As Goas beaches become ever more crowded, Deepti Kapoor looks inland for the Indian states fabled serenity and finds a wave of new restaurants and homestays
Its eight in the morning in Salcete, the old Portuguese heartland of Goa. As sunlight floods the paddy fields, church services are coming to an end. Congregations file out among the palm trees, gossiping and shaking hands. The men sport dark suits and crisply ironed shirts; the women wear satin dresses. They drift off, ready to go to school or begin their working day. At Jila Bakery, a family business built into the Antaos ancestral home in the jungle-shrouded village of Ambora, everyone has been hard at work since 5am. Soon a steady stream of customers will enter the hushed front room to collect their orders. In the kitchen, Reginald Antao, master baker, is still busy, deftly cutting pastry into rectangles in preparation for their spiced chicken filling.
This, Reginald waves a hand at everything around him, is the real Goa. He pulls a fresh batch of eclairs from the brick oven. The north, he chuckles, thats not Goa.
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