It is the Beaches of Goa Which Particularly Attract Foreign Tourists

The Calangute beach is known all over the world and thousands converge on it in March, April and May. The 28 kilometers long stretch of flour '"like sanded shore from Velcao to Betual in the south of Goa is one of the best in the world.

These beaches, which during the Portuguese regime only attracted the local people, have been drawing in the past may years more and more people from the rest of India and abroad., compelling the government to build a three '"storeyed hotel and a dormitory at Calangute and tourist cottages at Colva. Such is the spell of these beaches that Indian Hotels Limited have built a five star hotel complex near the Agoada fort on the Sinquerim beach, and the Mumbai Travel Agency, Sita, another five '"star hotel at Bogmalo beach, ear the Dabolim airport.

If one is travelling to Goa by sea, the first view of Panaji at dawn, especially in the winter months when mist hangs over the city, is both fascinating and gratifying. Indeed, Panaji is a romantic city. Its lanes, especially those in the old sector of Fontainhas, with their houses standing cheek to cheek and their main doors opening flush with the thoroughfares, have an individuality and quaintness all their own. It must be said to the credit of the Portuguese that they compelled by law the owners of houses in the cities to paint the exterior every year after the monsoon. As a result of this a visitor to Goa fids the cities eat and clean.

But it is not only the scenic splendor that makes Goa what it is. Goa is different from the rest of the country because of the East-West blend of architecture reflect in its buildings, its old world atmosphere, the cleanliness and quaintness of its cities, the palatial ad eat houses in the villages, the friendliness and courtesy of the people, be they Hindus or Christians, who are in the ratio about 6 to 4, A foreigner also feels more at home in Goa than elsewhere in India because it reminds him of some little place back home.