Escaping the sands
Being around the size of Cornwall, it would have been feasible (just about) to explore the length of Goa on day trips from a single location, and in truth that’s what most visitors do here. But to get closer to the cobs of this tiny state, l opted to move around.
My starting point, I have to confess, was a peach of a beach hotel, surrounded by paddies and wallowing water buffaloes. From the five-star Alila Diwa I walked ten minutes along a track beneath deep-green mango trees tasselled with fruit bats, to a swathe of palm-fringed white sand where I necked my first King’s beer in the shade of a weathered fishing boat painted with Hindu and Catholic symbols. This was Betalbatim beach, down in the south of Goa, a far-flung, little-developed stretch of Arabian Sea-side. If people tell you that Goa’s coast has been ‘spoiled by tourism’, tell them to come here. (Actually, on second thoughts, don’t).
Alert to the danger of drifting into a tropical trance, I asked my driver to point his exhaust pipe at paradise and take me inland. Soon we were weaving through coconut plantations dotted with whitewashed Portuguese churches. Chickens and little black pigs scattered as we sped through villages strung with cafés and wine shops. First stop was the stately, though unkempt, Palácio do Deão colonial residence in the languid village of Quepem. I was greeted by a panting dog stood on a stone veranda tiled with blue azulejos (ceramics) from Lisbon. I had expected to work hard in unearthing those tastes of old Portugal, not find them everywhere.
My host was Ruben Vasco da Gama. Was he related to his namesake discoverer of the sea route to India? “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t really know how long ago my family settled in Goa,” Senhor Vasco da Gama replied enigmatically as we wandered the rambling formal gardens and ageing home he hopes, in time, to turn into a colonial heritage hotel.
“I believe there is a growing interest in Goa’s hinterland, both geographically and culturally,” he predicted with confidence.
Imperial-age tourism is already up and running in nearby Chandor town, where my next stop was at the imperious 17th-century Braganza House, which struck me as resembling something like a French château. The house has survived recent times by doubling as a museum and octogenarian Senhora Pereira-Braganza, who has lived here since Portugal ruled the roost, showed me round the East Wing. Speaking Portuguese, as the older generation do (and because l understand the language), she pointed out bits of finery from the vanquished era, such as furniture from France, paintings from England, chandeliers from Belgium and china from China. “And your television is from Japan,” I observed. “Yes,” she nodded solemnly, leading the way to the tiny, candle-lit chapel housing a holy relic: a fingernail of St Francis Xavier.
