Description:
On the east coast of India is a place so shaped by travelers that it resembles less India than a projection of foreign aims and fantasies. Isolated from the rest of the country by a mountainous barrier, the province of Goa has drawn adventurers by sea and air, from tribal nomads and migrant Aryans, to the Portuguese (who ruled for 450 years), to the psychedelic conquistadors of the 1960s. These are all "old conquests" in this history of Goa as written by a self-described serial tourist from London. David Tomory, whose last adventure, A Season in Heaven, took him to Katmandu, delves deep into Goa's past. It's a slow-paced and nicely atmospheric journey through the area's checkered history, hopping seamlessly from politics to entomology to anthropology to geography. He imagines the Spanish inquisitions and analyzes their impact, and jumps into the Empire of the Hip, a wildly bohemian era during which the mix of hallucinogenics and loosely interpreted Indian philosophies drew oddballs from all over and Indian men took bus tours to see the fully naked Western women on the beach. Tomory first visited Goa in 1976, not too long before the emergence of "Touristhan"--the kingdom of mass tourism, travel aspiring to the condition of television, and the new conquistador. Package tourism was promoted by the Indian government in the hopes of ridding Goa of hippies and infusing the area with dollars. Tomory, who has an eye for irony, contemplates this onslaught of modernity throughout the book, convinced that it has brought more changes than any of the other outside influences combined. While Tomory makes clear his preference--he still rents an old fishing house with the new, modern Goa hidden behind it--he does not force his sentimentality. He lets the people of Goa speak for themselves, and many defend the new cash economy. After all, Goa is a society of compatible incompatibles, and the cultural variation that has always characterized the place is more resilient and stubborn than any surface uniformity. --Lesley Reed
| 
