Interesting stuff, from pictures, to western women are not safe in India. I have lived here for 2 years, also have visited Goa, “LOVE GOA”. I am safe because I surround myself with great friends, and do not go to unsafe area’s or put myself in any unwanted situation. Do I go on buses, no, I have heard the men will grab anything that seems like a women’s ass or body part. (again not sure because I do not go)

Now Goa, my sister and I had a great time tanning on the beach, and yup caught a few men taking pictures. I did confront them, along with them saying I delete, that was not enough for these men, the locals went crazy on them, hitting kicking, throwing the camera away. I was shocked, thinking wow, then an elderly man came up holding a huge stick shaking it at the running men, with a wet camera. Not all Indian men are the same, the way the locals acted was nice, so they also do not tolerate the perverted picture takers in Goa.

I am going back as always love that place, and it will be the 6th time so far!

Chill, and lets not trash all, I find the men usually pretty darn good at being very protective of women, Indian and Western.

April

Their riders are an odd mix: the hippies, semi-naked with their
intricate tattoos and wraparound shades, straddling old Enfield
Bullets, studiously ignoring the fat, pink, middle-aged package
tourists clinging nervously to their scooter handlebars and wishing
they were sipping their first cool Kingfisher beer of the day. These
men, too, have discarded their shirts, preferring to expose their
beer bellies to the sun; the women favour strappy vest tops and
shorts that ruck up around the thighs. If they notice the cold stares
they receive from some of the local people who move among them, it
does not show.

The sun is bakingly hot, sitting high in the deep blue sky above the
gently waving coconut palms, the light glinting off the waves rolling
gently on to the sand. This is the Goa most people know: the relaxed,
freewheeling, former Portuguese colony which opens its arms to
visitors of all kinds and so appealed to the hippies who flocked here
in the late 1960s that some have never left.

Yet something poisonous has entered Eden. Beneath the surface lies a
seething mass of tensions and hatreds. A spate of high-profile
attacks on western tourists, including the murder of British teenager
Scarlett Keeling, is the most obvious symptom of the malaise. A
state-sponsored land grab of expatriates’ properties, the influx of
Russian and Indian property developers, and even a threat to ban the
wearing of bikinis has convinced many long-term stayers that the time
to leave has come.

Many are alarmed by the failure to get to grips with the crime
problem. It was on Anjuna beach that 15-year-old Scarlett’s body was
found two years ago. She had been battered and raped after an evening
drinking and taking drugs while her mother, Fiona MacKeown, was
travelling elsewhere in India. Yet it was MacKeown’s vehement
protests that led the police to revise their initial conclusion that
the teenager had drowned accidentally.

In a week’s time, a court in the state capital, Panaji, will start to
hear evidence against two men accused of her killing. Not her murder,
though, a point that rankles with some European residents who think
that the authorities disapproved of her family’s unconventional
lifestyle. They point to the murder charges brought against a Russian
last month after a local man died in a late-night brawl in Morjim and
ask whether there is one law for Indians and another for those from abroad.

Even the state’s tourism minister, Francisco “Mickky” Pacheco, has
admitted that the lax police response to attacks on foreigners is in
danger of earning Goa the title of the “rape capital of India”. The
jailing last week of a waiter at a beach bar for the murder of a
former social worker, Denise Higgins, in April 2007 goes some way to
explain why even the most law-abiding foreigners are afraid. Higgins,
52, from Oxfordshire, was stabbed in her own home after befriending
the man and his family.

One British expat pensioner is so scared she says she now sleeps with
a knife in her bed in case of attack. The underlying tensions bubble
to the surface in the letters pages of the local papers and the
internet forums of the expats, which teem with bitter accusations of
racism, colonial arrogance and local mendacity. A letter to the
Herald newspaper last month was typical. Foreigners were opening
businesses and taking away the livelihood of the locals, the writer
complained, before explaining that foreigners also “gift us various
diseases like Aids, among other strange viruses and influenzas due to
mutation and mixing of blood”.

On the popular British Expats Discussion Forum, Darren (a former
resident of Goa who decamped to Vietnam) describes it as a “corrupt,
unlawful and dangerous” place populated by lazy and thuggish young
people who are distorted by “jealousy, greed and selfishness”. This
prompts another expat to dismiss the place as a “dirty shithole”.

Once Goa was in Indian hands, it was not long before the first
hippies arrived, heading first for the area around Anjuna and Vagator
beaches, which became famous for its beach parties and drug culture.
The state remained a hippie haven for much of the 70s. In the early
80s, it was all New Age, to be replaced as the decade wore on by the
growth in electronic music which eventually moved into the trance
scene, with full-moon parties on beaches and at other open-air
venues, a trend that continued into the 90s, despite an initial
police clampdown. But mass tourism had also discovered Goa. While a
range of five-star hotels sprang up in the south, the north welcomed
cheap package tourism.

So how did things get so bad? In 2006, there was a sudden influx of
Russian and Indian developers from Delhi and Mumbai. Large tracts of
land originally designated for agriculture were converted to
residential use amid accusations of corruption up to ministerial
level. As prices rose, local people suddenly found they were being
priced out of the market. It was also clear that such large-scale
development would place additional strain on already limited
resources such as water and electricity. The following year, the
state assembly elections were fought against a backdrop of a campaign
to save Goa from the newcomers.

Caught in the backlash were thousands of foreigners who had sunk
their life savings into homes there. To their horror, the goalposts
were moved and many properties had their residential use revoked.
Some of those caught by the switch had undoubtedly made use of
loopholes in the law, but hundreds of others who were sure they had
done everything above board were also caught in the net. Worse still,
under the 1999 foreign exchange management act they should not have
bought the land either, and the offence they have now retrospectively
committed carries with it a fine of three times the value of the land
and the possibility of confiscation.

Others found that the rules on other documentation had changed, as
had the way residency was defined. The government wasted little time
in moving against them.

Nick Papa, 47, and Mick Cooper, 65, received their warning notices on
14 December 2008. They arrived 10 years ago after falling for Goa on
holiday and sank their life savings into setting up home. They
thought they had found heaven when they bought their elegantly
presented house on a hillside in the village of Aldona in north Goa,
paying three million rupees (£44,500) for it and spending more than
half as much again doing it up.

Now, like so many others, they are determined to leave. Though the
couple, from south Croydon, insist they stuck by the rules and have
the paperwork to prove it, their nightmare is that, without
government approval, they cannot sell. Even if they can find someone
prepared to take their property off their hands for a reduced sum,
they are barred from taking the money out of the country. The British
high commission has taken up the issue with the Indian government,
but warns that it cannot interfere in the legal process.

“It’s a racist attack,” said Cooper. “They are going to kill people
with the stress. I know one woman who has tried to slit her wrists
three times. Why has the government got this hatred for foreigners?”
Papa joined in: “It all goes back to 2006 and the publicity about
foreigners buying up property which inflamed feelings and made the
locals think that inflation was because of the western influence.”

“Now you get called a white bastard and white trash,” said Cooper.
“When we moved here it was like living in paradise. Now we are being
held hostage. We want to sell up and go home. It’s not a safe place
to be any more.”

Vikram Varma, the lawyer representing many of the British owners,
says part of the problem lies in a conservative mindset among some of
the local population. “You have a set of people who are warm and
friendly towards foreign nationals, with open minds and contemporary
thinking. But you also have a certain set of people who are against
change of any sort,” he said.

To compound the expats’ misery, India has changed the rules on
tourist visas, curtailing the length of stay and imposing a two-month
ban on returning to the country. Once British tourists might stay six
months, fly to Colombo and return with a new six-month visa, but now
they are shut out. Though this change is under review, it spells the
end for many who took advantage of the situation to make India their home.

Varma thinks the government has its priorities wrong: “We have nearly
half a million Bangladeshis coming in illegally to India. They enter
without documents and are a major drain on the economy. We have far
fewer western tourists coming to Goa, and they come with intellectual
and financial capital. They are an asset. The charm of Goa is its
international visitors. It is what makes Goa different from the rest of India.”

Goa, with its little white churches and elegant casas set among
beautifully tended gardens, has always been a little different from
the rest of India, more cosmopolitan, with a more open outlook. The
Portuguese were here for 450 years and it was still a colony long
after the British left, until December 1961 when 30,000 Indian troops
overwhelmed the 3,000 Portuguese defenders. The fighting was over in
48 hours. But rather than liberation, many older Goans regarded it as
annexation by a foreign power. Some now feel that, as people move in
from poorer states to fill the menial jobs Goans will not perform,
the character of the state is changing.

One elderly Indian in a village near Anjuna sums it up in words that
have uncomfortable historical echoes. “The problem is the blacks [the
non-Goan Indians]. Look,” she said, pointing at a plastic bottle
tossed into her beautiful garden from the street, “that’s what they
do, they are dirty people.”

As tensions rise, the tourist industry, so crucial to the state, is
suffering. About 2.4 million tourists visit every year, including an
estimated 200,000 Britons, and it is the British about 3,300 of
them who make up the majority of the 5,000 foreign residents. But
though Indian tourist numbers are rising, foreign visitors are down
for the second consecutive year.

Lyndon Monteiro, vice-chairman of Goa’s tourism development
corporation, has the tough job of trying to reverse the decline. He
said the state had no choice but to implement national laws, but
insisted that everyone was welcome in Goa, irrespective of where they
come from. But he added that visitors must try harder to fit in.

“They must also respect the local culture, the law of the land and
the people’s sentiments,” he said. “Definitely, we would advise our
honoured guests to dress modestly. It is very bad manners for a man
to go shirtless in a supermarket or for a woman to wear a bikini.”

While the British fight on, the authorities have claimed their first
victims, fining a Swiss couple 200,000 rupees (£3,000) and issuing
them with a confiscation order. Sitting on the veranda of their small
guest-house in the heart of Anjuna, August and Ruth Thommen shake
their heads at the injustice of it all. August is 69, Ruth 10 years
younger but suffering from suspected bone cancer. They look worn out
by the strain. August apologised that he had to leave: he had to go
to the bank to withdraw the draft to pay the fine.

They bought the place 15 years ago after falling in love with Goa as
holidaymakers. Now they, too, want to get out. “This is just
robbery,” said Ruth. “I think the government would like to kill us
like in a war. This is our heart, our life. We never thought we would
go back to Switzerland, we would die here, but now it is finished.”
She lit a cigarette and drew on it hard, reflecting on the visitors
she had seen over the years. “I saw Scarlett the morning before she
died and she was completely stoned,” she said. “Everyone knew her
here. She was a beautiful girl, but her problem was drugs and
alcohol. I can’t understand how the mother can leave her like that.”

She took another drag on the cigarette, and shook her head: “When we
arrived the people were more friendly, now it is all money, money,
money, and cheating and lying.”

This type of “pervert” behaviour happens often in India and female foreigners need to be really careful. Indian men seem to not even respect foreign women traveling with a male partner, shockingly enough. If you travel alone as a foreign woman it can be hellish.Many Indian men watch porn of white women and think they are all sluts, and will have no problem to casually sleep with them. Even the educated ones think like this. I tried to rationalise with them, but it doesn’t work. They are ignorant pigs.
India is a democracy but not capitalist. More socialist and even communist. No one in India believes the western concept of ‘equality’ Goes directly against the caste system.
They know, correctly, that the type western female that travels India solo is probably not a virgin. In fact many western girls have had many many boyfriend by the time they are 21. It’s not surprising that they’re treat often disrespectfully. Also, given the many western women that come looking for male company does not help.f you think that by looking at blue images or porn movies etc india is turning pervert type of country than I think you are wrong. Kamasutra was the creation of ancient India. People were having these desire from the time of lord Rama. You’ll find many examples in history of India. those who had power used it and satisfied their needs and those who didn’t they kept low and did it secretly. Earlier there were no cameras, internet so we created these images in so called love temples with different exotic MUDRA’S. Earlier people were abused but no one knew now media is there these news get attention very quickly. I think this is a very long topic and I may need to write a novel on this to explain. In Short people are not hiding their needs their wishes so you feels they are pervert.Most of the culprits are either college students(hmm how did they reach college) and other times some cab drivers or trusted mates……..I think (and beg your discretion) actually normal Indian male( educated as well as uneducated)…is brainwashed by the hollywood films(and more from blue films)…they think foreigners especially women are of loose character(i don’t personally)…and moreover its not in India ..in foreign too such things happen…i read a report that hardly any rape cases are registered in America…One more thing that u should keep in mind ……..you will see most of the foreigners who come to India especially to Goa or himachal are drug addicts……although this does not justify the action(rape(crime) can never be justified)…they are taken advantage of…..I think personally ……that blue films have deteriorated the persona of foreign women in our country…their extrovert nature …their friendliness ….is mistaken.Perverts are everywhere….Even foreign perverts come to india…..

And yes, it is probably more a thing of education and progress that Indians and other nationalities have to face and go through. I’m sure, that it is only a temporary nuisance and with India’s march into the 21st century will eventually be overcome.

-AN PROUD GOAN AND AN VERY PROUD INDIAN.

I spent a week in Agonda because I thought the beaches were peaceful. Big mistake! When you’re alone at noon on the 3km beach, and suddenly a disturbed man walks out of the bushes, you wish you were in a crowded place so you could call for help. I was swimming and sunbathing so I was wearing a bikini, and I didn’t see anyone until this guy shows up from thin air. He had a crazy look in his eyes, he kept asking me where my boyfriend is, why was I there alone, and told me he KNEW I wanted only to have sex! He was getting more and more aggressive and started to take off his shirt.
Thank god I had my bag with me. I took out my knife that I carried just in case (because I had been warned about Indian men before I arrived in the country). It saved my life.

He was in his thirties, had bad skin, and his vision wasn’t straight. He was wearing a burgundy silk shirt with buttons.

Another, not as serious experience happened also on Agonda beach. This happened ironically right behind their beloved white catholic church. A local guy was standing on the edge of the beach staring at me with his pants pulled down and, yeah, guess what he was doing. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.

Also, beware of the kashmiris in Palolem – they hunt western girls in hope of sex and money.

India, especially Goa, is my worst experience so far from all the countries I’ve visited – because of the sexually disturbed men.

So girls, please think twice before leaving for Goa!