In Goa, the Good Second Day Starts at a Ferry Slip

The beach belt of Goa is roughly four kilometres deep. Everything from Arambol down to Palolem — the shacks, the sunbed rows, the scooter-rental boards chalked up outside guesthouses — occupies a thin strip of sand and coconut between the Arabian Sea and the first line of hills. Behind it lies a different state altogether: rice fields, tidal islands, laterite plateaus, and the forested spine of the Western Ghats. Most visitors never cross into it, largely because nobody mentions that it begins about fifteen minutes inland.

That is the whole opportunity of a second or third day here. You do not have to leave Goa in order to leave the beach. You need a scooter, a ferry, and a willingness to spend a day somewhere with no view of the sea.

What follows is arranged the way you would actually do it: two island half-days in the north, a great-house afternoon in the south, and one long inland day for anyone who wants the oldest things in the state. November to February is the window for all of it. The air is dry, the migratory birds are in, and the rivers are low enough that the rock carvings are readable.

Two islands, fifteen minutes from Old Goa

Drive to Old Goa, past the basilicas, and keep going until the road simply ends at the water beside the Viceroy's Arch. That is the ferry slip for Divar. Boats shuttle across the Mandovi through most of the day and well into the night, the crossing takes about a quarter of an hour, and the traditional river ferries have long been free for foot passengers and two-wheelers; a car pays a token fare, on the order of ten rupees. There is no booking, no meaningful queue, and no timetable beyond whichever boat is next.

Divar has four villages — Piedade, Goltim, Naroa and São Matias — and no beach at all, which is precisely why it has stayed as it is. The road climbs from the slip to the Church of Our Lady of Compassion, also called Our Lady of Piety, on the crown of the island's hill. A chapel stood here from the 1540s; the building you walk into was begun around 1700 and finished in the 1720s, and the interior is the Indian baroque that Goan parish churches do so well — white stucco worked into flowers and scrollwork, gilded side altars, a cool dim nave after the glare outside.

Then go round the back. The churchyard looks north and west across the Mandovi, and the river bends, the mangrove channels and the basilica domes of Old Goa lay out the whole geography of the region in a single view.

Naroa, at the far end of the island, is worth the ride for what is not there. The shrine of Saptakoteshwar stood at Naroa and was among the important temples of the Kadamba period. When the Portuguese destroyed it, the deity was carried across the river, and the temple you can visit today was rebuilt in 1688 at Narve in Bicholim under Maratha patronage. Divar keeps the site and the name; the temple itself is on the other bank.

Allow three or four hours, lunch included. The Island Bar in Piedade has been open since the mid-1990s and is known locally for its shelf of infused feni, made by the proprietor, served alongside plain Goan house cooking; a fish curry rice here costs very little. The Philosopher's Stove, also in Piedade, does pizza on a garden balcony and keeps irregular hours, so check before riding out specifically for it.

Late in the afternoon, do the second island. The ferry to Chorão leaves from Ribandar, on the causeway between Panjim and Old Goa, and lands beside the Dr Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary: 1.8 square kilometres of mangrove and mudflat protected since 1988 and named for the ornithologist whose field guides shaped Indian birdwatching. One thing to check at the slip — a newer roll-on roll-off boat has been introduced on this run, with a fare for visiting foot passengers reported at around fifty rupees, while the older ferries have been free. Ask which one you are boarding.

The sanctuary has a walkway, but mangroves are better from the water. Boatmen wait near the landing with dugout canoes and will take you into the creeks for an hour and a half; the going rate has been somewhere in the region of eight hundred to a thousand rupees for the boat, and it is worth agreeing both the price and the length of the trip before you push off. Go on a rising tide, in the last two hours of daylight. Between November and February the winter migrants are in, and even an indifferent birdwatcher comes back having seen kingfishers, egrets, a purple heron standing like a piece of furniture, and, if the mud is right, mudskippers doing something absurd.

The great houses, and one you can have lunch in

South Goa's inland answer is Chandor, twenty-odd minutes east of Margao through rice fields. Before the Portuguese arrived it was Chandrapur, a capital. Today it is a village with one long street and two very large houses standing on it.

The Menezes Braganza house takes up most of that street. It was divided between two branches of the family and both halves are still lived in, which is the point of visiting: this is not a museum with a ticket window but a private house where a member of the family opens the door, shows you round, and leaves you to put something in the box by the entrance. Aim for the middle of the day — the wings are generally open from mid-morning to late afternoon — and be ready to wait if nobody is home. The west wing has a ballroom with Belgian glass chandeliers, Italian marble underfoot and a library running to several thousand volumes. The east wing keeps a small private chapel where, by the family's own account, a relic of St Francis Xavier is preserved — a fingernail. Ask politely and you may be shown it.

Fernandes House, a short walk away, has an older core and an entirely different mood: less gilding, more structure, rooms arranged around a courtyard, and, again by the family's telling, a concealed lower chamber used as a refuge when the house was raided. It is usually opened on request, and a donation is expected.

Then drive about twenty-five minutes further inland to Quepem, where you can eat lunch inside one of these houses rather than merely walk through it. Palácio do Deão was built in 1787 by the Portuguese dean who founded the town. It stands above the Kushavati river facing the church, and it had fallen close to ruin before Ruben and Celia Vasco da Gama took it on and restored it. The house is open to visitors through the day, roughly from mid-morning to late afternoon and preferably by appointment — but the reason to book is the meal. A set Goan-Portuguese lunch is served in the garden pavilion to a small number of guests, much of it grown on the property, and has recently been running at something in the region of fifteen hundred to seventeen hundred rupees a head. The owners give the tour themselves. Book several days ahead in season; they turn walk-ins away when the kitchen is full.

If it is raining, or brutally hot, swap all of this for Goa Chitra in Benaulim — the collection Victor Hugo Gomes spent years assembling and opened in 2009. Several thousand agricultural implements, kitchen vessels, ploughs and oil presses, shown on a guided tour of roughly an hour for around three hundred rupees. It typically opens in the morning and closes in the early evening, and is normally shut on Mondays. It is an unglamorous museum and an unusually explanatory one: an hour here and the landscape outside starts making sense.

One long day for the oldest things in Goa

This is the day that wants a car and a driver rather than a scooter. The roads east are long, unlit after dark, and mapping apps will cheerfully route you down a forest track that turns into a streambed. Expect to pay in the region of three to four thousand rupees for a full day with a driver, agreed in advance, and carry cash — card machines are scarce inland.

Start at the Mahadev temple at Tambdi Surla, at the foot of the Ghats near Mollem, about sixty-five kilometres from Panjim and rather less from Margao. Archaeologists date it to the twelfth century, which makes it the oldest temple still standing in Goa. The Kadambas built it in the Kadamba-Yadava manner out of black basalt that had to be hauled over the mountains from the Deccan, because there is no basalt here. It is small — a pillared hall, a dark inner shrine holding a lingam, friezes of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma with their consorts — and it survives largely because it sat too far into the forest for anyone to bother destroying it. A stream runs past the plinth. Go early. There is nothing to buy and nowhere to sit, and it repays twenty quiet minutes far more than an hour in company.

Most people come out this way for Dudhsagar falls instead, which means a permit, a jeep from Collem and a convoy of other jeeps. If you have half a day rather than a whole one, the temple is the better hour.

From Mollem, head south into Sanguem for the Usgalimal rock engravings, on the north bank of the Kushavati between Rivona and Netravali. Heavy rain in the early 1990s stripped silt off a laterite shelf in the riverbed and exposed more than a hundred and twenty figures cut into the rock: bulls, antelope, a peacock, a dancing woman, and spiral triskelions that some archaeologists read as an early way of marking time. Estimates of their age vary considerably — the range most often cited runs from four to six thousand years, and some researchers argue for far older. Archaeological Survey signboards mark the turning, then it is a walk down steps to the river. There is no ticket and usually nobody else. Come in the dry months, when the water is low and the whole panel is exposed.

Netravali wildlife sanctuary is close by. Its oddity is Budbudyanchi Tali, the bubbling pool, where gas rising from the bed breaks the surface; local custom is to clap at the water and wait for the bubbles to answer. The Savari and Mainapi waterfalls are in the same sanctuary, with a small entry charge of about twenty rupees a head and gates that generally open around dawn and close before dusk. Longer guided treks need arranging in advance through the forest department.

If you are based in the far south, trade Netravali for Cotigao, about twelve kilometres inland of Palolem: a similar modest entry fee, a similar dawn-to-dusk window, and six treetop watchtowers standing twenty-five metres or more above waterholes, which you can climb and simply sit in. Finish at Galgibaga, south of Talpona and roughly twenty kilometres from Palolem — a long casuarina-backed beach with almost nothing built on it, because it is a protected olive ridley nesting ground. The forest department fences hatcheries on the sand through the nesting months, broadly November into March. Walk it, keep well clear of the marked enclosures, and do not shine a light on the sand after dark.

Fitting it together

Two days, honestly done, covers all of this. Take the islands and one great-house afternoon if you are staying north; take Chandor, Quepem and the Sanguem interior if you are staying south. Do not attempt to cross the state twice in a day. Goa looks small on a map and drives long, and the bottleneck is always the bridges.

A scooter is the right vehicle for Divar, Chorão and the village roads around Aldona, where St Thomas church has stood on the Mapusa river plateau since the 1590s and the small Corjuem fort — built by the Bhonsles in the mid-sixteenth century, later held by the Portuguese — gives you ramparts and a view over the fields for nothing at all. Rental has been running at a few hundred rupees a day plus fuel. For anything beyond Ponda, hire a driver instead.

Season matters more inland than it does on the coast. November to February is the window. October is greener and the waterfalls run heavier, but forest tracks can be closed and the river will be covering the carvings; by late March the interior is punishing by eleven in the morning.

And eat where the roads take you rather than where the reviews do. Bhatti Village in Nerul is a house rather than a restaurant, with no printed menu and a proprietor who tells you what came in that morning. Chef Fernando's Nostalgia in Raia occupies the late chef's own country house, is run now by his family, and does the Goan-Portuguese repertoire — xacuti, caldinho, prawn curry rice — with live music towards the end of the week. Neither has a view of the sea. That is rather the point of the whole exercise.