While I emerge from the surging waves of the Arabian Sea, a grey-haired very athletic looking fisherman surveys me as he walks along Colva Beach with his companion. He still wears the traditional pink red loincloth, has the broad chest and muscular build of a man who earns his living from hard physical toil. Does he recognise me? I wonder. Almost certainly not, there are after all now thousands of Westerners who make their way to this immensely long 12-mile beach in the course of a single year. And it is 24 years since I last spent any time here.
For three months I lived cheek by jowl with the fishermen and even helped them launch their heavy boats, laboriously heaved to the water's edge over wooden sleepers. It was a compliment to be asked. The fishermen have kept themselves to themselves for hundreds of years. That is not going to change even though their fishing beach has been discovered and is on the itinerary of both Western and Indian tourists. Over 100,000 Westerners will visit Goa's beaches in the next 12 months, and over 500,000 Indians. But it is now monsoon time, there are only a few of the advance guard in evidence, making it possible to picture how Colva was before the tourist invasion got underway with direct charter flights coming into Goa from Germany and Britain.
It is always dangerous to return to any 'idyllic' destination, none more so than when it used to be an undeveloped fishing village nestling among the palms on the second longest beach in India - and the fourth longest in the world. But as the fishermen say, Colva is full of powerful spirits, it would take an awful lot of development to remove from this uninterrupted stretch of silver-white fine-sanded beach its essential wild and open nature. The fishermen, I remember, gave their first allegiance to the moon, living by a 13-month lunar calendar. They have preserved some of their animistic beliefs although nominally Catholic. Dogs, cats, goats, pigs still wander at will among their palm-fronded huts along the beach. How they reacted to our full moon celebrations with drums beating out into the tropic night has to be a matter for conjecture. We were dimly aware of living at the edge of the jungle among people who understood its ways and its animals. It was the townspeople from Margao, some 4 miles away, who found it all rather alarming, and as for wearing next to nothing like the fishermen, that raised even more questions about the drive towards civilisation as preached in the churches.
One morning, sitting with an old dog under my favourite palm, I looked up to see two young American girls striding out the surf. One entirely naked, red-haired, her older sister, merely topless. We compared notes, she had turned down a job as a writer for Pan Am to go see the world. I had till then felt entirely virtuous at having turned down a job as writer with KLM to travel. She read the 'I Ching', 'Beware of the young fool', it warned. 'I can give you food, not love,' she offered but then retracted on the hot open beach at three in the afternoon in full public view. This time I was the one who hesitated. Only later did she point out it was her naked red-haired full and ripe young sister who formed the real attraction. I happened into the red head later in London, it was a distant glimpse back to a time when our astral paths had crossed, the moment irretrievably lost.
The Goa Tourist Authority looked at the first wave of European visitors, sensed they could be the advance guard of a much greater influx and decided to build some tourist bungalows at Colva Beach to cash in. 24 years ago they were in the process of construction. Today, 24 monsoon seasons later, their white limewash exteriors are blackened by the profusion of algae growth that the high rainfall and brilliant sunshine encourages in all life. While the fishermen have largely forsaken their paddle driven, immensely strong outrigger boats for smaller petrol-driven fishing boats that have to stay closer to the shoreline. They less often venture out 15 to 20 miles to make their catch of whiting or mackerel, but with a knowledge of the sea and its creatures stretching back at least a 1,000 years - and probably a lot longer - they still know where to go to find the shoals. And they are still better than the meteorologists at reading the weather. After two days of monsoon rains and winds, we wake up to find their boats back out on the ocean in a long line along the beach. The morning is bright and sunny, the wind has calmed and all is right with the world.
The former seminary where the first European and American 'discoverers' of Colva Beach all stayed 24 years ago - never more than 20 at any one time - is still there. And it remains the focal point of social life at Colva beach, for it's here that the buses from the town of Margao set down the tourists. But now it's been levelled to the ground and rebuilt as a two-storey building called Vincy's Bar and Restaurant, with rooms for visitors offering such luxuries as running water, whereas we made do with a well.
How, I wonder, is it further up the coast where most of the tourists mercifully go, to beaches like Calangute, Baga and Anjuna? We take the bus into Margao, and then ask for the bus to Mapusa at the bus station. The ever attentive and helpful Indians tell me to go to Panaji and change, but I spot a bus travelling direct to Mapusa and insist this is the best way to go. Only when we are heading up into the mountains of the Goan interior do I discover that the bus is taking a very long and circuitous route. The man beside me, who looks distinctly Portuguese in his tropical European outfit, explains that the bus goes up into the mining areas where the roads are very rough. The journey will take some three hours he predicts.
'So I should have gone to Panaji,' I reflect, realising the Indians had been right all along.
'It's too late now,' he smiles, 'you've paid your fare.'
'It will be interesting,' I say in a philosophic way as he gets off at Ponda, well on the way to the interior.
My wife wonders, after two hours of jolting progress, exactly how long it is going to take for the nominally 25 mile journey. We are deep in the countryside, surrounded by intensely green rice fields. I note that some of our fellow passengers are sitting cross-legged on their seats, calmly relaxed in spite of the sudden jolts shooting through the steel frame of the ancient bus. I copy their upright posture, note the brilliant white temple in the lush fields with its seven chambers leading to where 'Shiva likes to reside' in the inmost chamber. In front of the temple stands a seven-storey 'pillar of light'. My wife's back is by this time feeling distinctly bruised.
We find the beaches in the north of Goa largely deserted, with the onslaught of the monsoon seas having dirtied their usual white pristineness. In comparison, Colva is still a jewel of unblemished purity. We take the direct route back to Colva, changing at Panaji, just as we were originally advised. Towards sunset we return along the narrow road from Margao to Colva having picked up the bus at 'the old bus station' as a local advises, perhaps sensing I know where the bus station used to be. We arrive in time to see the sky on fire, with the palm trees outlined in profusion against the brilliant backdrop of ocean and sky. It all looks welcoming, almost like home, with the earth instead of the fireside blazing in a warm sultry glow . We saunter over to the small stalls selling bananas, roasted corn on the cob, papaya, pineapple and guava fruit. The village people from the interior of Goa run these stalls, they are as burnished as the sky, and as full of life. They know they live on the edge of a rich and welcoming jungle, they appreciate its offerings and know they can survive from this bounty. Sometimes you have to leave a place in order to discover it.
