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Goa and beaches
According to a PTI report
business of shacks on the beaches of Goa witnessed a slump this season
owing to economic downturn and the Mumbai terror attacks, which hit the
tourist inflow."In comparison to last season, we can say that the business
was down by almost 15 per cent," said Cruz Cardoz, President, Goa Shacks
Owners Welfare Society. According to him the season that went by had global
recession and Mumbai attack, slashing the tourist inflow
Goa and beaches are synonyms.
But at the height of summer, in April-May, while the beaches are fine for
short spans of time, say early in the
morning or late in the
evening, the thing to do is to go para-gliding. And during the rest of
the day, visit temples, which are cool inside, or go to the National Park
at Bondla, which also has a zoo.
Please remember not to
make comparisons with zoos anywhere else. People come to Goa for the beaches
and not the zoo and the only reason we stumbled upon it was because the
sun on the beaches was too much for us. I had dreaded the Goa trip, thinking
that most of the time would have to spent in a cool, air-conditioned and
darkened room. But when we hit the beach at Calangute, near Panaji, at
10 one bright and hot morning, which is practically dawn by local standards,
the boys were just setting up shop with their paragliding, banana and water
scooter rides, we knew it had to be paragliding.
At Calangute, paragliding
is done from a boat. The reason for this clarification was that a few days
later, at Colva, further south, we saw paragliders taking off from the
beach and landing there, too. As I said, we got there early and were accosted
in the car park where we did not haggle over the rate which was quoted:
it cost us Rs 500 per head for the four-five minutes of pure joy, soaring
through the air free as a bird and almost got to the stage of saying, “Look,
ma! No hands!” I gave in to the temptation of letting go my hold on the
harness wires and for just that brief second, thought I was a bird, soaring
above the water.
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