It wasn’t that long ago that Colva was nothing more than a peaceful little fishing village that attracted a handful of hippies bored of the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll lifestyle of Calangute. However, where hippies go, charter flights follow and in just the blinking of a stoned hippie’s eye package tourism had changed paradise forever. Fortunately, the scale of development here is nowhere near that of Calangute – you can still see the fish being brought ashore in the morning.
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Calangute and Baga were the first beaches to attract hippies travelling overland in the ’60s, then the first to secure the rampant package- and charter-tourist market in the ’90s. Today they are India’s ‘kiss me quick’ hat capital and the most popular beach resorts in the country with holidaying Indians. For many people it’s just a busy, noisy and tacky Indian Costa del Sol and the thought of spending a single night here is enough to make them shudder. For others, the very fact that it is so alien to anything else in India is an attraction in itself, there’s certainly no denying that the town has a certain character to it and, if you’re searching for a glimpse of how the much-hyped ‘New India’ holidays, then here she is in all her glory.
Shoved aside by the consumer age, the hippy ’60s needed somewhere to hide; San Francisco wouldn’t do, Carnaby Street couldn’t cope and the Marrakesh Express was suddenly cancelled in a cost-saving exercise. Eventually reaching Arambol’s sickle of sand and rash of beautiful, rocky bays the ’60s knew it had finally found its never-never land. Ever since then travellers, attracted by the hippy atmosphere, have been drifting up to this blissed-out corner of Goa, setting up camp and, in some cases, never leaving again. In turn, a mushrooming (probably magic) industry of low-key accommodation and facilities has sprung up to cater to these visitors, and in the high season the beach and the road leading down to it gets pretty crowded. For the moment the flower-power guys and girls hold the upper hand, but with all the beaches to the south full up, Arambol is starting to turn developers’ hands sweaty with excitement and it can’t be long until the sweet ’60s are forced off in search of the next Kathmandu.
Famous throughout Goa for its Wednesday flea market, Anjuna’s name still pulls in backpackers, European ravers, long-term hippies and, increasingly, midrange tourists taking advantage of comfy new hotels. Of all the more developed beaches in Goa Anjuna’s is the best.