A village walk in Goa

Goa is a place for walking at any time of the year. But specially in the monsoon, when the beaches are out of bounds, there is little to do except to walk. If you don’t like to take long pointless rambles, you should choose some other season to visit Goa in. Armoured in plastic raincoats, which we’d bought in the village for a hundred rupees, and armed with umbrellas, we spent our August holiday week wandering at random through little villages. Many of the villages have lovely Indo-Portuguese style houses. The bright yellow with white trim that you see in the featured photo is a popular colour. I suspect it is the most traditional colour here, since every new store drapes itself in it.

Many of the bungalows are two-storeyed. This one, painted in a light salmon pink with its neo-classical frontage and Romaneque arches over doors and windows looked like it had been well-cared for. Unlike most gardens in the village, this had not run wild. Clearly someone stayed here and spent time and effort taking care of the property.

A little way down a twisty road we came to this lovely bungalow. Its peaked roof, the green paint, the verandah running along three sides of the structure, the cast iron railings, the arched doorways, were all typical Indo-Portuguese stylistic elements. The garden was beginning to run wild. In fact the hibiscus and canna had escaped and were now beginning to take over the patch between road and house.

Just around the corner was this more modest house, but it was in wonderful shape. The roof terrace was covered over with a slanted shade, a structure that I would see again and again. It made sense in this climate, which is hot and sunny half the year, and rainy most of the rest. The rain had just stopped when I came to it and I liked the reflection of the building in the pooled rainwater in front of it. Notice the little chapel outside the front door!

This was nearly the end of the village. Beyond was the emerald sea of paddy fields. I wonder how the land stays productive just a hundred meters from the coast. I would have expect the sea breezes to sow salt through the land, making it unusable for agriculture. But rice and fish are the two main professions here, as well as the main components of the diet.