Indian Summer

Colva is a resort that's popular with Indians - we saw fairly few western tourists. Many Indians come to Goa from other states in India because they've heard that the attitude to life is more laid back here. There were whole families on the beach, often 3 generations, with cousins, aunties, uncles ... Unfortunately, there were also groups of roving single men, not all of them young. They were in town for the freedom to drink alcohol & the chance to see bared female flesh! Most Indian women, even those in Western dress, went into the water with all their clothes on (rarely venturing further than a few feet in). Many Indian men think that women wearing swimsuits, bikinis, shorts, strappy tops or even just having blond hair or being a westerner makes you fair game for unwanted ogling, comments & touching Even 52 year olds in the company of their husbands were subject to such attention. Neither of us felt flattered or pleased!

We did love the fact that our hotel was right on the beach so we could start & end the day with a swim, but sometimes the staring was deeply uncomfortable & the crowds were stifling by the end of the day. On Sundays, it was particularly difficult to thread our way through the teeming masses that huddled together for the course of several hundred yards along the sands & yet if we made the effort we could have the beach almost to ourselves after 10 minutes of walking! We did do quite a bit of walking to escape it all! The whole resort felt like Blackpool on heat, although it got strangely quiet, strangely early at night.

What would we say was the most memorable sight on an Indian beach holiday? Well, it was a close contest between the innumerable grannies wallowing in the surf in their saris & a buffalo being led into the sea for a swim!