing and shoving. From Margao I took a slower bus further south, crossing over some beautiful green hills rising to over 500 feet elevation before arriving at Palolem on the coast, about 20 miles south of Margao. The bus arrived a little before 1 and I got a room in a comfortable and friendly hotel.
Palolem, a fishing village undiscovered by tourism until less than 20 years ago, has a long crescent shaped beach backed by coconut palms. The beach is still beautiful, and the palms are still there, some reaching out over the wide expanse of sand towards the sea, but all along the perhaps mile long beach, under the palms, there is now commercial development. Fortunately, it is of the beach shack type and fits in well with the beach and palm trees. There are no big resorts. In fact, before the monsoon every year the proprietors of the small hotels, restaurants and shops along the beach are required by law, I've been told, to dismantle them until the beginning of the next season. (I can remember the Nepali guys who ran I restaurant I liked in Leh, in Ladahk, in India's far north, when I was there in September 2010 getting ready to close up the restaurant and head to Goa for the winter.)
There were lots of tourists in Palolem, almost all westerners, though some Indians. Soon after arrival I had a delicious lunch, a feta cheese and fried eggplant sandwich on good bread with a salad with balsamic vinegar dressing. Food and accommodation here are very good. I can see why people come and stay a long time.
About 3 I walked through the village to its northern end and then to the river to the north. The beach runs generally from the northwest to the southeast, and I made my way through the palm trees to the northwest end of the beach where a rickety wooden bridge crosses the little river to a set of huts on the other side. Then I walked back along the beach to the village center and then inland through the village to the the southeast end of the beach and climbed the rocky headland beyond. I came back to my hotel along the long, fairly wide beach, stopping to sit near two overhanging palm trees and watch the sunset about 6:30. The sun disappeared into the haze over the ocean. Outriggered fishing boats were beaching before sunset, but some still were out on the water.
The next morning I took about a two hour walk up and down the beach. My hotel is nearer the northwestern end and I walked first to the southeastern end, with the sun rising over the palms. Men were working on their fishing boats on the beach and tourists were out strolling or jogging. It was cool in the morning. I reached the headland and turned back, walking to the northwestern end. The tide was out and I could wade the little river at less than knee deep to get to the rocky headland on the other side. I came back, spotting a kingfisher first on the sand and then on a big rock at the river's edge and seeing lots of little crabs and their holes in the sand. Many of the holes had perfectly round little balls of sand next to them, excavated by the tiny crabs. The crabs generally would scurry to their holes at my approach. One, however, did not, but ran all around. I followed him and eventually he let me get within inches of him. Quite brave, or foolish. About 10:30 I had a great breakfast, an English Breakfast, as the menu had it, of scrambled eggs, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and potatoes, baked beans, bacon, sausage, pineapple juice and very good bread with butter and jam, all for 225 rupees (something over $4), quite expensive for an Indian breakfast but a great deal for what you got. I spent the middle part of the day in an internet cafe and reading in my room before taking another walk up and down the beach from about 5 to after sunset.
I thought about heading further south the next day, but couldn't quite make myself leave. In the early morning I spent another couple of hours or so walking up and down the beach. It was a bit cloudy early in the morning. There must have been over fifty outriggered fishing boats along the beach. I watched one come in, pushed up the beach from the water's edge by perhaps a dozen men. I then watched as about eight of them slowly unwound a long green net, pulling off shrimp and some small fish as they did so and tossing them into piles. Crows, dogs and even a few hawks watched, the crows diving for some of the small fish tossed to the sand. I didn't see the hawks do the same, but they were circling. The dogs ate some of the cast off fish, too. When I came back after walking up and down the beach they were finished and the shrimp had been divided into more or less equal piles, one for each of the fishermen perhaps. From the beach I walked into a group of very nice hut accommodations for tourists just behind the beach and read a newspaper while sitting on a comfortable chair under the palms before heading to a late breakfast.
In the afternoon I spent some time talking to a guy from Kazakhstan staying at my hotel. He is ethnically Russian and works on the Caspian Sea, doing environmental studies for the oil industry. He showed me photos of Kazakhstan on his laptop. I walked up and down the beach again before and after sundown. A fleet of about fifteen fishing boats had anchored in the little bay earlier in the afternoon. As I was leaving the beach in the twilight to walk through the coconut palms to my hotel, I noticed a guy high up in the fronds of a palm tree at the edge of the beach. Another guy came by and said he was placing a pot for toddy, and would have a liter by morning. For dinner that evening I went to an open air restaurant where a cow had situated itself just inside the entry. She sat there calmly all through dinner.
Goa was ruled by a Hindu dynasty for centuries before conquest by Muslims from the north in the early 1300's. Later that century, the Vijayanagar Empire conquered the area and ruled it for about a century, followed by the Bahmanis about 1470 and later Bijapur. The Portuguese, under Afonso de Albuquerque, arrived in 1510, defeated Bijapur, and made Goa the center of their Asian empire. Despite attacks by Bijapur and later the Marathas, and threats from the Dutch, they held on to Goa until 1961, when India invaded and took it over.
After resting in my room for a while I walked down the street, the Rua 31 de Janeiro (the date Panaji became capital), to the Hotel Venite, where I stayed in 1979. (I have an old aerogram with its name and street name.) It is now just a restaurant, with small balconies with tables over the narrow street below. I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the town. Panaji was made the capital only in 1833, after Old Goa became inhabitable because of malaria and cholera epidemics. The Viceroy had moved his residence to Panaji earlier, in 1759, when he took up residence in a palace along the river built on the site of a Bijapuri palace. The building, which was the Viceroy's residence until 1918, is still there and now used as government offices. I walked past it and past other old colonial buildings, with many Portuguese names on shops. In front of the former viceroy's palace is an unusual statue of a priest, Abbe Faria with a hypnotized woman at his feet. He was a Goan born priest who made quite a sensation hypnotizing people in France around 1800. There are great views across the wide river, with forested hills on the north bank. I remember leaving Goa by ship on that river in 1979 on a 24 hour journey to Bombay, which included sleeping on the deck on a chilly night at sea. Panaji is India's smallest capital city and a very pleasant one, with only about 100,000 people.
I walked away from the river up the slight slope to the Largo da Igreja, the central plaza, with a forty foot column in the center that until 1968 had a statue of Vasco da Gama on the top, now replaced by the four lions national symbol of India. Nearby is the bright white Church of the Immaculate Conception, originally built in 1541, but rebuilt and considerably enlarged in 1619. It was very large at the time considering that Panaji was just a village, but Panaji was the first stop for ships from Europe before heading upriver to the capital and those on board are said to have rushed to the church to give thanks for a safe journey. The church has two baroque towers and a baroque interior, with beautiful gilded wooden altars. The Indians entering removed their footwear, but when I asked the attendant if I needed to do so, he shook his head no.
From the church I walked uphill past a mosque and a Hindu temple, the latter dating from 1819 when Hindu temples were allowed after three centuries of repression by the Inquisition. I took winding streets up Altinho Hill and then steps down the other side to get back to the Fontainhas neighborhood. I walked past Fontainhas' whitewashed San Sebastian Church and many old colonial buildings back to my hotel. For dinner I went to a restaurant just in front of the Immaculate Conception Church and had shark in butter and garlic, which was very good. Back at the hotel I had a hot shower, the first one I have had on this trip to India. I almost always wash with bucket baths, and I haven't had hot water for a while. Hot water is not really necessary here on the coast and wasn't inland on the plateau either. Goa's highs seem to be about 90-95, with lows in the high 60's. I had a comfortable bed in that lovely high ceilinged room and slept well.
The next morning I walked around the Fontainhas neighborhood in the early morning to look at all the old buildings. Many are colorful: red, yellow, blue, green. It was the law during the colonial era that you had to paint your house after the monsoon every year. The old houses are built of laterite, a pockmarked red stone, and then plastered. I had a late breakfast at the Venite, an omelet with very good, chewy bread served with lots of butter, and read the newspapers at the restaurant, The Times of India (which I just read is India's most popular English newspaper with seven million daily readers) and Goa's Herald. I spent the early afternoon in an internet cafe and in the late afternoon walked along the wide Mandovi River, which is an estuary and tidal. I took the ferry that goes to the other side back and forth without getting off. There are several huge casino boats anchored in the river, plus Goa's fishing boats are all anchored in the river near the bridge upstream from the city center. They were striking because they wanted their fuel to receive a higher subsidy. Towards the west there is a nice walkway along the river and a large colonial building, built in 1871, I think. In colonial days it was the Vasco da Gama Institute, but now has a new name. In the entry hall are beautifully painted blue and white tiles, from the 1930's I think, illustrating passages from Camoes' Os Lusiades, Portugal's 16th century national epic. I walked along the river to the park on the west side of town with views of the mouth of the wide Mandovi. Sunset was at 6:30 over a big ship far away out to sea, with the high cliffs of the north bank of the Mandovi to the right, site of the old Portuguese Reis Magos Fort.
The next morning after a leisurely breakfast at the Venite I took the bus east along the river to Old Goa, five miles away. It is quite a large site. There was a city here, an important port for importing Arabian horses and for Mecca bound travelers on the haj, before the Portuguese conquered it from Bijapur. At its height during the Portuguese era, about 1600, the city is supposed to have been as large as Lisbon, with estimates of 70,000 to 200,000 inhabitants. Its golden age was the end of the 16th century, when Portugal ruled the Indian Ocean. In the next century the Dutch largely displaced the Portuguese, and malaria and epidemics of cholera depleted the city. It was all but abandoned by the 19th century. At the center are several big churches, all but one whitewashed. I went into the unwhitewashed one, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, first. It is made of laterite stone blocks for the most part. In fact, all the churches are made of laterite stone blocks, but most are then plastered and then whitewashed. Bom Jesus, raised to a basilica in 1946, was finished in 1605, with an impressive Renaissance stone facade. Inside it is mostly fairly simple, painted white, but with beautiful gilded altars with twisting columns and a large gilded pulpit. The main altar has a huge figure of St. Ignatius Loyola hovering over the baby Jesus.
Off to the right from the main altar is the elaborate tomb of St. Francis Xavier. Born in 1506, he came to Goa first in 1542, spending only a few months here, and then heading off to evangelize in Ceylon, the Moluccas, Japan and China, with short returns to Goa. He died of dysentery on an island off China in 1552, was buried there, but the body eventually dug up and brought back to Goa. It was said to be in a perfect state of preservation. The corpse is now in a tomb built near the end of the 17th century and paid for by Cosimo III, the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany. The tomb has three levels and is made of marble and jasper, with a crystal enclosure on top with the body. I think it is covered with cloth, but there are photos of the body in a room nearby. The corpse is taken out every ten or twelve years and brought to the nearby Cathedral for display. There are some great stories about the corpse. One is that its right arm was taken to Rome to show the Pope, where it wrote its name with a pen. Another is that once while on display, a woman bit off its little toe, but was found out when blood began gushing from her mouth. The saint is venerated not just by Catholics, but by Hindus, too, and there were plenty of them that morning in the church, many more Indians than western tourists. Piles of shoes were left outside the doors of the Basilica.
I walked through the adjacent cloisters, and then to the huge Cathedral across a wide expanse from the Basilica. In fact, adjacent to the Cathedral is the Archbishop's Palace, and adjacent to that is the Church and Convent of St. Francis of Assisi. The Cathedral, dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria because the battle that won Goa for Portugal was fought on her day, November 25, is said to be the largest church in Asia and larger than any church in Portugal, about 260 feet long and 170 feet wide. Its facade, unlike Bom Jesus, faces east and is said to be of Tuscan design. One bell tower collapsed in the 19th century, but the other remains. The Cathedral and other churches were much less crowded than Bom Jesus. Inside the Cathedral is white and fairly plain, but with huge aisles and very high ceilings. Construction was started in 1562, but the constant running out of funds delayed completion for 90 years. It has a gilded altar with scenes from St. Catherine's life, including her beheading, and several side altars. Apparently under the whitewashed interior are painted walls. I heard a guide say that because the laterite stone is so porous, moisture seeps in and it would be far too costly to maintain the painted surfaces, so they were whitewashed over. A portion of the paintings is still visible, though, in one of the side altars. On the floor are many interesting tombstones, some badly eroded and some not, and I could read quite a few. Nearby the Cathedral are the ruins of the Palace of the Inquisition. Apparently, it was St. Francis Xavier, upset by the immorality of Goa's populace, who brought the Inquisition to Goa. The Portuguese rather brutally suppressed Hinduism and many autos de fe were held just outside the Cathedral.
From the Cathedral I went into the Archeological Museum and Portrait Gallery in the former Convent of St. Francis. It has quite a bit of interesting stuff, both Hindu and Christian. On its walls are about 70 life size portraits of Viceroys and Governors painted on wooden boards dating from the early 1500's to the 1950's. A Viceroy who arrived in the 1540's had portraits painted of all his predecessors and himself and started the tradition. They are very interesting, showing the changes of dress over more than four centuries, with many very stern, tough looking guys in the early years. A chart showed something like 180 viceroys and governors and governing councils all together, so some portraits are missing.
Next, I went into the adjacent Church of St. Francis, dating from the 1660's and replacing an earlier church. It, too has a gilded altar, with St. Francis stationed next to Jesus on the cross, and a gilded pulpit. The floor is covered with tombstones, more than a hundred of them. Just to the west is the small chapel of St. Catherine, built at the old city gate by Afonso de Albequerque in thanks for his victory, but redone since. By the time I got there, it was 4:30 and I sat in its shade and ate some peanuts I had brought.
I realized I wouldn't be able to see everything I wanted in one day. I walked back to Bon Jesus and then the Cathedral and on to the large, whitewashed 1651 Church and Convent of San Cayetan, east of the Cathedral. It is domed and was deserted in the late afternoon. It, too, has a beautiful wooden altar and pulpit set against the whitewashed interior walls. Close by is a ruined archway said to date from the Adil Shah Bijapuri era.
On the way to the river landing is another arch, a ceremonial one that the Viceroys used to pass through on their arrival by river to the city. One the side facing the river is a statue of Vasco da Gama while on the other side is a figure with his foot upon a recumbent figure. The former is said to be Portuguese and the latter Indian. I walked through the arch and down to the river, where a ferry crosses to the other side. The river is lined with coconut palms, mangroves and other vegetation. Finally, I walked back to Bom Jesus, where a poorly attended church service (maybe 30 people) was going on. I caught the bus back to Panaji about 6 and was back before dark.
The next morning after breakfast at Venite I took the bus back to Old Goa. It was already late in the morning, about 11, but I walked through the center and then east up a road to Our Lady of the Mount, a small church on a 200 foot high hill with great views. I could see St. Cayetan with its towers and dome, and beyond it the Cathedral, the Church of St. Francis, and other whitewashed buildings. Bom Jesus was hidden behind a little hill. Further were several churches west of the center. The whitewashed churches seemed to be rising out of a sea of coconut palms. I could also see down the river to Panaji and upriver to a bridge, with jungle all around. It was quite a view and I spent more than half an hour enjoying it before walking back to the center.
I went back through the Cathedral and revisited the Archeological Museum and Portrait Gallery and then climbed up Holy Hill, the small hill west of the center. I passed the renovated Church of John of God and the Convent of Santa Monica, with large buttresses holding up the high walls, and went into the Museum of Christian Art located in part of the old Church of Santa Monica, adjacent to the convent. This museum had a very interesting collection, all from Goa, and its pieces were very well presented. They are still renovating part of the large church, with the museum occupying perhaps a third of it. A man at the museum told me there were about 100 nuns in the convent. He also told me Goa's Governor was coming to the museum that afternoon.
I walked further up the hill to the crest and the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary. From this hill Albuquerque is said to have watched his troops conquer the city from the Bijapuris. The church is Goa's oldest church, dating from 1526 in a style called Manueline, after Portugal's king at the start of the 16th century, the century when Portugal reached the peak of its power. It is simple and whitewashed, with turrets flanking the undecorated facade. Inside is the interesting tomb, of Gujarati design, of a woman said to be the first European woman in Goa.
I walked down, past the museum, and noticed by all the security that the Governor had arrived. On another part of the hill are the ruins of the Church and Monastery of St. Augustine. The complex, built in the mid 17th century, was huge, but was abandoned when the monasteries were closed in 1835. It fell into ruin, with its roof collapsing soon thereafter, though apparently the walls and facade were intact until the 1930's. Now remaining is a five story, 150 foot high portion of a bell tower. Less than half of it remains, towering over the other ruins of the complex. I walked all around inside. There are many gravestones on the floor and a few tiles remaining on the remaining walls. From there I walked up a bit to the Church of St. Anthony, with a locked gate. Young women were watering the flower garden next to the church with pots of water drawn from a well. I walked down to Bom Jesus ( the Governor's entourage, about six cars, passed me on the way) and watched the mass going on for a while. There must have been 200 to 300 in attendance. The mass was in Konkani, the local language. I took the bus back to Panaji about 6.
The next morning, after my usual breakfast at Venite, I took the ferry across the Mandovi River from downtown Panaji to Betim on the opposite bank and from there hopped on a bus heading west along the river for only a few miles to the village of Verem. From there I walked for about 15 minutes along the river to the Church and Fort of Reis Magos. The big whitewashed church was closed, but the 16th century fort has recently been restored and was open. Its walls climb from the riverbank up to the crest of the hill. The site is very interesting, with great views back to Panaji and out to sea and along the coast to the north and south. It's not a big fort, but it withstood a two year siege by the Marathas from 1739 to 1741. On the opposite of the river was another fort on a lowland position that has disappeared. I enjoyed both the views and the displays inside the fort, including one on a Goan cartoonist famous throughout India who died recently. His cartoons on his life at a young man in Goa in the early 1950's were funny and interesting.
I walked back and caught a bus heading to the beaches north of Panaji, getting off at a beach town called Candolim and walking south along the very crowded beach, full of westerners, many on chaise lounges, to the southern end, where there are the remains of another fort, Fort Aguada. This beach runs for something like five miles along the coast from Fort Aguada, ending at the Baga River. I looked around the seashore ruins and then climbed the hill to the massive upper fort, built in 1612 and once supplied with 200 cannons, to protect the Mandovi estuary from attacks by the Dutch. The fort is on the northern headland of the estuary, 200 feet or more above the water, with a moat cut into the rock below the walls, similar to the Portuguese fort at Diu, though that fort was at sea level, not 200 feet or more above sea level. On the north side, facing the estuary, which is miles wide at this point, the walls run all the way down to a lower fort, now a very scenic prison, on the shore. There's not much left inside the upper fort, though they are restoring it. Underground is supposed to be a water tank with a capacity of over two million gallons. Needless to say, there were great views from the fort. After walking along the walls, inside and out, I walked down the way I had come, down a scenic path rather than the paved road.
At the base I boarded a bus and took it north, paralleling the beach, a few miles to Calangute. There is almost continuous development along this route, the heart of Goa's package tourist industry, fueled by charter flights from Europe. It's all shops, restaurants and hotels. The signs are all in English, except for some, mostly menus, in Russian. On the bus I got to talking to an English guy who has been coming here for 20 years and he told me that 20 years ago the road was dirt and there were few facilities. I remember taking the bus from Panaji to Calangute in 1979 for a day on the beach. It was nothing then like it is now. These beaches 50 years ago hosted only fishing villages, with some beach homes from the upper classes from Panaji. Goa was discovered by backpackers in the late 1960's and became a sort of hippie haven. Mass tourism, with charters from Europe, followed in the 1980's and after. And Goa is now very popular with Indian tourists. The development is really fairly ugly. I got off briefly in Calungute, where I'd been in 1979 and now the preferred Goan destination for Indian tourists and it is a mess. I took a brief look at the beach after braving the traffic on the way to the beach, and then caught a bus back to Panaji, a trip of less than an hour. On the way back, I did spot several old Goan homes, with red tile roofs and columned verandas. Some were in considerable disrepair. They are lovely old buildings. The bus crossed the long bridge over the Mandovi and arrived in Panaji just at dark, at 7.
I headed north again the next morning on a bus to Mapusa, the main town of northern Goa, less than ten miles from Panaji and set in a little valley. From there I took another of Goa's ubiquitous little buses west to Vagator on the coast. Vagator has several beaches set in scenic coves. The village seemed a nice place, especially compared to the development further south, and I walked through it to the northernmost beach, with Chapora Fort on the mostly barren hill above it. I walked along the not too crowded beach, with a cool breeze from the sea, and made the steep 200 foot climb to the large fort, built in 1617. The walls are mostly intact, but there is almost nothing inside the fort. Still, the fort ruins are much more atmospheric than the restored forts at Reis Magos and Aguada. I walked all around, in the noonday sun, but with a cool wind. There are fantastic views. You can see Vagator's beaches to the south; to the north is the wide mouth of the Chapora River, with beaches and palm groves on the far side. I could see quite a ways up the coast. One section of beach a little north of the river was filled with sunbathers, at a village called Morjim and nicknamed Morjimograd as it is almost completely monopolized by Russian tourists and supposedly controlled by the Russian mafia. The wide river narrows going inland, though with a wide sweep below the fort with the fishing village of Chapora just below on the river. Further up the coast is the northernmost of Goa's forts, Terekhol, just south of the Maharashtra state border.
I spent a couple of hours wandering around the fort and the hills around it before walking down and walking the short distance to Chapora. In the little village I walked along the palm lined riverbank, with fishing boats out on the water. The center of the village was busy, with several dozen actual hippies, or clever disguised imposters, sitting at two juice bars near a banyan tree. I guess the package tourists have pushed them his far north. There were also quite a few Indian tourists around, mostly on noisy motorcycles. I stopped in a little restaurant and had a cheese and avocado toasted sandwich and a banana lassi and then walked back to Vagator, where I caught a bus to Anjuna, the next village a short distance south. I got off and looked around. Anjuna was famous as a hippie resort, but is badly overbuilt and ugly now. The beach appears to have been eroded in part, too. I didn't spend long there before catching a bus back to Mapusa and then to Panaji, getting back about 5.
The next day I spent sightseeing south of Panaji. I took an express bus about 20 miles south to Margao, Goa's second city with about 100,000 people. (There are only 1.5 million people in the state. Goa became a state only in 1987. It was a territory before that. It is a small state by Indian standards.) About halfway there we crossed the very wide estuary of the Zuari River. These Goan rivers rise in the Western Ghats, no more than 30 miles from the ocean, although with their twists and turns their lengths are greater than that. Apparently at high tide the Zuari and the Mandovi are linked by an inland watercourse. This made Old Goa even more defensible.
I got to Margao shortly before 10 and walked to its Largo da Igreja, with the large and whitewashed Holy Spirit Church at its eastern end. People were pouring out of the church after Sunday mass and at 10 another mass began, with the pews full and people standing outside. I took a brief look inside, but with the mass starting didn't want to stay long. I walked around the neighborhood, full of old colonial buildings, including the large da Silva Palace, dating from 1790 with three of its original seven peaked sections remaining.
From Margao I took one of Goa's little buses further inland, to the east, to the little village of Chandor, less than ten miles from Margao. I got off by its whitewashed church and walked to the nearby Braganza Palace. This two story palace, with 28 large windows lining the front, dates in part from the 16th century. It was built for two brothers, half for each one. It has remained in their families ever since. The Menezes-Braganza (at one point there was only a daughter to inherit) west wing was closed. It used to be open on Sundays, but the 95 year old lady who lived there died last year. No one lives there now, but a lady opens the wing for visitors every day but Sunday. The Perreira-Braganza (again, no son to inherit) east wing was open, and I was shown around by a young woman. This wing is not supposed to be as beautiful as the west wing, but it still was pretty impressive, particularly the ball room, 350 years old. It has marble floors and a painted zinc ceiling, the ceiling now in great disrepair. The furniture is old, too, but not that old. I was shown two chairs given to an ancestor by the King of Portugal as a reward for his service as a consul in Spain and a wooden toilet near the old four poster bed in a bedroom. There is a chapel with a relic in a monstrance, the fingernail of St. Francis Xavier.
The family lives in the wing and my guide introduced me to her mother-in-law, who speaks Portuguese. I spoke briefly with her. The guide told me the family is Indian, with no Portuguese ancestors, and was given the Braganza name when they converted in the 16th century. That seems a little odd to me, as Braganza was the family name of the Portuguese royal family. The areas of Goa closest to Panaji are called the Old Conquests and are more heavily Christian than the New Conquests, which Portugal acquired after the fervor of the Inquisition had passed. I think Goa's population is about 20 or 25 percent Christian. It's about 70 percent Hindu and there are Muslims, too.
Leaving the Braganza Palace, I walked past the village church again and headed east out of town, passing rice paddies fringed by coconut palms, about a mile to the Fernandes Palace, part of which is about 500 years old but most of which dates from 1821. It is not as large or as magnificent as the Braganza Palace, but still was very interesting. I was shown around by a young man who introduced me to his mother, with whom I had a pretty interesting conversation in Portuguese. Goanese pronunciation is much closer to the pronunciation in Portugal than in Brazil. The guy showed me gunholes in the oldest part of the house, in one part of the ground floor, for firing at intruders. He said there used to be an escape tunnel to the river 100 feet away, but it has collapsed now. He also let me wield an old sword, which was heavy.
He was a friendly guy and gave me directions to my next stop, the little town of Quepem. While waiting for a bus to come along I walked further east, passing more beautiful rice paddies and a decrepit colonial building with stone lions on the gateways. A little bus came along and I took it further east, passing over the here narrow Zuari River, hemmed in with jungle on either side, to the town of Sanvordem, where I hopped on another little bus southwest to Quepem. In Quepem I walked to the Palacio do Deao (which I think means Palace of the Dean, as in Dean of the Cathedral in Old Goa) on the river. It was built in 1780 by a Portuguese priest who arrived in Goa in 1779 at age 18. He stayed until his death in 1835 and is buried in the Cathedral in Old Goa, where he was Deao (again, Dean, I think). It was in ruins, but an Indian couple have restored it, are living in it, but allow visitors to look around. I walked through the house, full of old furniture, and the lovely gardens.
I had a small snack in a little cafe on the town square before taking the bus back to Margao, where I walked again to the Church of the Holy Spirit. A wedding was about to start at 5, but I looked around inside before it started. The original church was built in 1564 and sacked by Muslims in 1589. It was rebuilt in 1675 and is beautiful inside, with a large gilded altar and a splendid gilded pulpit, with painted figures on it. The church filled up while I was looking around. I noticed several women wore saris while most wore western dress, some of the young women in short skirts. All were dressed very well, the men in suits and ties. The bride wore a white wedding dress and proceeded down the center aisle. The service was in English. I sat and watched for a while, then took a walk around the neighborhood again to see the colonial era buildings before coming back to the church and catching the end of the sermon, the vows and the beginning of a song. I left before the end and caught a bus back to Panaji soon after 6.
I finally left Panaji the next morning, but only after a walk around the Fontainhas neighborhood and breakfast at Venite. About 10:30 I took an express bus to Margao. Unlike almost all other buses I've taken in India, for this bus you have to buy your ticket from a little window before boarding and, much to my surprise, there was a long, orderly queue that morning for tickets. None of the usual Indian scrum of cutting in line and pushing and shoving. From Margao I took a slower bus further south, crossing over some beautiful green hills rising to over 500 feet elevation before arriving at Palolem on the coast, about 20 miles south of Margao. The bus arrived a little before 1 and I got a room in a comfortable and friendly hotel.
Palolem, a fishing village undiscovered by tourism until less than 20 years ago, has a long crescent shaped beach backed by coconut palms. The beach is still beautiful, and the palms are still there, some reaching out over the wide expanse of sand towards the sea, but all along the perhaps mile long beach, under the palms, there is now commercial development. Fortunately, it is of the beach shack type and fits in well with the beach and palm trees. There are no big resorts. In fact, before the monsoon every year the proprietors of the small hotels, restaurants and shops along the beach are required by law, I've been told, to dismantle them until the beginning of the next season. (I can remember the Nepali guys who ran I restaurant I liked in Leh, in Ladahk, in India's far north, when I was there in September 2010 getting ready to close up the restaurant and head to Goa for the winter.)
There were lots of tourists in Palolem, almost all westerners, though some Indians. Soon after arrival I had a delicious lunch, a feta cheese and fried eggplant sandwich on good bread with a salad with balsamic vinegar dressing. Food and accommodation here are very good. I can see why people come and stay a long time.
About 3 I walked through the village to its northern end and then to the river to the north. The beach runs generally from the northwest to the southeast, and I made my way through the palm trees to the northwest end of the beach where a rickety wooden bridge crosses the little river to a set of huts on the other side. Then I walked back along the beach to the village center and then inland through the village to the the southeast end of the beach and climbed the rocky headland beyond. I came back to my hotel along the long, fairly wide beach, stopping to sit near two overhanging palm trees and watch the sunset about 6:30. The sun disappeared into the haze over the ocean. Outriggered fishing boats were beaching before sunset, but some still were out on the water.
The next morning I took about a two hour walk up and down the beach. My hotel is nearer the northwestern end and I walked first to the southeastern end, with the sun rising over the palms. Men were working on their fishing boats on the beach and tourists were out strolling or jogging. It was cool in the morning. I reached the headland and turned back, walking to the northwestern end. The tide was out and I could wade the little river at less than knee deep to get to the rocky headland on the other side. I came back, spotting a kingfisher first on the sand and then on a big rock at the river's edge and seeing lots of little crabs and their holes in the sand. Many of the holes had perfectly round little balls of sand next to them, excavated by the tiny crabs. The crabs generally would scurry to their holes at my approach. One, however, did not, but ran all around. I followed him and eventually he let me get within inches of him. Quite brave, or foolish. About 10:30 I had a great breakfast, an English Breakfast, as the menu had it, of scrambled eggs, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and potatoes, baked beans, bacon, sausage, pineapple juice and very good bread with butter and jam, all for 225 rupees (something over $4), quite expensive for an Indian breakfast but a great deal for what you got. I spent the middle part of the day in an internet cafe and reading in my room before taking another walk up and down the beach from about 5 to after sunset.
I thought about heading further south the next day, but couldn't quite make myself leave. In the early morning I spent another couple of hours or so walking up and down the beach. It was a bit cloudy early in the morning. There must have been over fifty outriggered fishing boats along the beach. I watched one come in, pushed up the beach from the water's edge by perhaps a dozen men. I then watched as about eight of them slowly unwound a long green net, pulling off shrimp and some small fish as they did so and tossing them into piles. Crows, dogs and even a few hawks watched, the crows diving for some of the small fish tossed to the sand. I didn't see the hawks do the same, but they were circling. The dogs ate some of the cast off fish, too. When I came back after walking up and down the beach they were finished and the shrimp had been divided into more or less equal piles, one for each of the fishermen perhaps. From the beach I walked into a group of very nice hut accommodations for tourists just behind the beach and read a newspaper while sitting on a comfortable chair under the palms before heading to a late breakfast.
In the afternoon I spent some time talking to a guy from Kazakhstan staying at my hotel. He is ethnically Russian and works on the Caspian Sea, doing environmental studies for the oil industry. He showed me photos of Kazakhstan on his laptop. I walked up and down the beach again before and after sundown. A fleet of about fifteen fishing boats had anchored in the little bay earlier in the afternoon. As I was leaving the beach in the twilight to walk through the coconut palms to my hotel, I noticed a guy high up in the fronds of a palm tree at the edge of the beach. Another guy came by and said he was placing a pot for toddy, and would have a liter by morning. For dinner that evening I went to an open air restaurant where a cow had situated itself just inside the entry. She sat there calmly all through dinner.
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