GOA

Goa, the destination of so many Europeans over Christmas, reminds me of the South Coast of Natal in South Africa, except that the Goan coast is fringed by thousands of coconut palm trees. The heat and humidity hit you the minute you emerge from the Terminal.   It rains here for four months of the year, so everything is lush and green and the rivers are wide and full of water and there are natural inlets and coves all along the coast.  The seafaring Portuguese must have loved it when they arrived in the early 16th century, aiming to control the spice route.  Old Goa became their stronghold and the churches they built here, still stand as relics of a bygone age, when the town had a population bigger than London or Lisbon.  As a Goan resident explained to me, the Portuguese ruled Goa for 400 years and intermarried with the locals and so their influence has remained.  About 30% of Goa's small population of one million, are Roman Catholic.

An old Indian lady offered to show me where I could catch the bus for Old Goa at a fraction of the cost of the auto rickshaw.  It was quite a long way and she pulled her sari veil over her head and clucked at me for not having a hat.  On the way we stopped for a drink - two young boys were operating a machine for extracting the juice from sugar cane - they put the bunch of cane through  the crusher about 7 times, added a couple of limes and then poured the juice into glasses with a couple of ice blocks !

From Panaji, the journey on the local bus took about 30 minutes.  I visited the church of St Francis first - huge and full of sunlight and an interesting floor made of carved gravestones.  But I had really come to see the other church the Basilica of Bom (Good) Jesus - again huge, the biggest in India, with a vast gilded reredos and the tomb of the mid-sixteenth century St Francis Xavier whose uncorrupted body lies in a silver casket. The simplicity and naivety of the sculptures in the churches and the squat proportions of the architectural features, were in stark contrast to the refinement of Italian sculpture and architecture.

I stopped for a Fresh Lime Soda on the way back - the limes are cut and squeezed, a spoonful of black salt is added and then soda water is poured very slowly, to stop it frothing over - it's quite the most delicious drink I have ever tasted.