Goa Between the Seasons

I came to Goa in May, when the heat is thick and the tourists are gone and the sea turns wild before the monsoon. The beach shacks are shuttered, the roads are quiet, and something true about the place becomes visible — like a painting with the varnish stripped off.

South Goa's Catholic village churches are extraordinary. I spent a day cycling between Chandor, Loutolim, and Quepem, stopping at mansions built by Goan aristocracy in the Portuguese era. At the Braganza House in Chandor, the last descendant of the family — a woman in her seventies — showed me through rooms that haven't changed since 1763. 'We keep it as it was,' she said. 'It is not a museum. It is our home.'

A coconut farmer named Agnelo took me to a local feni distillery — a clay pot operation in his cousin's backyard where cashew feni is made the way it has been for four hundred years. We sat on plastic chairs and he poured me a glass and watched my face carefully. The feni burned and tasted of summer and wood smoke. 'The tourists want cocktails,' he said. 'This is the real thing.'