Goa
Salt and slowness — the only Indian state where time genuinely seems to operate differently, and nobody seems bothered.
"Goa has a way of suspending time. You arrive with a list of things you plan to do and leave having done approximately two of them — and feel entirely at peace with this outcome."
— Personal notesNorth, South, and the difference between them
North Goa and South Goa are not just geographically different — they are philosophically different. North Goa is loud, crowded, festive, and unabashedly commercial. Baga, Calangute, and Anjuna exist in a permanent state of beach-shack festivity, and there is a particular pleasure in surrendering to that energy for an evening, eating grilled fish at a table with your feet in the sand while the Arabian Sea does its thing ten metres away.
South Goa is the other argument: Palolem, Agonda, Colva — beaches where the crowds thin out and the fishing boats outnumber the sun loungers. The pace here is agricultural. You eat when you are hungry, swim when it is hot, and read in the shade when it is not. It is exactly as uncomplicated as it sounds.
Portuguese tiles and the ghost of empire
Old Goa is the strangest urban experience in India — a city that was once larger than Lisbon and London, reduced now to a handful of baroque churches standing in clearings among the trees. The Basilica of Bom Jesus contains the relics of St. Francis Xavier and has been drawing pilgrims for four hundred years. The Se Cathedral is the largest church in Asia. And both of them sit in the middle of what is essentially a small Goan village, as if history simply forgot to come back and finish the job.
The Goan house of the Portuguese era — tiled, colour-washed, with carved wooden balconies — survives in pockets of Panaji and the older village neighbourhoods. Finding them is worth the effort; they are among the most beautiful domestic architecture in the subcontinent.
"The best Goan meal I ever had cost almost nothing and was eaten at a plastic table next to the sea. The kingfish was grilled over charcoal and served with rice and kokum curry. I have been chasing it ever since."