GOA, India (AP) – The golden rays of the sun fall on Goa’s smooth sandy beaches every night, magical as ever, but strangely quiet and lonely. This holiday season, few visitors enjoy the famous sunsets in the Indian party hotspot.
The unspoken fear of the coronavirus is undermining Goa’s vibrant beach huts and boisterous bars of their lifeblood.
This west Indian state was a Portuguese colony until 1961 and usually comes alive in December and January, its tourism-led economy thrives with foreign travelers and charter flights bringing in hordes of holidaymakers.
Over the past decade, Goa had transformed from a seasonal mecca for hippie backpackers and wealthy vacationers alike to a second home destination for the Indian middle class. Construction boomed, raising concerns about its impact on vulnerable environments. Apartments with sea views, on riverfronts or surrounded by forests are in high demand.
The pandemic and resulting travel restrictions have changed everything, possibly forever.
Along the popular beaches in North Goa, from Candolim to Calangute to Morjim, many historic coffee shops, tattoo shops and bars with sunbeds are permanently closed. Nightlife in popular party hubs has died.
Seema Rajgarh, 37, is a lonely figure on the almost deserted beach of Utorda in South Goa, her blue sari set against the expanse of the Arabian sea as she pulls towards her jewelry of beads and stones. None of the few domestic tourists are interested in buying them.
On good days during the holiday season, the mother of three girls, the youngest less than two years old, said she earned 2000 rupees ($ 27).
Now times are bleak.
“Some days I make as little as 200 rupees ($ 2.7), not enough to even buy milk and food for my kids,” she said.
Rajgarh’s husband, a cook, lost his job during the nationwide lockdown imposed in March to stem the spread of the coronavirus infections. He remains unemployed.
School fees for the children have to be paid long ago. Rent is three months behind.
“This virus has destroyed our lives,” said Rajgarh.
In 2019, more than 8 million tourists visited Goa, including more than 930,000 foreign tourists. According to state tourism, about 800 charter flights came from Russia, Ukraine, the UK and Japan, among others.
In August, only 1.1 million visitors had attended, including just over 280,000 foreign tourists.
An official report on COVID-19’s impact on Goa released in December estimated a loss of nearly $ 1 billion to the tourism industry as a result of the April-May lockdown. The potential job losses are expected to be between 35% and 58%. More than one in three of Goa’s 1.6 million people work in tourism.
Goa is responsible for more than 51,000 of the more than 10 million reported coronavirus cases in India, with 749 deaths. The ongoing aftermath of the abrupt disruption in economic activity has tempted many entrepreneurs to quit.
Sitting at home during the lockdown last summer, designer Suman Bhat, whose luxury label ‘Lola by SumanB’ with its flowing draped silhouettes is popular among Bollywood celebrities, struggled to close her flagship store in Goa’s capital Panjim or wait for the decline of the sale.
Bhat managed to keep her employees, but had to give up her beloved retail space and move to a cheaper location in August.
“It was a difficult goodbye for me. You put so much money into the business to create a customer experience – and it’s completely taken away from you. There is no longer a way for anyone to see, touch and feel your product, ”she said.
Bhat says her employees are exhausted by the new routines of sanitizing, testing and worrying. Now that the end of the pandemic is not yet in sight, the future remains uncertain.
“Can my attire be evening wear if there is no evening to go to? Is it fair to ask people to pay that kind of money when everyone is trying to save? she wondered.
“Everyone is just exhausted. You don’t know when an employee will say he has a fever. What are you doing? Close everything? Tell everyone to get tested, sanitized and spray everything? You’re in troubleshooting mode all the time, ‘she said.
Months after the lockdown eased, Goa is showing signs of life. The number of domestic tourists increased during the holiday season at the end of the year. Casinos have reopened and visitors are no longer required to present negative coronavirus test reports, unlike most other Indian states.
But things are barely back to normal.
Yoga teacher Sharanya Narayanan struggles to understand what has been lost.
Narayanan, 34, came to Goa from Mumbai in 2008 to perform aerial acrobatics in a club and has stayed to make it her home.
She taught in multiple locations, but had to switch to virtual classes during lockdown. When wellness centers reopened in August, only one of her jobs came back: her own private class.
“The pandemic has changed everyone’s life, including mine,” she said.
“I miss the sense of anonymity that I previously enjoyed in Goa. That every time I didn’t meet the same group of people, it always changed, evolved, so that I could recreate myself without feeling stagnant, ”she said. “It’s the transient nature of the things that are so attractive about Goa.”