Tourist hotspot Goa counts its pandemic losses, braces for change
PANDEMIC AND ENSUING TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS HAVE DRAMATICALLY CHANGED EVERYTHING AT THE POPULAR TOURIST DESTINATION, POSSIBLY FOREVER
This holiday season, few visitors are enjoying the celebrated sunsets in the Indian party hotspot — Goa. The sun’s golden rays fall on the smooth, sandy beaches every evening, magical as ever but strangely quiet and lonely.
The unspoken fear of the coronavirus is sapping Goa’s vibrant beach shacks and noisy bars of their lifeblood.
This western Indian state usually comes alive in December and January, its tourism- led economy booming with foreign travellers and chartered flights bringing in hordes of vacationers.
Over the past decade, Goa had been transforming from a seasonal hotspot for both hippy backpackers and rich vacationers to a second home destination for India’smiddle class.
Dramatic change
The pandemic and the ensuing travel restrictions have changed everything, possibly forever.
Along the popular beaches in North Goa from Candolim to Calangute to Morjim, many landmark coffee shops, tattoo parlours and shack bars with sunbedshave shut permanently. Nightlife in popular party hubs has died.
Seema Rajgarh, 37, is a lonely figure on nearly desertedUtorda beach in South Goa, her blue sari set against the expanse of the Arabian Sea as she hawks jewellery made of beads and stones. None of the handful of domestic tourists is interested in buying them.
On good days during the holiday season, themother of three girls, the youngest not yet two years old, said she used tomake Rs2,000 ($ 27, Dh99).
Now, times are bleak.
“Some days, I make barely Rs200 ($ 2.7), not enough to even buy milk and food for my children,” she said.
Rajgahr’s husband, a cook, lost his job during the nationwide lockdown imposed in March to contain the spread of the coronavirus infections. He remains unemployed.
School fees for the children are long overdue. Rent is three months behind. “This virus has devastated our lives,” Rajgarh said.
Tourism amajor casualty
In 2019, more than 8 million tourists visited Goa, including more than 930,000 foreign tourists. Some 800 chartered flights arrived from Russia, Ukraine, the UK and Japan among other countries, according to the state tourism department.
As of August, only 1.1 million had visited, including just over 280,000 foreign tourists. An official report released in December estimated a loss of nearly $ 1 billion for the tourism industry due to the lockdown in AprilMay.
Months after the lockdown began to ease, Goa is showing signs of life. Domestic tourist arrivals surged during the yearend holidays. But things are hardly back to normal.
Yoga teacher Sharanya Narayanan is struggling tomake sense ofwhat has been lost. “The pandemic has changed everybody’s life. I miss the sense of anonymity that I enjoyed earlier in Goa. That every time I didn’t have the same set of people to meet, it was always changing, evolving so I was able to recreate myself without a sense of stagnation,” she said. “It is the transient nature of things that is so appealing about Goa.”
Some days, I make barely Rs200 ($ 2.7), not enough to even buy milk and food for my children.”
Seema Rajgarh | Jewellery hawker