Goa

According to the statistics the Goans are now mostly Hindus but along the beach front areas there’s still a dominant Christian influence and that’s what the traveller ends up experiencing. Yet the Hindu influence pervades even the churches; those with darker skin tend to be ushered to the back pews in an unspoken caste segregation. Things are still pretty archaic here, check out the average Goa dating scenario.

The Goans are much more easy going as a whole than other Indians and that is what made the freak scene here possible in the first place. They still have archaic Portuguese names such as Wilson or Delmina and are fairly straight, conservative types. Women are more liberated than in the rest of India but mothers tend to stay at home 24/7 and instill a good sense of Catholic misery into their children.

The Goans have grown up with the freaks and have seen just about everything. From Japanese acid flip outs to drunk Germans crashing their motorbikes in the local well, not much is of surprise any more. Goans don’t leer at foreign women like the busloads of Indian tourists do and the whole atmosphere is easier for a Westerner to appreciate than the rest of Indian society.

The Goan people make their living from the tourists during season time (October to April) and then take it as easy as they can for the rest of the year. They spend time fishing, harvesting rice in the paddy fields and trying to get anything dry during the torrential monsoon.

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