North Goa
Development in North Goa is concentrated mainly behind the seven-kilometre strip of white sand that stretches from the foot of Fort Aguada, crowning the peninsula east of Panjim, to Baga creek in the north. Encompassing the resorts of Candolim, Calangute and Baga, this is Goa’s prime charter belt and an area most independent travellers steer clear of.
Since the advent of mass tourism in the 1980s, the alternative “scene” has drifted progressively north away from the sunbed strip to Anjuna and Vagator – site of some of the region’s loveliest beaches – and scruffier Chapora, a workaday fishing village. Further north still, Arambol has thus far escaped any large-scale development, despite the completion of the new road bridge across the Chapora River. What little extra traffic there is since the new road link tends to focus on the low-key resorts just south of Arambol, namely Aswem and Mandrem.
North Goa’s market town, Mapusa, is this area’s main jumping-off place, with bus connections to most resorts on the coast. If you’re travelling here by train via the Konkan Railway, get off the train at Tivim (Thivim), 12k east of Mapusa, from where you’ll have to jump in a bus or taxi for the remaining leg.
BAGA, 10km west of Mapusa, is basically an extension of Calangute. The only difference between this far northern end of the beach and its more congested centre around Calangute is that the scenery here is marginally more varied and picturesque. Overlooked by a rocky headland draped in vegetation, a small tidal river flows into the sea at the top of the village, past a spur of soft white sand where ranks of brightly coloured fishing boats are moored.
Since the package boom, Baga has developed more rapidly than anywhere else in the state and today looks less like the Goan fishing village it still was in the early 1990s and more like a small-scale resort on the Spanish Costas, with a predominantly young, charter-tourist clientele to match. If you can steer clear of the lager louts, Baga boasts distinct advantages over its neighbours: a crop of excellent restaurants and a nightlife that’s consistently more full-on than anywhere else in the state, if ANJUNA, the next sizeable village up the coast from Baga, was, until a few years back, the last bastion of alternative chic in Goa – where the state’s legendary full-moon parties were staged each season, and where the Beautiful Set would rent pretty red-tiled houses for six months at a time, make trance mixes and groovy dance clothes, paint the palm trees fluoro colours and spend months lazing on the beach. A small contingent of fashionably attired, middle-aged hippies still turn up, but thanks to a combination of the Y2K music ban and overwhelming growth in popularity of the flea market, Anjuna has seriously fallen out of fashion. Even the young Israeli hellraisers who inundated the village during the late 1990s – and were largely responsible for the government’s crackdown on parties – have stopped coming.
One of the few genuinely positive improvements to the north Goa resort strip over the past decade has been the Saturday Night Bazaar, held on a plot inland at Arpora, midway between Baga and Anjuna. Originally the brainchild of an expat German called Ingo, it’s run with great efficiency and a sense of fun that’s palpably lacking these days from the Anjuna Flea Market. The balmy evening temperatures and pretty lights are also a lot more conducive to relaxed browsing than the broiling heat of mid-afternoon on Anjuna beach.
Although far more commercial than its predecessor in Anjuna, many old Goa hands regard this as far truer to the original spirit of the flea market. A significant proportion of the stalls are taken up by foreigners selling their own stuff, from reproduction Indian pop art to antique photos, the latest trance party wear, hand-polished coconut shell art and techno DJ demos. There’s also a mouthwatering array of ethnic food concessions to choose from and a stage featuring live music from around 7pm until midnight, when the market winds up. Admission is free.
A competitor in much the same mould – Mackie’s – has opened nearby, closer to Baga by the riverside. Spurned by the expatriate designers and stallholders, this one is not quite as lively as its rival, though in recent years has made an effort to close the gap, with better live acts and more foreign stallholders.
As a consequence, the scattered settlement of old Portuguese houses and whitewashed churches, nestled behind a long golden sandy beach, nowadays resembles the place it was before the party scene snowballed. There are, however, two downsides to staying here. One is an enduringly druggy atmosphere. Levels of substance abuse, both among visitors and locals, remain exceptional, and the village suffers more than its fair share of dodgy characters. Just how seedy the scene revolving around Anjuna’s shacks has grown became apparent in February 2008, after a British teenager, 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, was raped and murdered.
The other negative thing about the village – at least, if you’re staying here – is the famous flea market. Every Wednesday, the beach and coconut groves at the south end of the beach get swamped with tourists and sellers from other resorts, forcing most of the resident tourist population north to neighbouring Vagator for the day. not all India.
A 45-minute bus ride up the coast from Panjim, CALANGUTE was, in Portuguese times, where well-to-do Goans would come for their annual mudança, or change of air, in May and June, when the pre-monsoonal heat made life in the towns insufferable. It remains the state’s busiest resort, but has changed beyond recognition since the days when straw-hatted musicians in the beachfront bandstand would regale smartly dressed strollers with Lisbon fados and Konkani dulpods. Mass package tourism, combined with a huge increase in the number of Indian visitors (for whom this is Goa’s number-one beach resort), has placed an impossible burden on the town’s rudimentary infrastructure. Hemmed in by four-storey buildings and swarming with traffic, the market area, in particular, has taken on the aspect of a typical makeshift Indian town of precisely the kind that most travellers used to come to Goa to get away from. In short, this is somewhere to avoid, although most people pass through here at some stage, to change money or shop for supplies. The only other reason to endure the chaos is to eat: Calangute boasts some of the best restaurants in the whole state.
Note : from the 'Rough Guide' directory www.roughguides.com