South Goa

South Goa is the answer to a question a lot of travellers only work out on their second visit: where in Goa do you go when you want the beaches without the noise? Where the north of the state has spent two decades building a reputation on beach clubs, night markets, water sports and a party circuit that runs until dawn, the south has stayed comparatively slow. The beaches are longer, wider and emptier, the pace is unhurried, and the strip behind the sand is still more coconut grove and paddy field than concrete. If your idea of a good coastal holiday involves walking a kilometre of near-empty sand at low tide rather than queuing for a sunbed, this is the half of Goa to aim for.

Geographically, South Goa is one of the state's two districts, running down the coast from the Zuari river to the Karnataka border, with the commercial town of Margao (Madgaon) as its hub. Its shoreline is a series of broad, gently curving bays: the long Colva–Mobor stretch of white sand in the centre, and further south the crescent coves of Palolem and Agonda in Canacona, backed in places by low forested headlands. Inland, the land rises quickly into the Western Ghats — a UNESCO-listed biodiversity hotspot — giving South Goa a hinterland of wildlife sanctuaries, spice plantations and one of India's tallest waterfalls, all within an easy drive of the coast.

But South Goa is not only beaches. This was the heart of Portuguese India for more than four centuries, and the legacy is everywhere. Just across the district line, the churches of Old Goa — the Basilica of Bom Jesus, which holds the relics of St Francis Xavier, and the vast Se Cathedral among them — form a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most important centres of Christian heritage in Asia. In the villages around Margao, grand Indo-Portuguese mansions such as those at Chandor still stand behind their whitewashed façades, and the local calendar is stitched through with feast days, processions and fairs that blend Catholic and Hindu traditions in a way that is distinctively Goan.

The other great pleasure of the south is the food. Goan cooking is a cuisine in its own right — coconut, tamarind, kokum, chillies and vinegar layered over the day's catch — and it is at its most honest here, in the fish-curry-rice thalis of the market towns and the shacks along the sand. Add the state's heritage spirit, feni, and a laid-back attitude to long lunches, and you have a place built for lingering.

Practically, South Goa suits a range of trips. It works as a pure beach break of three or four unhurried days; as a heritage-and-nature circuit taking in Old Goa, the mansions and the Ghats; or as the quieter base for a longer Goa holiday, with the busier north an easy day's excursion when you want it. However you come to it, the advice is the same: slow down, pick one or two beaches rather than trying to tick off all of them, and leave a day for the churches and the hills behind the coast.