For all of you with romantic ideas about Goa, well it's changed, more built up hotels, techno cyberpunk discos but still fabulous! Everything changes and the wild freakiness of Goa changed 25 years ago, around the year 2001 when the Towers came down. Murders, rapes and robberies occurred in the jungles and on the fringes of the out of control parties. Gradullay walls got built around the jungle dance floors, armed guards were put on the gates, entry was by hard cash and cops scrutinised every punter to see who was high, (they wanted to control the drug trade.)
This uniforming process set in with a vengeance in 2008 with the terrorist attack on Mumbai, night life got shut down and everyone had to watch their step. The days of dancing wth Pan in Goa, naked around the bonfire, tripping the light fantastic on pure LSD, faded out but freaks have hung in there for fifty years, till 2023, hoping to keep the flames of pagan orgies alight, with abandoned dancing, lost in a crowd of jumping trancers, safe, and nobody giving a shit about who you are.
When I came to Goa for the New Years season of 22/23 I travelled alone for one last nostalgic time, mostly just to see my Indian friends in their beach shack on Vagator, to be reassured they had survived Covid. This is the beach where I've partied, danced and laughed every year from 1997 to 2018, (also the very beach we froliced tripping on LSD 1972 to 1976 when it was jungle and we built grass huts to live in.)
I got ripped off big time on arrival, the hotel on Anjuna Beach I booked and prepaid $700 had sold my room to a richer gronk for bigger money and greedily still kept mine. The booking company I used, WOTIF, wiped their hands of any responsibilty, sayng they had to abide by any hotel decisions, thus ennabling the robbery. I had a fever and found myself dumped on the hot, dusty street like a dog. The hotel is called Goroomgo Laxmi, an apt name as the manager told me to "Go, no room, go!"
Thus I hated Goa and felt it had gone to the dogs but my friends on Vagator Beach helped me find another room, better, closer to the place I loved, so I shelled out another $500 and settled in. And I soon caught the Goan vibe, relaxed on the beach, ignoring the chaos swirling around, watching the passing crowd of India come to play. I was fed delicious meals, mostly local seafood and fruits, and got to sink into beautiful sunsets over the Arabian Sea, contemplating my life and how I lucked out at getting here.
Between Xmas and New Years Goa really jumps, its the peak of the tourists season and life-affirming festivities. Vagator has about 21 nightclubs that pump out techno music nightly and on 28, 29, 30 December there is a huge trance festival called Sunburn, 10 am to 10 pm, costing $500 for the three days. It attracts near 7000 young Indian punters dying to relive the notorious, ecstatic dance party mythology. Very few dance in the hot sun, most showing up at 5pm, but they still get burnt, money-wise, as the clatter of different, (but the same), computer beats bursting from 7 stages sounds like a thousand washing machines gone haywire. The chaos of innumerable goons and their tear-away girlfriends ripping up the night on motorbikes is amusing.
I ignore it all as I'm too old and too wise to get immersed in such commercial, alcohol-fuelled shenanigans. But a trip to Goa wouldn't be complete without a visit to the biggest, and the original, techno music club, Hilltop, especially on New Years eve.
I wasn't even going there this year but the fireworks at midnight in Vagator Beach was so spectacular, with an Indian crowd roaring, that I got overly excited and felt it had to be topped by some frenetic dancing. I paid the $160 entrance fee, which hopefully bars the gangsters from the boondocks from entering and grabbing the women, and I joined a crowd of about 5000 punters in the huge, walled backyard of the Hilltop Hotel.
The first 4 DJs I found boring, I'd heard far better way back 1997 to 2007, not just at Hilltop but all the other free, lawless venues: Siva Valley, Bamboo Forest and Monkey Valley. There were real geniuses in mixing disparate beats and sounds: Infected Mushroom, Woozy, Sounds Unlimited, (this last group got me so worked up I danced like a whirlwind dervish, on the best Molly, what one needs I guess to really go for it.) Here in 2023 the techno was derivative, nothing innovative, relying on a single base beat, "Boom, boom, boom", that covered over any counterpoint sounds. Then at 4am on came an older Indian DJ who provided weird melodies and oriental orchestrations in and out of the beats that made for pleasant listening.
But it was at 5am that came the killer DJ, at last, the original techno dance beats weaving in and out of fantastic melodic rythms and soundscapes. The huge crowd went bananas and the dance marathon rocketed off. Though many gronks got in my face and waved their arms while trodding on my toes, I realised it was a free-for-all, everybody and anybody could have a go. Dags in boring Nike Ts and style concious hipsters mixed with straights and freaks, black and white, obese and skeletal, het and queer, one got lost and freed in the crowd, dancing how one willed, nobody cared.
I danced from 12.30am to 6am, and it seemed many hipsters meandered by and had a gander at the old dick with the white beard making the moves. As always the coolest dudes wore black, the wannabe groovers wearing amazing fluro designs on black T shirts, but disco fluro is passe as far as Im concerned. I wore white pjama pants and a plain powder blue T with the falling angel, Lucifer, on a siver chain around my neck. Tied around my waist was a long white cotton shirt with a blue silk-screened design of a giant Mad Max deviant head. From the back it looked like a dress. My white outfit lit up under the black lights positioned on the trunks of every coconut tree, I stood out like a glow J.C. statue, only I was Lucifarian.
What an old fool I must of looked in that vast, jiving crowd, but Ive been doing this for 60 years and I'm not gonna change now. I'm th type that thrives in crowds gyrating to syncopated, jive beat, charging around thru the coconut groves on fast motorbikes, then chilling by the ocean eating fish and drinking fresh orange jiuce. Only those of similar temperment would truly appreciate Goa.
The Goans work very hard to give the tourist a pleassnt, comfortable holiday. They race back and forward in the hot sun setting up beach beds and umbrellss, taking orders and delivering meals. I eat every day at a shack called Green Eyes run by three brothers who I've known for 25 years. One of them, Pani, the cook, dropped dead in the kitchen from exhaustion and heat. I was the only foreigner asked to attend the "laying in" of the body, a terribly sad occassion for all of us.
I like being on my own, no hassles, little drama. I used to travel with Indian friends and whew, did they cause trouble, fights, thefts, girls touched up, goonda gangsters dressed as cops robbing the entire town, real cops searching the punterd hoping for a bust and a bribe. Now I travel alone, few hassles, how peaceful to be my own best friend, chill out and write my third book. For the entertaining reports on my Indian misadventures 1997 to 2017 read the forthcoming conclusion to my trilogy, "Lone Stranger."
It's true that the cars, motorbikes, importunate pedlars, insistant beggars, oafs from the hintetland sneaking photos of white women in bikinis, the incessant thump thumop thump pulsating from nightclubs could drive the placid peace-lover to an incandscent fury, then the quiet of South Goa would be more your cup of tea. I try not to lose my temper when a huge SUV tries to run me down on the narrow Vagator streets. My summation of India is it's a cross between a boot camp, an adventure park, a motor bike rally, a health retreat, a horror house, a jungle safari and a trance party. If you can't handle such a mash-up scenario don't come to India, especially not Goa.
I've truly had a wonderful time here in Goa, I take back my condemnation of the place. If you want a tripped out dance and chilled trance holiday here. But bring lots of money and guard it close. Oh, and hold your girlfriend closer, there's a lot of horny guys around.
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| The last sunset of 2022 |
