“Isn’t Goa your home? How can you bash it? That’s blasphemous!” The friend was ranting, her brain having shed its last logical cell. She has never lived in Goa, she doesn’t know Goa. Hearsay and pretty Instagram posts are her opinion source. She believes Goa is the country’s best holiday destination.

The Dramatically Changed Goa

The ranting friend has ‘imagined’ a Goa. Mine is lived reality. I have lived in Goa for 8.5 years and watched it metamorphose into an uglier version of the paradise that once lured many a tourist: Unscrupulous taxi drivers. Countless potholes. Numerous trees felled under the garb of development. Garbage everywhere. So much garbage (I sit in the car wearing blinkers) and an unbearable stench everywhere. Accommodation rates soaring beyond the graph. And yes, road rage, rash driving and perennial honking by the cab drivers. No public transport – there are a few buses but I’d rather crawl into sunset than hop into one of those buses. Beggars at crossroads are the new monstrous reality and at any tourist attraction are hawkers heckling to sell a bracelet, a keychain – they do not understand a polite ‘no’, you got to be massively rude to get them off your back.

It is not the Goa that I moved to lock, stock & a smoking barrel and loved dearly. Goa is a disappointment now. Mighty disappointment.

Picture this. You step out of the airport and a group of taxi drivers approach you almost menacingly with a raucous ‘Taxi Taxi’ chorus. As a woman, you feel threatened and uncomfortable and want to escape the wolf pack. And god forbid, if you actually need a taxi, they quote such a hefty fare that you flinch. But there is no option.

Goa Miles (a local ride-hailing app) is a fiasco and there is no public transport from the airport. In the state, you are at the mercy of the taxi mafia—I once paid ₹500 for a 4.5-kilometre ride in a taxi that had dirty towels covering the torn seat cover!

Beaches give nightmares

Beaches, specially the popular ones like Calangute, Baga, Anjuna, Miramar, are a nightmare. Parking arrangements are deplorable and the beaches are littered with filth and uncouth men drinking and dancing. I have been to Calangute beach once (only once in 8.5 years) and had to pay a cover charge of ₹1,000 for four rickety plastic chairs and two plates of potato fries fried in burnt oil. You feel cheated and vow never to return.

But shacks are the not the only ones scamming you. A few fancy restaurants do, too. In an upmarket restaurant, the co-founder chivalrously offered to rustle a fresh bread veggie feast – what he laid on my table was burnt bread (he called it ‘bread’s leopard spots) that was nearly inedible. When I told him, it was ‘really bad’, he chuckled ‘at least I tried’. I paid ₹450 for ‘leopard spots’. A friend paid four taxes on one bill: Service charge (levied by the restaurant, Service tax (levied by the government), VAT on alcohol and VAT on the all-inclusive bill. Some even sneak in dishes on the bill that you never ordered. So, check your bill before paying.

If you are looking for a 5-star hotel room for a 4-night year-end celebration, be ready to shelve ₹10 lakh for a fancy villa in Moira; ₹260,000+ taxes in W Goa; ₹150,000+ taxes in Grand Hyatt Goa, ₹400,000.With ₹10 lakh, a family of 4 can do a luxury Maldives holiday twice, Bangkok 4 times, Sri Lanka 5 times, even a package Europe tour for much less.

The tourists are right

So, why should one come to Goa? After the viral uproar, the state government urged ‘don’t compare an Indian state to a country like Sri Lanka’. Why not? The tourist wants his money’s worth, he’ll go where he gets the best deal for what he is spending.

But wait! This litany of woes is for budget and middle-class tourist. If you can pay the exorbitant tariff of ultra-luxurious hotels, you’ll escape a few of these hassles. Potholes will still be there but perhaps they turn a little less evil if you are driving a Mercedes.

I still live in Goa, and, well, I still love a few things about it, but the paradise seems lost. The disappointment is jarringly apparent – for the tourists as well as permanent residents.

Someone, for heaven’s sake, please do something about the garbage. The stench can kill.

And someone, for another heaven, please fix the taxi and hotel tariff woes.

If not, the tourists might never return.