India Guide
Goa
Arambol (Harmal)
The largest coastal village in Pernem district is ARAMBOL (sometimes called Harmal), 32km northwest of Mapusa. If you're happy with basic amenities but want to stay somewhere lively, this might be your best bet. The village's two beaches are beautiful and still relatively unexploited. The majority of foreigners who stay in Arambol tend to do so for the season, and over time a close-knit expat community – of mostly ageing hippies who've been coming here for years – has grown up, with its own alternative health facilities, paragliding school, yoga gurus and wholefood cafés.
Strewn with dozens of old wooden boats and a line of tourist café-bars, the gently curving village beach is good for bathing, but much less picturesque than its neighbour around the corner, Paliem or "Lakeside" beach. To reach this, follow the track over the headland to the north; beyond a rocky-bottomed cove, the trail emerges to a broad strip of soft white sand hemmed in on both sides by steep cliffs. Behind it, a small freshwater lake extends along the bottom of the valley into a thick jungle. Hang around the banks of this murky green pond for long enough, and you'll probably see a fluorescent-yellow human figure or two appear from the bushes at its far end. Fed by boiling hot springs, the lake is lined with sulphurous mud, which, when smeared over the body, dries to form a surreal, butter-coloured shell. The resident hippies swear it's good for you and spend much of the day tiptoeing naked around the shallows like refugees from some obscure tribal initiation ceremony – much to the amusement of Arambol's Indian visitors – although in recent years, the banks have been annexed by a local entrepreneur, and you now have to pay for a scraping of what little mud remains.