In India for three letters
On the last week of December from Moscow to this state in southern India comes daily at eight flights. Goa – in the minds of every European, Russian or Israelis, who made his impression from the stories "knowledgeable people", This place is a certain infinite musical and drug free, the last bastion of the culture and traditions of the Hippie movement, the island of lost freedom, a kind of tropical similarity of the Danish Christiania or Spanish Ibiza.
Partly such an idea is true: In fact, tens of thousands of people from all over the Earth are sent annually in Goa to spend a couple of weeks in the setting of carbon monoxide, narcotic relaxation and complete permissiveness, and even settle in the hut under the palm trees, rejecting temptations native western civilization.
Goa for the bourgeoisie ..
However, it is worth understanding that all such stereotypes in relation to Goa were formed at the end of the seventies last century, and in the past since then a quarter of a century, Indian realities have changed at no less than Russian. Today, for each successor of bright hipp traditions, coming around "Boeing" At Dabolim Airport to breathe airfield air, for each Moscow Downshifter and for each young Israeli rebellion, which has changed the ideals of Zionism in Indian tropics, has a kind dozen of lovers of a condemnation beach holiday by the formula "all inclusive" – In the spirit of such international resorts like Turkish Antalya, Thai Pattaya or Egyptian Sharm el-Sheikh. Air-conditioned buses straight from the airport, past Raivov and Hippovskih huts, will deliver the bourgeoisie thirsty "Radisson", or "Hilton", or "Kempinski", or what other hotel. Two weeks later, the rested middle class (Moscow, Berlin or Manchester) will plunge on the return flight, never thinking about the nrules and features of the place where it happened to sunbathe in this season.
The state of Goa has all the prerequisites for the development of classic forms of beach tourism. The territory of three Moscow accounts for 102 kilometers of an excellent coastal strip covered with gentle silk sand. Inherent in India, the Beach of Overcrowded Goa did not affect local residents there are only 1.4 million people there (despite the fact that the population of the neighboring states of Maharashtra and Karnataka is 97 and 53 million, respectively). The level of income of the local population is quite high (by historical reasons associated with the centuries of Portuguese dominion): beggars and cripples, haunting a foreigner on the streets of Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi, you will not meet anywhere in Goa. Crime in the notable tourist forms is also absent. But a well-developed transport connection: Dozens of charter airlines from Europe and Asia are launched at Dabolim Airport, and from cities, from where airplanes in Goa do not fly, you can easily reach there via Bombay, located 600 kilometers from the northern borders state.
… and for hippies
For all these reasons, the resorts of the South Goa than, the strongest will be approved in world rankings of ordinary beach holidays. However, the northern part of the state, as before, will remain Mecca for Raverov, Downshifters, fugitives from the consumption society. If, of course, local authorities will not decide to end this tradition to the end (about which in the local press, and in the legislative assembly of the state of Goa have long been conducted by lively discussions).
The development of the northern part of Goa Europeans began in the 1970s – shortly after the Indian troops put an end to the Portuguese colony arising here in the XVI century. Then in the villages of Anjuna and Vagator began to settle American, Canadian and European hippie. They traveled in Goa in the ground – from Bombay, Delhi and Nepalese Capital Kathmandu, even earlier in the status of Asian bridgehead "Children flowers". In Indian villages, on the shores of the Arabian Sea, Hippy filmed at the local residents of the house for the dollar a day and spent "season" (lasting here since October to June) in ordinary joys, quite exhausted formula "Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll". To earn the same dollar a day, hippiea was established in the palm grove of Anjuna flea market, where it was sold to each other things from personal baggage. The flea market in Andun acts to this day, it works every Wednesday, only traded there now mostly local residents, and they buy tourists.
"Children flower"
An interesting story about how the life was arranged in the Hippovskaya community of Anjuna, it can be found in the book of memories of the American anthropologist Cleo Ozer "Goa Freaks".
Growing out in a rich Jewish family in Manhattan, stomase breakdown and family, and with America during the Vietnamese War. At first she went to Europe and worked there a fashion model, and in the mid-1970s settled in the Hippov commune in Andun, among those most freaks who later became the heroes of her book. According to the testimony of the odzer, the main source of income of Giana hippie was still not revenue from the sale of personal belongings on the flea market, but delivery to the USA and Canada of Asian drugs, mainly from Thailand. Hippie, who had its own funds, bought a party for 2 thousand dollars in Bangkok and sold her for 22 thousand in Canada. Their more constrained in the means of comrades worked by couriers: for one successful flight with foreign cargo, it was possible to rescue from 8 to 10 thousand dollars. Although earnings "Children flower" They managed with the impracticity peculiar to them (on the way back to Asia, stopping in the most expensive hotels), the revenues grabbed them to ensure that there is no rest of the year on the Goan coast, where in those years it was possible to hire a local servant for 22 dollars a month, seven days a week.
The odzer spent six years in Anjun. It was the time of sunset the hippov commune: in the West, the movement began to go to no, so that new participants appeared less and the oldest destroyed their drug health and, if they did not die from overdose, sooner or later they went to various Asian prisons. On smuggling. Although Indian laws on this occasion are softer Thai, the memories of the horror of the prison in the old Portuguese Fort of Agvad differ little from the described in "Midnight express". The main difference is that from Agvada for all the time of its existence, no one managed to escape … Realizing these sad perspectives, Cleo Smezer in the early 1980s left the paradise shores of Andugany, returned to the United States, graduated from the University and now he has been working in the service of the rehabilitation of drug addicts. She sent a copy of his memoirs to every public library of the state of Goa to the edification of new generations of Foreign Paradise.
Goa Trans
Generations, however, remained to edify the deaf. In the 1980s, when from several thousand hippies who inhabited the north of the state, only a hundred-other most persistent and ideological opponents of Western civilization remained, the coast was made by the place of pilgrimage of Revers, electronic music fans. By the beginning of the 1990s, even a whole musical style was formed, called "Goa Trans". Lovers of this music (one of the harbingers of which is called Claus Schulz) did not settle in North Goa and there were no communes there, however, in many times they went there for their raves and festivals. Events are sitting in the open air, on the seashore or in the rainforest. The Large Polyana is selected, on which the sound equipment is installed, and for several tens of DJs, they replace each other for the remote control, stunning thousands of collected listeners with a shock psychedelic, under which they are union dancing. The entrance to such parties stands on Goan standards is not suiced, however, the rawers arriving at Goa-Trans-Party thousands of kilometers from the house, the price of the issue is unlikely to ever stop.
The attitude of local residents and authorities to trans parties, to put it mildly, tense. Not only because drugs are free on raises freely sold, but also because these holidays begin, as a rule, deep at night and the roar of shock installations operating with a frequency of 130 -150 beats per minute, spread to many kilometers around. Therefore, the beginning of each part of the party is accompanied by the arrival of the local police with the prescription to close the event and arrest the equipment. Bribes, allowing to avoid this trouble, are laid and in the budget of any raise, and in the family budget of any officer of the Goan police ..
Russians are coming
Russian tourism in the state of Goa began with cautious sealing of Moscow DJs and fans of electronic music at the very end of the 1990s, but the musical theme of Russian guests quickly quickly moved to the background. As the rumors about the paradise corner on the Malabar coast of India spread in Moscow Tusovka, the desire to go there at the same time arose from the most different layers of the Russian public, from students to the oligarchy. Tour operators and carriers did not make themselves for a long time, and by 2004, regular air traffic was established between Domodedovo and Dabolim airports. Last year, Goa was visited by 50 thousand Russians, and would not be surprised if this season would double.
Russian entrepreneurs through submersing Indian firms buy in North Goa Real Estate, reveal restaurants, shops, hotels and centers of Eastern Medicine. V "Russian capital" State – Village Mordezhima. The rise in price of all types of tourism services is confidently ahead of the growth of world oil prices. Indian newspapers are filled with horror stories about "Russian mafia", Local drug business, real estate and prostitution – facts about this is not contained in any article in any article, and the entire war of compromates in the local press is just a reflection of the struggle between Indian groups for the right to sleep northern guests. But Russian regulars of Goa gladly retell each other these horror stories under the shelter of palm trees on the sandy shore of the Arabian Sea.
