Tag: Travel and Tourism

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5 night Goa Honeymoon Package

  • 5 nights Accommodation in our special Honeymoon Suite
  • Complimentary Champagne Breakfast
  • Complimentary Bottle of hand pressed Goan Wine
  • Complimentary Tickets to a Romantic Movie
  • Complimentary Romantic Boat Ride
  • Complimentary Honeymoon Surprise on Arrival
  • Complimentary Late Check Out till 5 pm, subject to availability
  • Complimentary selection of daily Goan Newspapers
  • Complimentary bottled Mineral Water throughout your stay
  • Complimentary Hand made Bath Amenities

5 night Goa Honeymoon Package in a Honeymoon Suite: Rs. 36,000

Honeymoons are special, once in a lifetime experiences and rest assured, we will take special care of you and make your honeymoon something you will remember for the rest of your lives!

Please make your reservations well in advance since we are a small Homestay and are often booked out quite early.

India: +91 94480 87708
Europe: +43 680 2303682

mihirnayak@outlook.com


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Goa Tourism

Goa to get 35 lakh tourists this year, says minister

There is good news for Goa’s tourism industry.

Tourist numbers in Goa are expected to swell to 35 lakh during the forthcoming season, state Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar said Wednesday. The increase in tourist numbers is mainly due to the domestic tourists who have been visiting Goa. 

Annually, Goa attracts 22 lakh domestic visitors to its beaches and nightlife spots every year. Goa has already attracted over 16 lakh tourists and December would see the turnout double.

The minister has also predicted a rise of 50,000 in the number of foreign tourist arrivals this year to the 4.5 lakh foreign tourists who visit the state annually.

All in all, good news for an industry that is the basis for the livelihood of a large portion of the state’s population!

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View from my Balcao – Liberty Port

View from my Balcao …my Dad blogs from Goa

Visitors, and they will descend in hordes come October, to this island in the sun, make the rulers of this tiny state genuinely believe that commerce & vice go hand-in-hand. Maybe true of the rampant mining over the past decade and more. Not entirely true of tourism.

Goa is certainly not a twilight zone of drugs, booze & sleaze, as is currently being made out – Bombay & Delhi score higher, for sure. Its just a fun-place where richie-rich kids from Bombay & Delhi (and lesser cities) come to have a spot of merriment. Beer, nay any booze, is ridiculously cheaper than other cities, so why not indulge in an extra tipple when on holiday. And why traveel all the way to Pattaya when Goa is round the corner.

The social-service wing of the ruling government has grabbed headlines for their enthuisiastic attempts to curb night-life. This middle-class anxiety about hedonism could change the perception of Goa forever, making it a dull and boring beach-state as against the carefully nurtured halo of being a free-and-easy one. Their puritanism appears naive at best. Bombay & Delhi too have rocking night-life, so why single out Goa ?

Goa serves a singular purpose of allowing young (and old too !) folk, engaged in stressful lives of today’s money-changing world, to chill-out and get a taste of Goa’s famed laid-back (sosegaad) lifestyle.

Goa’s night-time avatar is unknown to many – hot-spots at Baga/Anjuna/Calangute or any of the casinos moored in the inland-waters, that start rocking by 9pm and shut shop around 6am, and why not. Partying is the sole purpose of holiday-makers to Goa. Goa is not just the gateway to India but also a rocking paradise for the foreign, and increasing now, the Indian tourist.

Lest their prudism turn Goa into the least sexy beach-town in Asia and allow a more strident Pattaya to turn the tables & turnstiles, it must beg the question as to what is good, bad or ugly.

Across the icy gulf of time from the swinging 60s to today, Goa has been India’s best-known secrets among all foreigners.

The ruling Government’s collective anxiety about keeping a clean image of Goa’s beaches must perforce go hand-in-hand with the image of a state that has had 11 CMs in the past 12 years, excluding the previous Congressman, and one that allows the mining-casino lobby as much freedom as the beach-bums of yore.

Putting a check on both is certainly advisable, given the burgeoning mining & casinos scams, & increasing number of rape cases, but lets not overload it to cause it to tipple the other way and take away the charm of Goa’s liberty to all its visitors. The present CM, who has a blue-blooded engineering degree to his name, will have to find the correct balance, a middle-path as the wise Buddha said of life.

BACKSTORY

About Us

My name is Mihir Ignatius Nayak and this is the story of how I started the Mitaroy Goa. 

From a very young age (I think I must have been 2 or 3 years old), my parents used to take me on a number of holidays across India. My father was one of India’s first travel journalists and he got to stay at many hotels as part of his work. My mother, who had a really stressful job as a Doctor, loved to travel.

My earliest recollections as a small boy, were packing our stuff, getting into our small car and driving away to some new, exciting place. And when my little sister was born, we used to bundle her into the car too, nappies and all!

When I started school, we used to go every summer for a week’s holiday to Goa. Delicious Goan food, miles of untouched beaches and the knowledge that school was a full 2 months away meant that I looked forward to the summer holidays the whole year round. For me, the summer holidays were undoubtedly the best time of my childhood.

It was then at the tender age of 10 that I had a dream. One day I would open my own hotel in Goa and it would be called “Mitaroy”.  

When I told my mother about my dream to open my own hotel someday, she must have smiled to herself, wondering how I could ever dream of owning my own hotel.

When I finished high school, my parents wanted me to study law like my grandfather. But I was determined to study hotel management and pursue my childhood dream. After looking at a number of hotel schools in the UK, Switzerland, Australia and Austria, I finally decided on the Salzburg Tourism School in Austria, where many famous hoteliers from across the globe had studied.

5 years later, I graduated with excellent grades, topping my class, even though all the subjects were in German! From making beds and polishing cutlery to checking in dignitaries and cooking with a Michelin chef, I worked my way from small bed & breakfasts to Grand Hotels. But I never forgot my boyhood dream of opening my own hotel some day.

When I returned to India, I was looking to start out on my own. My parents owned an old house in our ancestral neighbourhood of Fontainhas. They didn’t know what to do with it and it was lying in a dilapidated condition. I decided that I would take up the job of restoring the old house and convert it into a hotel.

And 15 years later, I actually did open my first hotel, thus making boyhood dream a reality.

In the future, I plan to open hotels in Salzburg, London, Berlin and Cape Town.

But whatever the future might hold for me, I have learnt that if you dare to dream and believe in yourself, all your dreams will come true…

Goa Sightseeing

Museum of Christian Art, Old Goa

Tucked away in a quiet road near the majestic Basilica of Bom Jesus is Asia’s first and only Museum of Christian Art.

Inaugurated in 1994 by the then President of India, Shri Shankar Dayal Sharma, the museum, which has enriched the cultural heritage and history of Goa was originally set up at the Seminary of Rachol in Salcette, Goa.

However, for the convenience of the general public and tourist visitors to Goa and with the support of the Archdiocese of Goa, the Museum of Christian Art was relocated to within the precinct of the Convent of Santa Monica, Old Goa, in the vicinity of the World Heritage Monuments. Most tourists only visit the World Heritage Monuments, leaving the few tourists that trickle in to the Museum of Christian Art enough space and time to look around.

I join a few tourists who have managed to make it past the World Heritage Monuments and are walking slowly, almost solemnly, toward the Museum of Christian Art. Before we get there however, we pass by the Convent of Santa Monica.

Th Convent of Santa Monica, built in the year 1627, has considerable architectural and historical significance. The Convent was at one time extremely important on account of royal patronage and was known as the Royal Monastery. I dislodge myself from the group and take a look inside. Past a few scaffoldings, I enter a large Church which is in the process of being restored. As I look around, I come upon an old cross hanging in the centre of the Church. I read a faded inscription next to the cross stating that sometime in the 17th century (I forget the date), this cross actually wept blood. Millions of pilgrims came from all across Goa and South India to witness this miracle. Now the cross hangs forlorn and forgotten in an old Church. 

The Museum of Christian Art in Old Goa itself forms the other half of the Church. Thanks to an entrance fee and efforts by the Archdiocese of Goa and the Goa Government, the Museum of Christian Art is much better preserved than the old Church.

The Museum of Christian Art houses a number of beautiful old paintings, sculptures and statues dating back to the early reign of the Portuguese in Goa. However, the Museum of Christian Art is unique in the fact that it houses a selection of objects on display that are the Hindu contribution to Christian Art in Goa and India.

Before visiting the museum, I wasn’t aware that many Hindu artists and artisans were involved in the building and creating of Christian artifacts during the Portuguese colonial rule.

At the time, images and paintings could not be dispatched from Portugal fast enough to meet the rising demand in an increasingly developed Goa. Hence, the Portuguese authorities were forced to use local Hindu artists and artisans to complete this religious work. The permanent requirements of producing images of the myriad of Hindu deities coupled with the existence of hundreds of Hindu temples and shrines in Goa was the shining proof of a well established and highly respected Goan School of Art.

Later, Hindu artists even sold images of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary and many Christian saints door to door, thus depicting their ability to move from traditional Hindu backgrounds to sophisticated forms of European art steeped in venerable Christian traditions.

The Museum of Christian Art in Goa is thus a unique testimony of the close bonds of interdependence, religious understanding and mutual acceptability between Sacred Christian Art and its traditional Hindu artisans in Goa !

While there is a fair amount of silverware such as crosses, chalices and mass plates, my favourites among the items on display are the richly embroidered priestly gowns and a portable Mass kit for priests who had to travel to distant villages to say mass.

Stay Romantic!

Mihir