Goa beaches - travel advice and places to visit

Goa, India is known for its beautiful beaches. In fact, there was a time when tourists from outside used to travel to India only to spend some time on these beaches. And they still continue to maintain that charm, attracting people from both outside and inside.

Goa boasts 85 kilometres of splendid beaches running into sparkling blue waters. Right from Palolem, close to the border of Karnataka, the beach is blanketed by white sand facing a blue bay between two headlands. Agonda, Mabor, Cavelossim, Varca, Benaulim, Colva, Majorda and Bogmolo are other popular beaches dotting the coastline towards Panjim, Goa's capital.

Miramar beach, three kilometres from the capital city, is a popular beach with joggers, walkers, children and paddlers. As an estuarine beach, where the Mandovi River joins the sea, the flood and ebb tides of the river's mouth create rip currents, making it an unsafe place for swimmers. Further north is Sinquerim, a good, clean, swimmers' beach popular with tourists for its broad and less crowded atmosphere. Next is Candolim beach, largely favoured due to its ambiance. The area is reminiscent of a coastal village in Spain - warm, friendly and happy to mind its own business.

Calangute, first hippie beach resort, is today a paddling, snacking, shopping, picnicking and vacationing beach. Lying north of Panjim, it's generally crowded and the small resorts do a thriving business during the holiday season.

Calangute casts a spell with her wild, wilful waters. It is a palm-bedecked, sunny haven nestling in a green semi-circle of the villages of Arpora-Nagoa, Saligao and Candolim. Located in the Bardez taluka, it is just 15 km from Panjim. This is a typical tourist town with promoters and hoteliers putting up accommodation of various sizes and comforts. Excellent accommodation facilities are available, particularly at the tourist resorts and cottages. With its ample breadth and good cover of casuarinas, it's the most popular beach in Goa.

Calangute became a traveller’s cliche in the sixties and seventies and tourist literature has always referred to it as the Queen of Goa's beaches. The beach is frequented till the late hours not only by local people but also by tourists. Parasailing at the beach starts in the afternoon when the wind is blowing just in the right direction and it goes on until sunset.

The few reminders of the past include the Saturday bazaar in the palm groves near the new Post Office. In the centre of Calangute is a nice Tibetan market. Full of different kinds of gems and silverwork, wooden statues of the Buddha and Hindu deities, the friendly Tibetan people run this market.

Traces of Buddhism can still be seen in this coastal village. The narrow road snaking past Bon Viagem convent along the cashew-covered foothills, leads to the springs at Mottant. The secluded spot is ideal for picnics and bathing. The waters are medicinal.

Baga, though not very popular, is a very nice beach. The sand here isn't either white or gold but brown. With the Baga River flowing down on one side, it offers a pleasant diversion for children and water-lovers. Where the river and the sea meet, there is a group of black rocks against which the sea crashes in dramatic expulsions of spray.

Across the river, a fair distance away, is Vagator, the most photographed beach in Goa. At the tip of the headland bordering it are groups of sea-washed rocks popular with honeymooners and others who want to be left alone. To the south of the headland are more outcrops of rocks cupping little pockets of sand and unique tidal pools.

At the place where two of Goa's famous rivers meet the Arabian Sea is the Dona Paula bay. Nine km west of Panjim, nestled on the south side of the rocky, hammer-shaped headland that divides the Zuari and Mandovi estuaries, this former fishing village is today a commercialised resort. Named after Dona Paula de Menezes, this place is called the Lovers Paradise due to a myth that has been attached to this place.

Dona Paula is entombed in Cabo chapel of Raj Bhavan but her magic and mystique is still every tourist's favourite yarn. Punished for captivating Francisco de Tavora, the Count of Alvor with her charm, she was pushed off a cliff to drown in the waters below. Her irrepressible spirit still continues to haunt every visitor with legends of her lovers. She is even supposed to have been seen emerging from moonlit waves wearing only a pearl necklace.

You can organise your travel to Goa or elsewhere in India with India tours.

Once you reach Panjim by flight, all the Goa beaches can be reached either by road or by water. Since tourism is a big business in Goa, all these places have always state-owned accommodation facilities, with delicious food to suit everyone’s taste.