The Goan Experience
“It’s green, it’s glistening and it’s gorgeous: just three of the reasons why Goa has allured travellers for decades. Two million visitors come each year for the silken sand, crystalline shores, coco-hut culture and susegad – a Portuguese-derived term that translates loosely to ‘laid-backness’. Pour in a dash of Portuguese-influenced food and architecture, infuse with a colourful blend of religious traditions, pepper with parties, and you’ve got a heady mix that makes Goa easy to enjoy and extremely hard to leave.” – Lonely Planet
The first stop in my Indian itinerary and a place I normally only visit to relax – Goa! I have visited Goa countless times but in all honesty I’ve never taken my camera out of its bag. This is the one place I normally visit to have a quick holiday, and each and every time I annoy myself by not taking any photographs, well not this time, no holiday was scheduled and I made myself a plan which would ensure I left with some classic Goan images of 3 of my favourite places – Palolem, Anjuna and Vagator.
Palolem Beach was my first destination, the most southerly of Goa’s developed beaches and once the state’s most idyllic. Nowadays its beauty is very much dependent on your point of view. For those who believe a beach cannot be paradise without a decent selection of cheap restaurants and hotels, a dose of nightlife and plenty of likeminded people then Palolem is still top pick. With its large white sand beach and cloudless blue skies it really is hard to find fault with this place, and even with the large crowds it attracts you can always find a quiet spot on the beach if you are willing to walk a little.
A series of rusty cliffs and headlands bursting out of thickets of greenery help to give Vagator one of the prettiest settings on the north Goan coast, It’s this back drop combined with the quiet beaches that have made large contingents of long-stay backpackers and party people religiously set up camp here for months on end every season. Time as ever was moving too quickly and so I only had one day to take photographs in Vagator, so up and down the beach I walked until I felt I had enough coverage, then it was time to find somewhere for sunset shots. Luckily I found my evening location relatively quickly which gave me a good hour to relax in the sun before getting back to work.
Famous throughout Goa for its Wednesday flea market, Anjuna’s name still pulls in backpackers, European ravers and long-term hippies. With a few shots in mind I arrived at the market a few hours before it normally gets going which gave me the chance to get some interior shots before the crowds made it impossible and also freed up my afternoon to try and photograph the beach sellers in their colourful and sometimes traditional dress.
My evening was spent capturing what can only be described as one of the most orange sunsets I have ever seen. My trip to Tanah Lot in Indonesia still remains as the most spectacular sunset; however there is something about a truly orange sunset that makes me smile! My favourite image from that evening was of a couple stood watching the sun go down, who miraculously didn’t move an inch during my 30 second exposure, so they must have been enjoying the views as much as me!
