Goa... Much raved about

If you believe in the term 'heaven on earth', you've got to be referring to Goa. Goa is a paradise on the shores of India, a place that despite being in India takes you far out, where hippies and travellers have a tendency to drift towards the '60s. It has a lifestyle that combines the best of the East and the West. It is also the starting point of a dynamic type of dance music named after the area – Goa trance. This psychedelic dance music is one of Goa's biggest crowd-pullers.

Party-goers from all over the world accumulate in Goa, every year around Christmas and New Year to partake in the festivities, sit back and chill out on the beach during the afternoons, before heading off to the all-important reason for being in Goa – the full moon rave.
Picture yourself dancing for hours without any stops, overflowing with bliss. The compulsory string of lights hanging at raves transport you to another world and leave you with a voluminous energy. When you reach that spot, you know you've entered the world of today's hippie traveller.

Dance buoyantly for hours on end to the techno beats, get hypnotised by the psychedelic visuals (made up of lights, lasers and fire jugglers) and stimulating atmosphere, stay up all night and explore your mind – ask any hippie and they'll tell you, all this makes up a good rave. Egos and personal prejudices are left behind as each one celebrates life and feeds off each other's positive energy.

Your average hippie today, might be a regular working-class citizen back home, but come his vacations and he's off travelling to places that pull others like him, with long, braided hair or dread locks left flowing. Once they arrive in Goa, they connect not just to each other, but also to the forces of nature that surround them.

Goa has built up its reputation as a paradise place over the last four decades. Hippies from that era, many of whom have permanently settled down in Goa, running little cafeterias or selling their wares at the weekly flea market every Wednesday along Anjuna beach, give the indication that Goa is a relaxed city.

Once upon a heyday, Calangute was the Hippie Central all self-respecting hippies and other artistic souls headed towards, to "seek the revolution" and "feel the vibe", especially around New Year's time, when all hell broke loose. And Goa's current lot of hippie travellers are nonetheless inclined to recollect the past and party it up.

These hippies come to Goa to break down the mental barriers people carry around with them in their minds all their lives. They get away from reality by opening a door to a limitless imagination which we all possess but which lies buried deep down in our consciousness.

The shamanic behaviour (navigating your consciousness) that's infiltrated the Goan hippie culture since the early '60s, (when the likes of John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Led Zeppelin frequently visited) helps people connect to each other. Everybody involved, regardless of where in the world you've travelled from, is included into a precious circle, able to express their innermost selves, which, when liberated, is without any boundaries or restrictions, absolutely free of judgement.

At any rave in Goa, you'll see locals mixing in with the hippies, sitting on a chai mat (a straw rug) laid out by the local vendors who make their living at Goan rave parties. They brew coffee and iron kettles of chai (tea) over charcoal grills and display trays of honey, cream, donuts, cakes, biscuits and ghee (Indian cooking oil) pastries. The hot spots are plenty – Disco Valley, Hilltop, Bamboo Forest, Shorebar or Paradiso are the most frequented venues.

What is this major attraction, party that pulls these hippies towards Goa like bees to honey – the rave that everyone's raving about? Is it just a disco under the trees, or a night-long extravagance, or even a well-thought out, money-making game plan? Maybe it is a mixture of all this. A rave is many different things to different people.

These hippie travellers have travelled thousands of miles from all over to party in Goa. The parties don't really get going until 4.00am and it's around dawn that the energy levels and the rising sun make for a high level, energy burst. A good Goan rave will last until 2.00pm or 3.00pm in the afternoon. Great ones go on for four days.

So, it comes as no surprise that once again the Goa 2001 raves made the underground headlines worldwide. These trance parties have proliferated the music scene called Goa Trance and have become a big fashion among young tourists. So much so, that Goa is now branded among the world's top party circuits.

In the early years of its popularity, Goa was a kind of haven for out-of-the-way, psychedelic music collectors getting together and getting off on the music and then making parties out of it. Suddenly, everyone wanted to identify with the feeling of being in Goa. World renowned DJs, who go hand-in-hand with the hippie culture infiltrating Goa, all find it an honour to play in Goa.

Goa Gil, who was one of the originators of the famous Goa full moon parties, DJed in Goa through the 1970s. Gil introduced "the first post-punk experimental electronic dance music" that today Goa boasts of. He claims to be attempting to "use trance music and trance dance experience to set off a chain reaction in the people's minds," believing that, "since the beginning of time, mankind has used music and dance to commune with the spirit of nature and the universe." His aim as a Goan artist is to "redefine the ancient tribal ritual for the 21st century."

And as is apparent by the herds of hippies flocking to Goa, the rave is not an event time plans on forgetting. After all, the full moon follows you wherever you go.