Goa

Goa is India's smallest state and its most-visited coast: about 105 km of Arabian Sea shoreline, a hundred-odd beaches, and four and a half centuries of Portuguese rule that ended only in 1961. That last part is what makes it feel unlike anywhere else in the country — laterite cathedrals standing in open fields at Old Goa, an ochre-and-blue quarter in Panaji with street names still in Portuguese, and a kitchen that runs on vinegar, coconut, kokum and pork.

The single most useful thing to know before booking is that the coast splits in two and the halves are not interchangeable. North Goa — Candolim, Calangute, Baga, Anjuna, Vagator — is where the shacks, the markets, the water sports and the nightlife are, and where the beaches are busy from November onwards. South Goa — Colva, Benaulim, Agonda, Palolem — is quieter, greener and slower, with wider sand and fewer people on it. Couples and families usually want the south with a day trip north; a group in its twenties usually wants the opposite.

The second is that the sea has a season. From November to February the water is flat, warm and safe, and the shacks are all open. Through the monsoon, roughly June to September, the shacks come down, most water sports stop and the swimming flags go red — the state is beautiful and green and cheap in those months, but it is a different holiday, and we will say so rather than sell you a beach you cannot enter.