What you can do at Goa Beaches for this summer holidays

Since Goa has a large Catholic minority, it has many Catholic holidays besides the Indian national holidays. One of them, the Carnival though often mistaken for a ‘Catholic holiday’ is largely a Government sponsored affair of Floats and festivities.

There is a lot to do – for those who like their fun a little laid back

* Relax at the beaches. Goa has an almost unbroken 70 km coastline of beaches
* Be sure to take precautions if you go swimming.

* Visit the venerable cathedrals of a bygone era at Old Goa, which are still in remarkable good condition where the sacred remains (once considered the incorrupted body) of St. Francis Xavier is.

* Enjoy the cuisine at a range of restaurants that cater to just about every palate. Goa is an amazing place to try out food from across India and the rest of the globe.
* Check out the several discos and pubs that have sprung up around Goa.
* Goa is more than just a set of scenic beaches. It has long been a meeting place of cultures, and played a role in global history in the past centuries. Check out local resources, meet interesting people, visit unusual institutions — you could find more than you expect here.

* Check out on Goa’s Natural Wonders.

* Information is hard to come by in these areas of Goa. Ask villagers for one or two villages down the line, as some tend to get confused by questions about longer distances. People are generally very helpful if approached politely and with a smile. More polite, naturally, than in the more touristy parts of Goa. Banks and the bus-stops are the few places that mention location names. They are good guides to get a sense of bearing, in a place where there are few sign-boards.

* Be kind to the local people. Most villages are tightly-knit communities, where everyone knows everyone else. The presence of a strange in places outside of bigger beach areas (like Palolem) becomes immediately obvious to villagers. Treat the areas with respect; and make your intrusion less interfering. Villagers are quick to help out, and reciprocate a smile. But ‘outside’ origins are quickly obvious — even a Konkani speaker from another part of Goa would get immediately ‘betrayed’ by his accent!

* Take care of confusing (and newly-changed) names. Locals are unsure about the names of some beaches. Where exactly is Tari? Or, has that name become redundant after the canoe connecting the two points fell into disuse (‘tari’ is Konkani for canoe-point) now that there’s a bridge there?

* To add to the confusion, some beach names have been arbitrarily set up by foreign visitors. ‘Butterfly’ is supposedly an island between Palolem and Agonda, which few locals would know by that name. Some guides refer to Khola (written as ‘Cola’ by the Portuguese) as Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola!

* Be kind to the environment. Goa has long been an eco-friendly, waste-free society, though the waterguzzling tourism mega-projects and the large scale plastic influx has changed all that. On the roadsides, you can see coconut shells drying. The coconut tree, which predominates South Goa (the favorite drink is coconut feni, not cashew feni as in North Goa) is very much used in the kitchen to home-building and many other purposes.