Bad time is a good time to go

Now is your last chance to catch a rainy Goa in the off-season. And in case you’re
wondering what a beach destination can offer in the monsoon — well, peace,
quiet, and attractive room rates, says DNA, who came away charmed by a Goa that wasn’t at all about sun ‘n sand.

It is half past four in the afternoon on Monday, September 7, and I’m the only customer in the covered third floor terrace of the Nautica restaurant at Dona Paula jetty. It’s just stopped raining. The sky and the sea are a seamless canvas of grey. The wind is moist and loud. The pages of the thriller I stole from the hotel I was staying in till yesterday are fluttering audibly. And I’m caught in a pleasant pre-prandial dilemma: should I go for Chicken Xacuti with my beer or Chicken Vindaloo?

The waiter is wearing one of those flamboyant printed shirts with abstract expressionist art on them (I gather that’s the unofficial uniform for waiters in Goa). He warns me that Chicken Vindaloo will be too ‘hot’ for me. He wants me to order Chicken Xacuti.
I am not a foodie, and don’t care one way or the other between Xacuti and Vindaloo. But unable to make up my mind, I tell Abstract Expressionist to just get my beer and we’ll think about the rest later.

The beer arrives. I take a swig and pick up the book. But my mind refuses to settle on the secret neo-Nazi group about to take over America. And soon I’m in reverie mode, thoughts flitting desultorily over the past few days of loafing around in Goa.

I had driven down from Mumbai, all 580km of it. Friends were sceptical of the timing. “Who goes to Goa in the monsoon?” They were even more skeptical of the duration. “10 days?! What’ll you do there for 10 days, that too in the rains?” Well, I had no ready answers then, but I do now, I think.

Goa beyond the beach
For one, the cliché about Goa being all about sun ‘n’ sand needs to be tossed into the sea. In early September, which is when I landed here, the sun is mostly in bed and the sand is a wet blanket. But a whole new set of sights and surprises await those who visit the state in the ‘off-season’.

Like when you drive down from Panjim in north Goa to Margao in the South: right beside the national highway NH-17, you’ll see cemeteries where the wooden crosses on the graves are wearing plastic raincoats, perhaps to protect the soul from getting wet. Like when you drive through deserted lanes in Candolim or Calangute or any of the coastal villages and ponder the purple, rain-washed, almost-swanky panchayat buildings that seem air-dropped from another country.

Like when you check into a five-star resort and pay a two-star rate. Like when the service is so much better because there is less pressure on room boys and waiters. Like when you don’t have to wait at the shops because there’s nobody else to be attended to.

One aspect of Goa that gets lost with all the focus on the beaches is that it’s got the Western Ghats running through it. And it is in the monsoons that Goa’s hills come into their own. In the last leg of the Mumbai-Goa drive, as you cut through the Ghats, the panoramic views of the hills rising one behind the other like gigantic sea waves frozen in time are as breathtaking as the state’s beaches used to be.

Tiny streams burbling down the mountain greet you every few hundred metres. The most majestic of these waterfalls is, of course, the Dudh Sagar Falls — a tourist attraction round the year.

You won’t miss the parties
For the touristy-minded, the river cruises are on even in the monsoons, as are the boat-rides in the backwaters. It being off-season, they are less crowded. And yes, parties still happen at Tito’s.

Besides, it’s not as if the beaches are shut or something. Only yesterday, I’d spent half a day day-dreaming at a bar on Palolem beach. The ‘bar’ was just a shack, though a big one. The floor was sand, the food was excellent, and the music, even better. It hadn’t rained the whole day, and even at 6pm, tourists, mostly Westerners, were walking in straight from the water and ordering drinks in their swimsuits. I’d been drinking steadily for about four hours when I spot a crow a few metres away, hopping about on the sand near the entrance. A crow in a bar? Never seen that before. This merited a poem at the least. I’ll call it “Crow bar in Goa”.

As I took out my wallet to look for the napkin on which I’d scribbled the poem, the Abstract Expressionist returned. “Sir, have you decided?” It suddenly occurred to me that Vindaloo in Goa is such a cliché.  “I’ll go with Xacuti.” I told him. “It’s been a long time since I had something that began with an ‘X’.”