I walked the hill to the fort above the Goa Resort and the Russians didn’t like it.
“It is too hot. Get on.” Scooter after scooter passed me, stopped, waited for me to reach them then offered me a ride. It was very kind but,
“I’d really like to walk.”
“You will die.”
“I wont die.”
I nearly climbed aboard with one lovely young Moscovite in a purple dress. Her boyfriend came screeching up at just the wrong moment however, said something about ‘ Taj Fort Goa ‘, squinted at me and figured I wasn’t worth his time. They drove on.
At one point there was a small Hindo shrine weeping tree with a battery powered radio playing a tape on loop. There was a small candle and piles of used incense sticks. A pot hung from a chain attached to the tree.
It wasn’t that far and the view from every turn was spectacular. The Arabian Sea spread out before me. I was the only one walking.
Fort Aguada, located just a few miles outside of Panaji, the main town in the Indian state of Goa was constructed in 1612 to guard against the Dutch Empire and the Marathas. A freshwater spring supplied the fort –not to mention the ships coming from Europe, desperate for clean water. Aguada means water. In 1864 the Portuguese erected the nearly 50-foot lighthouse, the oldest of its kind in Asia.
I climbed to the top of the lighthouse just before sunset in January 2012 to snap this shot.
The shipping traffic on the Arabian Sea was thick. I literally could not count the number of ships out there. The air was full of smoke from fires burning all up and down the coast. Not to mention the pollution from the sub-continent. The sun lit the particulates to give the wild orange/pink/purple color I captured here.
I saw a number of Brahminy kites (Haliastur Indus) passing In front of my shot. At first, I didn’t want them in the picture. After watching them, however, I realized the depth and perspective they could add to the photograph as well as a sense of movement and finally subtropical heat. Combined, the sunset, the ships on the sea and the kites rounded out the image I wanted and, I think, relate the sense of place I’d sought.
I used a Nikon D3000 on a tripod with a 300mm Nikkor lens. ISO 100, f/11, 1/400s
Later, I took a swim from the beach below the fort and the sea was warm like bathwater.
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Author and Photographer Jim O’Donnell writes from Taos, New Mexico. Visit him at Around the World in Eighty Years