'Cocaine coast': Goa's new image?
The dark side: Goa has overtaken Mumbai as favored shipment point for drug markets in Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe, says India Today.When Goa season begins, somewhere in mid November, Mumbaikers are usually the first to jump on the one-and-a-half hour flight for weekends and weddings of beach bumming, shack eating, beer drinking and bike riding.
In the last decade though India's original hippie haven has lost its flavor as a scene of full power trance parties and chillum-smoking travelers chilling under coconut palms.
According to India Today, it's gotten a lot worse.
While at one level Goa today is seeing more designer boutique hotels, swankier beach shacks and trendy trips booked on sites like Exclusively.in, at another deeper and darker level, there's a horrid saga at play.
India Today's cover story talks about a "confederacy of crime between the police, politicians and the drug cartels."
This is an elaborate, exhaustive account that paints a favorite travel destination as a drug mafia den; a Russian rave colony where cocaine and prostitution are currency, where political corruption of the state is hand in glove with dealers, dons and pimps, and where young female travelers' dead bodies are washed up the shore.
But, the article points out, the nefariousness is confined to 320 beach shacks along a three-km coastline stretch in north Goa. Which now makes south Goa's shanti vibes increasingly more attractive for travelers in search of a true Goa trip.
