North of the Noise

Everyone knows Baga. Everyone has an opinion about Anjuna. But North Goa is larger and stranger and more interesting than its reputation as a party coast suggests. I spent a week deliberately avoiding the famous stretches and found a different place entirely.

Siolim village sits on the Chapora River estuary and moves at its own pace. I stayed with a Goan family who have been fishing these waters for three generations. The father, Domingo, takes his boat out before 4am. I joined him one morning and we pulled in mackerel and kingfish as the sky turned pink. He sold everything at the Mapusa market by 7am and was back home for breakfast. 'Simple life,' he said, with a satisfaction that was anything but simple.

The hinterland of North Goa — Assagao, Saligao, Moira — is where the interesting Goa lives today. Artists, farmers, people who moved here from Mumbai and Delhi two decades ago and found they couldn't leave. A ceramicist named Priya showed me her studio in a converted warehouse in Assagao. 'People come here to find something,' she said. 'Sometimes they find it. Sometimes they find something else. Either way, they stay.'