Stray animals take the centre stage at world famous Colva beach with hardly any visitors during the Covid lockdown. Captured by : Santosh Mirajkar
MARGAO
Welcome to Colva, the world famous beach. The fag end of the summer would normally bring hordes of visitors from across the country to spend the season’s last few days before the onset of monsoons.
The Covid pandemic has hit the tourist village the hard way. Local stakeholders say the beach used to play host to thousands of visitors, including domestic tourists, at this part of the season every year.
For the second successive year now, Colva wears a deserted look, with hardly any visitors around, what with the lockdown in force and the Covid restrictions at the state borders.
A visit to the beach has revealed what has been feared the most “ absence of the visitors. In fact, the Colva beach square, which used to bustle with people and vehicles, besides vendors, is completely quite.
Instead, one found stray dogs resting all around the beach square, a situation unheard of in the recent past. “Normally, we used to hear shouts of bye-bye summer from the visitors and tourists, when they used to descend on the beach. Today, curtains have come down on the summer season without the usual rush and traffic congestion. We had witnessed this situation last year around the same time”,
Tourism stake holders, including shack owners and water sports operators have been hit hard. The beach wears a deserted look with hardly any visitors around.
Outgoing Colva Sarpanch Anthony Fernandes said the Covid pandemic has affected the tourism stakeholder very badly. “Barring locals, we do not find any visitors around on the beach. The restaurants are down and so are the business activities such as the beach shacks, water sports etc. This is the second time that the tourism season has been devastated by COVID”, Anthony said.
One can find some activity at the far corner of the beach, where the local fishermen are engaged in their traditional occupation of fish drying. With the markets in the cities and towns shut down, including the fish markets, many a fish loving Saxttikar makes it to Colva to lay their hands on dry fish and to make a provision for the ensuing monsoons.
