Gone to Goa

This past weekend I ducked out of Delhi for a brief holiday along the Arabian Sea in the old Portuguese colony of Goa. The lush green fields, rocky red cliffs, white stucco churches and sandy beaches dotted with meandering cows formed the perfect backdrop in which to sit back, relax and enjoy a different side of India.

On the 45 minute drive from the airport to our small motel, dirt roads carried us down hillsides and through swampy jungle, while our taxi driver dodged the ubiquitous dirt bikes which dash around Goa carrying Western hippies to the beaches and bars and Indian Christians to the chapels and markets. Once we reached our destination of Little Vagator, the Goan beach best known for its crumbling stone fort and burgeoning party scene, my travel companions (two other Americans) and I stopped for dinner and drinks at sunset, enjoying fresh prawns and sangria in the presence of a burnt orange sky framed by palm trees.

In a short two and a half days there we were able to see a wide variety of what Goa has to offer, from beaches to nightclubs, to a busy Saturday night market where I got to touch an elephant for the first time in my life (so cool!! felt like I was touching a dinosaur).

On the last day before flying back to Delhi we toured Old Goa, once the seat of the Portuguese colonial government in India and the home of the famed "incorrupt body of St. Francis Xavier." St. Francis Xavier, Goa's patron saint, was a Portuguese missionary who spent 10 years in Asia, 3 of them in Goa, building churches and spreading the faith. Following his death on December 2nd in 1552 his body was shipped back to Goa where it is said to have miraculously resisted decay over centuries without benefit of embalming. The feast of St. Francis Xavier takes place December 3rd each year, which conveniently happened to be the day we were touring Old Goa.

The town was decked out for the occassion, with a rickety-looking ferris wheel and a fairgrounds where you could buy everything from Jesus statues to tabla drums. As we left the area just before dusk, we passed by thousands of worshippers headed to mass under a big tent outside the Basilica Bom Jesus, the church where Xavier's body still rests today.