Goa for a song

I smiled across at my wife Susanna. Nothing appeared to have changed since 1983 when Goa seduced us into devoting one quarter of our precious year-long Asian backpacker adventure to its beaches and sights.

In August of that year, Susanna wrote in her diary: “If Bombay was hell, southern Goa is heaven. The unbroken beach is like nothing I’ve seen before, an endless expanse of white sand, rolling surf and swaying palms. It’s incredibly beautiful.”

Even back then the word on the backpacker grapevine was that the south was where to find the real Goa, free from traffic congestion, litter and the worst excesses of European visitors.

Today, however, a clutch of five-star resorts is attracting the grown-up backpackers of the Eighties who now crave all the mod cons, and then some.

Instead of staying in a £1 a night guesthouse we were booked into a handsome Pavilion room at The Leela Kempinski Goa hotel.

It had dark hardwood furniture and a balcony overlooking the lagoon and 75 acres of lush gardens.

This may be the most expensive of the five-star resorts in the area but at about £1,600pp for a fortnight’s package including flights it’s still excellent value (similar packages in the Caribbean, Mauritius or Seychelles can cost up to £5,000pp).

Plus, if we had stayed at the Leela’s nearest neighbour on the same 10-mile stretch of incomparable beach, the four-star Holiday Inn, two weeks would have cost just £895pp.

Other savings can be made if you eat outside the hotel. We sat in the garden of Betty’s, a raised rustic restaurant on the sand, and dined on fish and vegetable biriani for a quarter of the price of such dishes in the hotel.

Even at the smarter Fisherman’s Wharf overlooking the tranquil Sal River, we never paid more than £8 a head for three courses and beers.

For lunch at Mike’s or Pearl’s, two lively beach restaurants adjacent to the hotel, we paid half that!

From the jetty at the rear of Betty’s we set out on a sunset bird-watching trip on the river, booking the entire boat, and our knowledgeable guide Parna, for under £10.

For two delightful hours we bobbed around, waving to locals up to their waists in the river using their toes to fish clams, and watching exotic kingfishers flickering through the air and fruit bats hanging upside down in trees.

What you can’t put a price on in Goa is the authentic experience that is a world away from its insulated and often characterless international holiday destination rivals.

As we lay on the soft cradling sands fanned by languorous coconut palms with the Arabian Sea at our feet, occasionally our revelry would be disturbed by someone wandering across to offer a half-hour massage for £2.50.

Apart from that, we were left to sunbathe, swim and watch women selling a kaleidoscope of sarongs and a young girl balancing on a tightrope between bamboo poles.

As the majority of sun-worshipping tourists returned to their hotels for showers and cocktails, they were replaced by Indian guests who prefer their sun a little cooler.

The fire ball grew vermilion as it descended, children turned cartwheels and grandmothers in saris plonked themselves fully clothed in the sea and giggled like schoolgirls.

If you do push the boat out, relatively speaking, and plump for The Leela, you won’t question the expense for a second.

This is a wonderful hotel with a gym, spa, swimming pool, 12-hole golf course and tennis courts.

It sits beside a lagoon and an island of mango, coconut, hibiscus and frangipani ringing with exotic bird calls.

A five-minute taxi ride will take you for some retail therapy in Cavelossim, where the best shops in the south sell leather bags, jewellery, pashminas and everything you can think of made out of cotton.

Although we found it hard to prise ourselves from the beach, we did manage the occasional sortie further afield.

We returned to Anjuna market, a two-hour drive north, which was about five times the size it was in the early Eighties.

The crowd continued to grow through the morning as we watched a succession of snake charmers and child  acrobats performing while old hippies sold mandalas and batiks.

Heading back to our sanctuary in the south in the afternoon, we passed an emerald paddy field flanked by silhouetted palms. Beside it, a pick-up game of cricket was in full tilt, boys chasing between wickets in late sunbursts of dust.

Any day trip is an instant reminder that it is the state’s diversity that is its great strength: the pretty Portuguese villas of Fontainhas, Goa’s Latin Quarter; Old Goa, with its miraculously preserved body of St Francis Xavier in the Basilica of Bom Jesus; the wonderfully friendly and incorrigibly nosey people; and the shocking green beauty of the interior that runs to endless powder beaches.

When we first visited Goa, it was the soft landing to the old world, where western backpackers got their orientation to eastern ways.

Now it attracts those seeking pampering and an exotic fix without breaking the bank. In the Hindu holy Vedas, written 3,000 years ago, it says that the guest is god. They certainly treat you like one in Goa.

GETTING THERE

Thomas Cook (0845 7 2530 / www.thomascook.com) offers 14 nights B&B at The Leela Kempinski Goa hotel on Mobor Beach from £1,610pp (two sharing), including return flights from Gatwick and transfers.

India Tourism: 020 7437 3677 / www.incredibleindia.org