Tandoori Nights in Palolem, Goa, India

Travelled By

Peter Smith

Born in England, travel was in my blood from the beginning.My family was on the road working in agricultural shows and from the start I was travelling all over England and Wales even when in a pushchair! Although I am sure I was kicking and screaming at least some of the time. ...Find out more!

I had been trying to get to India for ages, in fact I already had an unused and expired visa in my passport, this time I would actually make it.

With India being so huge I had decided to be conservative in my travel plans and to keep to the west coast. I arrived in Mumbai on an overnight British Airways flight and was booked onto a Kingfisher plane to Goa later in the morning. The chaos of the terminals in Mumbai is amazing with hundreds of people shouting and running around, bags disappearing off into the distance and perplexed travellers stuck in the middle.

I managed to find the correct bus to transfer to the domestic terminal and we meandered for miles around the perimeter road before finally arriving at our destination.

Here is a big, no HUGE, tip. If you make a reservation by debit or credit card for a flight or hotel in India you must show the card that you made the reservation with. Now if that card was replaced for some reason you will still need to show it, regardless. This is always on the small print on nearly every flight I have booked all over the world I have never, ever been asked for the original card, until India.

A local Palolem lady entertains the tourists on the beach

Of course I didn’t have it, they were most gracious though and cancelled my original reservation and made a new one on the spot for the same price. It would have been trickier if my budget was tighter and I had no other card. Reservation completed Kingfisher took me to Goa, although for an airline branded by one of the most famous beers in India, it was a dry flight!

Arrival at Goa was a more sedate affair; the gleaming airport was easy to negotiate and I managed to haggle down the price of a small van to get me to Palolem beach an hour or so down the road. This was my first taste of Indian driving; formula 1 starts, tearing into the bends and braking at the last moment. It was a wake up call, I only hoped that the driver loved his family and didn’t take the praying bit too hard and concentrated on the driving. We passed trucks on tight bends with sheer drops to the side and navigated potholes you could have dropped a mini into!

The drive was beautiful though, passing through colourful villages their stores adorned with hand painted signs for the products available; many of the more attractive ones for the beers within. Goa was irrepressibly marketing itself as the liberal state and compared to Kerala in the south it was positively Las Vegas.

Palolem fisherman making their last catches in the fading light

Eventually we arrived at Palolem, a gem of a beach just far enough away from the tourist blight in the north of Goa to make it a real travellers item. Not easily reached and much more difficult to leave, it has been on the hippy beat for many years attracting a long term clientele that love the laid back atmosphere and the thriving beach life.

There is a good choice of accommodation in Palolem, the most evocative being the bamboo and tarpaulin beach huts that fringe the white powder sand. These huts are put up after the monsoon ends in November and, neatly numbered piece by piece; they are broken down in May and stored until the following season. Some come with electricity and air-con others are bare bones and suit the budget traveller.

Each set of huts usually has its own bar and beach chairs out front, some enterprising owners furnishing Internet connections where you can call home a cold beer in one hand and your feet almost in the ocean. I thought this was meant to be getting away from it all.

I found myself a great little spot and a new friend in my waiter from Nagaland way in the north east of India’s provinces. I had never heard of it before and he continued to educate my while supplying ice cold beers in abundance, I liked it here. The water was warm although murky and there was little sea life to be seen in the small amount of snorkelling I tried. The beach however was incredible, a perfect white sand curve with coconut palms all around, a gentle breeze and the ever present sounds pulsating from the bars.

White sands and the cool shade of palm trees frame this perfect beach

In the late afternoon the sun beds are removed and replaced with chairs and candlelit tables facing out to sea. After a shower and a short siesta a stroll is in order to say hello to fellow travellers, avoiding the protestations of the local dog population and find a restaurant that you can at least see what is being cooked.

We soon found a great little bar where I and three others sat down to mellow Ibiza type sounds and strong cocktails. A huge Tandoori oven sat centre stage in the kitchen and we chose from the menu a mix of fish and chicken. The meal came with scorching bread, dips and heaps of rice - way more than we could eat; this for only a couple of hundred Rupees in total.

Palolem has power problems, the electricity and the lights quite frequently go out plunging the whole area into darkness, I actually preferred it that way. I could see the stars carpeting the sky, the music had gone and the sounds of the waves lapping against the shore added romance to the evening. It was only when I thought of the ice melting and the food in the fridges rotting that I thanked the magic of the generators and the humming sounds that returned to rob me of the silence.

I had settled into a comfortable existence here and could understand the simple pleasures of travellers before me although I could also imagine their distain for the cold beer and air-conditioned beach huts that the modern backpacker seems to like.

It was probably not India in reality but it was a great start!