Goa's Hobbit

The Hobbit Go through the Anjuna flea market, you&rsquoll come to a hill on the beach, and it&rsquos right there, inside the cliff.&rdquo Short of &ldquofollow the yellow brick road&rdquo, it would be hard to find a more charming, fairytale set of directions. St Michael&rsquos vaddo is snoozing in the afternoon heat, and it&rsquos with a faint sense of unreality that I walk the 200-odd metres through a winding, red sand road, to knock on a door set into the cliffside.

I have Tolkien for company, with the first lines from The Hobbit running through my head &ldquoIn a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.&rdquo

The carved dragon on the small sign outside the door winks at me as I walk in and stop dead. It doesn&rsquot matter what you&rsquove been expecting when you first see The Hobbit &mdash stepping in is like stepping into a hotel from fantasyland.

There&rsquos a flight of steps cut from stone that goes up and down and almost sideways. There&rsquos a comfortable nook with large windows that look out onto the broad white roof and a row of cheerfully waving palm trees. There&rsquos a fanciful spider&rsquos web made of knotted rope (but no resident arachnid), a mosaic snail, and an almost dwarf-sized pregnant black cat with bewitching green eyes looking up at me in plaintive greeting. (This last is just visiting.) There are walls that take on the shape of the cliff, with the natural laterite rock projecting into the rooms at one point, ferns growing out of a section at another, and the rest covered with funky bubbles in the colours of the beach and the ocean. There&rsquos a stunning garden that flows all the way down the cliff until it bumps into the beach proper, filled with palms, young chili plants, ferns and hammocks. And there&rsquos Chinmayi, owner and restorer of The Hobbit, offering hospitality, stories about the history of the area and a guided tour all in one breath. (As Tolkien remarks astutely, hobbits are fond of visitors.)

Ten minutes later, I&rsquom washing off the dust of the journey in a beautifully appointed bathroom (large, soft fluffy towels, yellow Jaisalmer stone for the basin) where the shower stall is, literally, carved from the cliff, and where you can see the sea from the window. There&rsquos a plunge pool, tiled in blue, just outside the steps from my room that lead onto the white, cushion-friendly roof, and later, I&rsquoll lie back with a good book and watch a lone paraglider navigate the skies, as dogs play far down on the beach.

Chinmayi&rsquos bustling around in the airy, inviting drawing room that the residents of The Hobbit&rsquos three rooms can repair to when the whirl of raves, beaches, and general pigging out becomes too exhausting. While The Hobbit doesn&rsquot have its own kitchen, Chinmayi and her husband also own Shiva Valley, the shack at the bottom of the garden. For those too immersed in the spirit of susegado to take the winding flight of steps down to the shack, the &lsquohouse boys&rsquo will bring your meals up to the house, and on request, Chinmayi will stock the fridge with cold drinks, beer, wine and snacks.

We settle down piles of cushions make the yellow sandstone sofa so comfortable that I instinctively put my feet up &mdash it&rsquos that kind of house.

St Michael&rsquos vaddo is off to a side from Anjuna proper, and The Hobbit nestles in a quiet cove &mdash near the mayhem, but not of it. Even the twice-weekly raves are relatively sedate, compared to what you might find at the more twisted heart of Anjuna.

&ldquoOnce upon a time,&rdquo David Tomory writes in Hello, Goodnight, his classic history of Goa, &ldquothere had been naked hermaphrodites to astound the fully dressed men. The mobile Californian commune called the Hog Farm had visited. There was at least one Family of unrelated adults there were the Green People, each bearded patriarch marshalling his wives and babies.&rdquo

Today&rsquos seekers, mavens and mavericks are of a different breed. Some, like the older residents who&rsquore Chinmayi&rsquos friends, will demand their privacy &mdash or charge a fee &mdash in exchange for telling you stories about the mansion called Orgasmic and the mellow beatnik days. Chinmayi and her husband bought The Hobbit 10 years ago from a retired hippie who&rsquod run out of steam and cash.

&ldquoIt was psychedelic. There was a row of hammocks hanging from the roof, the rocks on the walls were psychedelic, the floor was psychedelic and the windows were tiny slits. There was no running water, just the two wells he used what&rsquos now the plunge pool as a bathroom. The exterior was made of shells and pebbles, but we had to change that too &mdash it retained heat and attracted too much dirt. And you can&rsquot live with psychedelic every day.&rdquo

Chinmayi enlisted Arvind D&rsquoSouza to do the renovations, and he came up with this &ldquostark, beautiful&rdquo framework, leaving the natural rock in as part of the Cudappa stone walls, installing the Jaisalmer stone beds and sofas, using earth colours and quiet shades. &ldquoIt was gorgeous &mdash but almost too stark. This is a funky house I wanted it to be bohemian. There&rsquos this Israeli guy on Vagator Hill, a tattoo artist, so he knows what to do.&rdquo The first few years, the walls were spray-painted in a floral pattern this year it&rsquos bubbles, Chinmayi&rsquos only brief being that purely natural shades should be used.

Bubbling away as she suggests walks (&ldquoup the hill, great for bird-watchers&rdquo), excursions (&ldquothere&rsquos a nice fete hosted by the Church this evening&rdquo), things to do (&ldquoan awesome yoga place &mdash or there&rsquos a rave on tonight on the beach&rdquo), Chinmayi makes up the best part of The Hobbit &mdash it&rsquos like having a good, local friend who&rsquoll help you feel less of a tourist.

Below on the beach, a muffled beat starts up. In season, the sea outside is blue, glassy and calm the raves are more intense, more fierce, the famous flea market seething with promise. But this is the end of season, and everything&rsquos laid-back &mdash even the music.

Chinmayi comes out to one of the balconies attached to each of the three rooms. &ldquoSouth Anjuna used to be a hidden cove,&rdquo she says. &ldquoOne of the earlier, legendary hippie communes was here. The Magic Bus from Amsterdam, the Californians this was their beat. There were moonlight parties The Who dropped by and played over there, on that property &mdash see It was the happier side of the hippie dream you could walk around naked on the beach. It&rsquos only recently that the locals have started to use it. Before that, it was the other guys, like the Spaniard who walked around in a leopard skin and cut his hash with a machete.&rdquo

I like the inside-outsideness of the house, and the up-and-downness too. It&rsquos the kind of place where you expect to bump into Mr Underhill or a clan of Bagginses around every corner. Having just three rooms ensures that this is perfect for small groups &mdash like-minded friends, a large family.

Nervous parents, the vertiginous (the house is built on several levels) and the very formal would be best advised to stay away from The Hobbit, though. The lack of stair railings and the bumpy walls make it a hazard for children, though some kids love the whimsy of the place. And the &lsquokoi hai&rsquo brigade, used to trembling bearers and formal dress for dinner, would retreat bewildered in the face of The Hobbit&rsquos casual, anything-goes charm. Chinmayi insists that she&rsquos much more formal these days &ldquoI&rsquove stopped wearing my lungis when guests arrive &mdash and I even put on my chappals when I greet them.&rdquo

Swimming in a pristine sea the next morning, I come back to shore with a veritable guard of honour &mdash two boisterous dogs who&rsquove played catch in the waves with me as the ball, and the early fishing boats. This is one way to &ldquodo&rdquo Anjuna, by not doing it at all. Take the house advice, and go to the local places for awesome fish curry-rice or rawa mussels &mdash Anand&rsquos is buzzing, and Zoorie&rsquos does great steaks. Ask the fishing fleet what you should have for lunch, birdwatch, walk, paraglide, snooze on the roof, drive to Mapusa market for red chillies, fresh curry pastes, cashews, and dodol and bebinca at Simonia&rsquos.

Or join the last, ragtag remnants of the hippies, with a nostalgic look at the raves and the peaceful smokers at Shiva Valley, work your way through the flea market and through Basilico&rsquos incredibly fine Italian menu, party at any of 15 different bars and pubs. Whatever works for you.

Me, I have to leave for Delhi, dragging myself out of this Tolkien-inspired fantasy. Rarely has a house lived up so spectacularly to its name &mdash and some of its magic follows me to the airport. Unwittingly echoing Smeagol in The Hobbit, the security lady asks me &ldquoWhat have you got in your pocket&rdquo I check. A (wrapped) beef croquette from Xavier&rsquos bakery, two seashells, a pebble painted in rainbow colours, some white sand. Nothing I&rsquod call &ldquomy precious&rdquo, except for an invisible fistful of memories.