Southern India Revisited

February 16-22 2013 Royal Goan Beach Club, Benaulim Beach, Goa

Some things change and some things remain the same. The Royal Goan Beach Club we visited 12 years ago as a condo exchange was essentially the same. The staff was helpful and attentive, the resort had not expanded and the rooms were large, bright and clean. The pool was the center of activity, or the place to just stretch out for the day. Instead of a dirt path, the road to the beach was paved. It still followed the outer walls of the Taj Exotica Hotel and merchants still enticed you into their shops along the way with pleas to ‘just have a look’. There were a few more beach shacks offering sun beds free to patrons of their restaurants but there were no more hotels along the stretch close to Royal Goan than there were 12 years ago. The beach was still a wide expanse of fine, silver sand that squeaked when you walked across, progressing to a golden expanse hard packed enough to ride a bicycle or drive a car. Small breakers frothed at the edge of the sea, just as it did many years before. One of the beach shack owners rushed out to greet us when we walked by the first day and said, “You came back”. And we had. Her restaurant had moved further down the beach but she was still in business after 28 years.

The biggest difference was the country of origin of the foreign tourists. There were still direct flights from Great Britain bringing mostly older tourists for extended stays on beaches along the Goan Coasts but they were now outnumbered by Russian tourists. There were bilingual, English and Russian, signs and menus at the beach shacks and Russian was spoken by many of the tourists catching the rays on the sun beds and eating at the restaurants. We had heard reports of a town north of Panjim nicknamed Little Russia, and complaints about loud drinking groups. We did not encounter any problems. Benaulim does not attract the party crowd. Most of the tourists were either family groups or older, retirement age people.

Our daily routine remained generally the same. We had breakfast of yogurt, fruit, toast and cereal in our condo and the rest of our meals in the various restaurants nearby. We rented bicycles and rode to the beach in the morning, choosing a beach shack with good shade umbrellas, the best being ones made of palm leaves. We alternated short swims in the ocean and walks along the beach with sitting on the sun beds, reading our books. It would be impossible to walk or ride the entire length of the beach in one day. The beach stretches without a break from Velsao Beach in the north to Cavelosimmo in the south, a distance of more than 30 km. We were about in the middle.

One day we did make it on our bikes as far north as Colva, about 3-5 km from Royal Goan, where buses bring groups of Indian tourist for a day at the beach. Some of the day trippers rushed into the waves, fully clothed, to have a swim, others just watched the activities from the safety of the beach. There were boats to make a tour of the beaches and possibly see dolphins. Fast boats were on hand offering short parasail rides. Lunch was at whichever beach shack we had chosen that day. Later in the afternoon we would return to Royal Goan, grab a sun chair by the pool and have a swim.

Our only excursion was a crowded local bus ride into Margao to make train reservations for our departure at the end of our week. The routine at the train station hadn’t changed. We got forms to fill in and waited in the Special line, servicing seniors, special passes and Tourists. It still took an hour and we couldn’t get a berth for an overnight trains. Instead we were able to get reserved seats on the day train to Panvel, a southern suburb of Mumbai. Our plan is to spend the last few days in Matheran, a small hill station SE of Mumbai. The leaves Margao at 9:30 AM and arrives at 7:15 PM, so we booked a room in Panvel and will continue to Matheran the next day.