Some memories from my first couple of visits:
I stayed on Sinquerim Beach near Candolin, #Goa
* Cows that walked along the beach every morning (the beach is nothing like the wide, clean & beautiful beach with tiny tiny sea shells, that it was. Tourism & an abandoned oil tanker [see below] changed the beach.)
* The spice farm visit - incredible. And my first out-of-hotel Indian meal.
* The food - all the markets, all the food. The freshness. Nothing refrigerated, just used that day. The spices. The colours. The road-side stalls - one person and their daily pick. Fresh sugarcane juice. Sweet lime sodas.
* The beautiful women. The women who collected sea shells in the morning to cook with their rice. The colours.
* The fishermen, hauling nets and boats in and out of the water. Or pile-net fishing from the beach.
* The oil tanker that was (purposely) grounded on Candolin beach, and was left there for decades. It changed tides and water flow, obliterating the beaches (and thus lots of businesses) for years. It is still not back to what it was before,
* The beautiful beach in the mouth of the Mandovi, hard to get to except by boat, with a small restaurant with the freshest of fresh food, tables with waves lapping at the feet, and a couple of round, thatched rooms if you wanted to stay the night. A magical place that not longer exists (see the beached oil tanker above).
* Left-over hippies from the 60's and 70's, still there, still doing magical things on the beach - you'd see them if you were lucky.
* A shrine to Mary/Jesus, beautiful with flowers and offerings, used by the fishermen leaving from bamboo jetties in a small inlet. Last time I was there the place was over-run with tourist boats, the shrine had been abandoned and all was dirty, muddy and incredibly smelly.
* Beachside cafes for lazy afternoons.
* Pillion passenger riding the backroads and non-tourist sites of Goa.
* Sunsets
* Temples and more temples, all beautiful.
#India