Anjuna

Anjuna was a farming and fishing village of the Bardez district long before anyone came for its beach. Under Portuguese rule much of the population was converted; the church of St Michael was founded in 1595, and the village lanes still hold the whitewashed houses, with their shaded balcões and oyster-shell windows, of Goan Catholic families who did well under colonial rule. Many emigrated — to Bombay, to Portuguese Africa, to the Gulf — and sent money home, which is why so many of the old houses are grander than a village of paddy farmers would suggest.

Goa was absorbed into India in 1961, and within a few years Anjuna had a second identity. From about 1966 overland travellers on the hippie trail from Europe discovered the empty beaches of North Goa, and Anjuna, cheap, tolerant and remote, became their winter headquarters. They rented village houses, held full-moon parties on the beach, and in the 1970s began selling their possessions to fund onward travel in what became the Wednesday flea market. The Christmas and New Year gatherings of those years were the seed of the trance parties for which the coast later became known, and of the psychedelic trance music that took Goa's name around the world in the 1990s.

Charter tourism, Indian domestic tourism and growing restrictions on open-air parties changed the place from the 1990s on. The beach shacks became licensed businesses, the market became a mainstream bazaar, and the night scene moved into licensed clubs on the cliffs towards Vagator. Anjuna today is a layered place: a Goan village, a backpacker resort and, in nearby Assagao, an inland retreat of restaurants and cafés, with the old traveller freedoms surviving in smaller, quieter forms.

The village's culture is a mixture that its founders could not have foreseen. The Goan Catholic layer is visible in the church, the roadside crosses, the parish feast in September and the carnival before Lent; the Hindu layer in temples, Ganesh Chaturthi processions and the Konkani spoken at home. The Goan identity that both share — a Portuguese-inflected food, a fondness for music and football, the susegad ease that Goans both claim and mock — is older than tourism and underlies everything.

On top of it sits a half-century of travellers. Anjuna was where Goa trance was born, the fast, hypnotic electronic music that grew out of the beach parties and became a global genre; Vagator's cliff clubs still play it, and the drum circle, the hammock and the chai stall are part of the area's furniture. Long-stay foreigners from many countries spend winters here year after year, and the Wednesday market brings traders from all over India, foreign sellers and Indian holidaymakers into one crowded field.

The two cultures do not always sit easily together. Villagers along this coast have objected to loud parties, drugs and the sale of land to outsiders; locals complain of being priced out; visitors complain of police and rising costs. Visitors who dress for the village rather than the beach, keep their noise to licensed venues and treat the lanes as someone's home are the ones made welcome.

Anjuna's permanent population is around 10,000, swollen several times over in the dry season by visitors, seasonal workers from across India and the foreigners who stay for months. The old village economy — rice from the paddy fields behind the beach, fish from the Chapora river, coconuts and cashews — survives alongside the tourism that now provides most incomes: guesthouses, shack ownership, scooter hire, taxi driving, market stalls and the restaurant kitchens of Assagao. Remittances from Goans working abroad, especially in the Gulf and on cruise ships, remain important, and many of the finest houses belong to families who live elsewhere.

The day runs on two clocks. Villagers are up early, at mass, at the fish market or in the fields before the heat; the visitors emerge late, drift to the beach or a café, and come alive at sunset, when the shacks fill. Wednesday changes everything, as the market traffic chokes the lanes from mid-morning. In the monsoon, from June to September, the beach shacks close, most foreigners leave, and the village returns briefly to itself under the rain.

Current concerns are those of the whole Goan coast: the sale of family land and old houses to developers and outsiders, water shortages and waste in the season, erosion of the beach, traffic on roads built for bullock carts, and the tension between the night economy and residents' sleep. The new airport at Mopa has made the far north of Goa more reachable. Younger Goans often leave for Panaji, Mumbai or abroad, and the village's future as a living community rather than a resort is openly debated.

Anjuna eats Goan, and Goan food is one of India's most distinctive regional cuisines — Konkani coastal cooking reshaped by four centuries of Portuguese rule. The shacks' staple is fish curry and rice, a coconut-and-tamarind curry sharpened with kokum, the dried sour fruit of the region, served with the day's catch. Prawns, kingfish, pomfret and squid are grilled or fried in a rawa, a semolina crust; and prawn balchão, a fiery pickle-like dish, keeps for days.

The Catholic kitchen brought the pork dishes for which Goa is famous. Vindaloo, from the Portuguese vinha d'alhos, is pork marinated in vinegar and garlic with chillies — far from the generic curry-house version. Sorpotel is a rich stew of pork and offal, chouriço the local spicy sausage, usually eaten with pão, the soft bread rolls the Portuguese brought to Goa. Chicken cafreal, green with coriander and chilli, and chicken xacuti, with roasted coconut and a long list of spices, are shack menu fixtures. Hindu Goan food is lighter and often vegetarian: sol kadhi, made with kokum and coconut, cooling vegetable curries and the rice-and-dal of the paddy villages.

Sweets include bebinca, a layered coconut-milk pudding, and dodol, a dark jaggery-and-coconut fudge. Drinking is part of the culture: feni, the local spirit distilled from cashew apples or coconut, is widely sold, and alcohol is priced low by Indian standards. Beyond the shacks, Assagao has restaurants and cafés of its own, and the Friday market in Mapusa is a good place to see the raw ingredients and buy spices and traditional Goan goods to take home.