My time in Goa: The perfect holiday destination in the eyes of a 12-year-old

My first trip to Goa has been fabulous! I never had so much fun, especially since the lockdown. Even after returning, I cannot stop talking about the sea, the beaches, the food and the people. It turned out to be even more beautiful than what I had imagined and its flora and architecture were captivating and to me novel.

The sea was unpredictable, changing swiftly from being calm to very turbulent. If the beaches were less crowded, I discovered, the colour of the sand tended to be yellowish and the water in the sea clearer. But at crowded beaches, the sand looked obviously dirtier but the sea too was not so clear.

Candolim beach had very people when we arrived; the sand was bright yellow and the sea waves not too small or too large. Anjuna was rocky. I found big, red rocks with tiny holes in them, some with water which had got in during high tide presumably.

I found lots of crustaceans, mainly crabs, slugs and even small fish living in small pockets of water! Sometimes the fish get trapped in those pockets and have to learn to survive there with no food and limited water till the next high tide. On the other hand, I was told, some fish preferred

to stay put in such pockets as it provided them protection from predators.

One of my uncles had warned that food in Goa would be strange and might not be to my liking. Well, guess what! It was even better than I imagined and I loved it! I was able to have lobster that I had longed to taste and it was awesome. The people of Goa I met were nice, warm, kind and hospitable. I had no difficulty communicating in Hindi. There were also a large number of tourists from different parts of India and the world. I was struck by the diversity and the variety of languages that they spoke. It was very different from Assam.

I couldn’t have missed the red soil and red rocks. The rocks near the coast were more porous, possibly because of the waves of water they encountered daily. The red soil and the warm sun provide ideal conditions for growing coconuts and cashew nuts.

I found the coconut trees to be slightly different from the ones in Assam. They are taller and slimmer in Goa while the ones we see in Assam are shorter and wider. The architecture in Goa is also very different from what we are used to. Buildings are more colourful and have slanting roofs like in Assam. But they are mostly made of tiles of baked clay. Some of the buildings are also made up of rocks and stones. The roads in Goa were also better and better maintained than in Assam. The reflectors on roads are very common and brighter.

When we visited Fort Aguada, I saw that the same red rocks. The darker rocks were older, I learnt, and could be easily distinguished from newer rocks. The sea bed there was also rocky.

The resort was alluring. The first thing I noticed was the ‘green’ pool. It was probably the night that caused it to look green. The outside area looked like a courtyard, surrounded by many cabins. The area had many

chairs, swings and open space. The cabins themselves were cozy but, do not laugh, I was taken in by the design of the bathrooms. Half of the bathroom had marble floorings and looked ‘normal’ while the other half was ‘open air’ with no roof and with grass on the floor.

It was an exciting end to my discovery of Goa!

(The writer is a 12-year-old school student from Guwahati who recently visited Goa for the first time)