Translated material
To India with three letters
Three letters to India. In the last week of December, eight flights arrive daily from Moscow to this state in southern India. Goa - in the minds of every European, Russian or Israeli who made up his impression from the stories of "knowledgeable people", this place seems to be some kind of boundless musical and drug freemen, the last bastion of the culture and traditions of the hippie movement, an island of lost Freedom, a kind of tropical similarity to Danish Christiania or Spanish Ibiza
In part, this idea is true: in fact, tens of thousands of people from all over the world go to Goa every year to spend a couple of weeks there in an atmosphere of carbon monoxide rave, drug relaxation and complete permissiveness, or even settle in a hut under palm trees, rejecting temptations native Western civilization.
Goa for the bourgeoisie...
 |
However, it should be understood that all such stereotypes regarding Goa were formed in the late seventies of the last century, and over the past quarter century, Indian realities have changed no less than Russian ones. Today, for every follower of the bright hippie traditions who descends the Boeing ramp at Dabolim Airport to breathe in the air of freedom, for every Moscow downshifter and for every young Israeli rebel who betrayed the ideals of Zionism in the Indian tropics, there are a good dozen lovers of condo beach holidays according to the formula "all inclusive" - in the spirit of such international resorts as Turkish Antalya, Thai Pattaya or Egyptian Sharm el-Sheikh. Air-conditioned buses straight from the airport, past raves and hippie shacks, will take the beach-hungry bourgeoisie to the Radisson or the Hilton or the Kempinski or some other hotel. Two weeks later, the rested middle class (Moscow, Berlin or Manchester) will plunge on the return flight, never once thinking about the customs and features of the place where he had a chance to sunbathe this season.
The state of Goa has all the prerequisites for the development of classical forms of beach tourism. The territory of three Moscow accounts for 102 kilometers of excellent coastal strip, covered with the most delicate silky sand. The scourge of overpopulation inherent in India did not affect Goa - there are only 1.4 million local residents there (despite the fact that the population of the neighboring states of Maharashtra and Karnataka is 97 and 53 million, respectively). The income level of the local population is quite high (for historical reasons associated with centuries of Portuguese rule): beggars and cripples chasing a foreigner on the streets of Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi, you will not meet anywhere in Goa. There is also no crime in forms noticeable to tourists. On the other hand, transport links are well developed: dozens of flights of charter airlines from Europe and Asia land daily at Dabolim Airport, and from cities where planes do not fly to Goa for any reason, you can easily get there through Bombay, located 600 kilometers from the northern borders state.
…and for hippies
For all these reasons, the resorts of South Goa, the further, the stronger they will become established in the world rankings of an ordinary beach holiday. However, the northern part of the state, as before, will remain a Mecca for ravers, downshifters, fugitives from the consumer society. Unless, of course, the local authorities decide one day to put an end to this tradition (about which both the local press and the legislative assembly of the state of Goa have long been lively discussions).
The development of the northern part of Goa by Europeans began in the 1970s - shortly after the Indian troops put an end to the Portuguese colony that arose here in the 16th century. Then American, Canadian and European hippies began to settle in the villages of Anjuna and Vagator. They traveled to Goa by land - from Bombay, Delhi and the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu, which even earlier established itself in the status of the Asian springboard of "flower children". In Indian villages on the shores of the Arabian Sea, hippies rented houses from local residents for a dollar a day and spent the "season" (lasting here from October to June) in simple joys, completely exhausted by the formula "sex, drugs, rock and roll." To earn that very dollar a day, the hippies established a flea market in Anjuna's palm grove, where they sold items from personal luggage to each other. The flea market in Anjuna still operates to this day, it works every Wednesday, but now it is mainly local residents who trade there, and tourists buy from them.
"Children of Flowers"
 |
An interesting story about how life was arranged in the hippie community of Anjuna can be found in the memoirs of the American anthropologist Cleo Odzer "Goa Freaks".
Raised in a wealthy Jewish family in Manhattan, Odzer broke with both her family and America during the Vietnam War. She first went to Europe and worked there as a fashion model, and in the mid-1970s she settled in a hippie commune in Anjuna, among the very freaks who later became the heroes of her book. According to Odzer, the main source of income for Goan hippies was not the proceeds from the sale of personal belongings at a flea market, but the delivery of Asian drugs to the United States and Canada, mainly from Thailand. Hippies with their own means bought a batch for $2,000 in Bangkok and sold it for $22,000 in Canada. Their more financially constrained comrades worked as couriers: for one successful flight with someone else's cargo, one could get from 8 to 10 thousand dollars. Although the “flower children” disposed of their earnings with their usual impracticality (on the way back to Asia, staying in the most expensive hotels), the proceeds were enough for them to live comfortably for the rest of the year on the Goan coast, where in those years it was possible to hire local servants for 22 dollars a month, seven days a week.
Odzer spent six years in Anjuna. It was the time of the decline of the hippie commune: in the West, the movement began to fade away, so that there were fewer and fewer new participants in the party, and the old ones actively destroyed their health with drugs and, if they did not die from an overdose, sooner or later went to various Asian prisons, having been caught on smuggling. Although Indian laws are more lenient than Thai ones, the memories of the horrors of the prison in the ancient Portuguese fort of Aghwada differ little from those described in the Midnight Express. The main difference is that no one managed to escape from Aghvada during its entire existence ... Realizing these sad prospects, Cleo Odzer left the heavenly shores of Anjuna in the early 1980s, returned to the USA, graduated from the university and now works in the drug rehabilitation service . She sent a copy of her memoirs to every public library in the state of Goa as an edification to new generations of seekers of earthly paradise.
goa trance
Generations, however, remained deaf to her admonitions. In the 1980s, when only a hundred or two of the most persistent and ideological opponents of Western civilization remained from several thousand hippies who inhabited the north of the state, the coast became a place of pilgrimage for ravers, fans of electronic music. By the early 1990s, even a whole musical style was formed, called "goa trance". Lovers of this music (one of the forerunners of which is called Klaus Schulze) did not settle in North Goa and did not establish any communes there, however, in many cases they gathered there for their raves and festivals. These events are still held in the open air, on the seashore or in the rainforest. A large clearing is selected, on which sound equipment is installed, and for several tens of hours, DJs replace each other at the console, deafening the thousands of assembled listeners with percussion psychedelics, to which they enthusiastically dance. Entrance to such parties is not cheap by Goan standards, but the price of the issue is unlikely to ever stop the ravers who arrived at the Goa trans party thousands of kilometers from home.
The attitude of local residents and authorities towards trance parties is, to put it mildly, tense. Not only because drugs are freely sold at raves, but also because these holidays begin, as a rule, late at night and the roar of drum kits operating at a frequency of 130-150 beats per minute is carried for many kilometers around. Therefore, the beginning of each party is accompanied by the arrival of the local police with an order to close the event and seize the equipment. Bribes to avoid this trouble are included in the budget of any rave, and in the family budget of any Goan police officer ... The Russians are coming Russian guests rather quickly faded into the background. As rumors about a paradise on the Malabar coast of India spread in the Moscow crowd, the desire to go there simultaneously arose among the most diverse sections of the Russian public, from students to the oligarchy. Tour operators and carriers did not take long to beg, and by 2004 regular air traffic was established between Domodedovo and Dabolim airports. Last year, 50 thousand Russians visited the state of Goa, and I would not be surprised if this number doubles this season.
Russian entrepreneurs, through front Indian firms, are buying up real estate in North Goa, opening restaurants, shops, hotels and centers of oriental medicine. In the “Russian capital” of the state, the village of Morjim, the rise in prices for all types of tourist services is confidently outpacing the rise in world oil prices. Indian newspapers are full of horror stories about the "Russian mafia", as if subjugating the local drug business, real estate and prostitution - there are no facts about this in any article, and the whole war of compromising evidence in the local press is just a reflection of the struggle between Indian groups for the right to shelter northern guests. But the Russian regulars of Goa are happy to retell these horror stories to each other under the rustle of palm trees on the sandy shore of the Arabian Sea.