The coastal route from Goa to Gokarna is only about 150 kilometers, but it crosses a cultural border more significant than the state line between Goa and Karnataka. On one side: Goa, the hippie trail destination that became a rave destination that became a Russian tourist destination that’s now trying to remember what it was supposed to be. On the other side: Gokarna, the “authentic” alternative that’s rapidly becoming exactly what Goa was before it became what Goa is now.

This is the cycle of coastal tourism in India: discovery, development, displacement, and someone telling you about a better beach that hasn’t been ruined yet.

I rode this route trying to find what remains of the original vibe – the 1960s-70s era when Goa was genuinely countercultural, when Western hippies came seeking enlightenment and cheap drugs, when the beaches were empty and the culture clash was still novel enough to be interesting.

Spoiler: it’s gone. Or more accurately, it’s been replaced by something else that people are now nostalgic about despite it being less than twenty years old.

Goa in the 1960s was a Portuguese colony that had just been absorbed into India. It was exotic, permissive, inexpensive, and distant enough from mainstream Indian culture to feel separate. Hippies came, stayed, created communities, made art, took drugs, and convinced themselves they’d found paradise.

This paradise lasted until it became famous. Once guidebooks started listing Goa as a destination, once charter flights started arriving, once “the hippie trail” became an actual tourism category, the original vibe began its slow death. You can’t have an alternative culture once the mainstream discovers it and wants to visit on their two-week vacation.

By the 1990s, Goa had transformed into a rave scene. Psytrance parties on beaches, drugs upgraded from hash to MDMA, a new generation convinced they’d discovered something authentic. The hippies were still around, older now, complaining about the rave kids ruining their paradise. The irony of hippies complaining about cultural change was apparently lost on everyone.

Then came Russian tourism. In the 2000s-2010s, Goa became a major destination for Russian charter tourists seeking warm beaches and cheap holidays. Entire neighborhoods filled with Russian restaurants, Russian signage, Russian tour operators. The rave scene continued but moved to clubs rather than beaches. The old hippies complained about the Russians. The ravers complained about commercialization. Meanwhile, Goa transformed into something that satisfied none of these groups but generated significant tourism revenue.

This is what I found riding through North Goa: overdeveloped beaches, expensive resorts, traffic jams, and very little that resembled the countercultural paradise of mythology. Anjuna beach, supposedly the hippie epicenter, is now lined with beach clubs and restaurants. The famous flea market is a tourist market selling mass-produced “hippie” items made in factories.

The original vibe hasn’t died so much as fossilized. It exists as aesthetic – Bob Marley posters, tie-dye, the word “chill” overused in restaurant names – but not as actual culture. The infrastructure of alternative living has been converted into the aesthetics of alternative tourism.

South Goa is quieter, less developed, closer to what North Goa was thirty years ago. But it’s developing fast. Every year brings new resorts, new restaurants, more infrastructure. The “undiscovered” beaches get discovered. The quiet villages get loud.

This is where Gokarna comes in. Fifty kilometers south of Goa, across the state border into Karnataka, Gokarna has positioned itself as “Goa before Goa got ruined.” It’s a temple town with beaches. The temples give it religious significance, which creates cultural constraints on development. The beaches are accessible only by foot or boat, which limits crowds. It’s cheaper than Goa, less developed, more “authentic.”

I arrived in Gokarna expecting to find what Goa had lost. Instead, I found Goa’s trajectory condensed into fast-forward. The beaches are beautiful but filling with guesthouses. The town is still religiously conservative but accommodating tourists. The vibe is “chill” in exactly the same performed way that Goa’s vibe is “chill” – it’s a product being sold, not a culture being lived.

The tourists in Gokarna are younger than Goa’s tourists, mostly backpackers and Israeli post-army travelers. They believe they’ve found something authentic that Goa isn’t anymore. They sit on beaches, smoke hash, discuss how commercial Goa has become, and fail to notice they’re the leading edge of Gokarna’s commercialization.

This is the fundamental problem with seeking “authentic” alternative cultures: they stop being alternative the moment you successfully find them. The discovery is the destruction. Your presence, your tourism dollars, your Instagram posts – all of it contributes to the transformation of whatever you’re seeking into another tourism product.

I met a man in Gokarna who’d been coming since 1995. He told me it used to be empty. Just a few travelers, local families, simple guesthouses. Now it’s “discovered.” He’s watching Gokarna become Goa in real-time and he’s angry about it. I didn’t have the heart to point out that he was part of that process – his two decades of visiting, of telling friends, of returning year after year, all contributed to making Gokarna known.

The recovering hippie part of my title is aspirational. I’m not actually a hippie, recovering or otherwise. But riding this route made me understand what the original hippies were seeking: escape from commercialization, mainstream culture, the commodification of experience. They wanted something real, something unmediated by tourism infrastructure.

The tragedy is that their success in finding it destroyed it. Goa became famous because they went there. Then it became commercial because it became famous. Then it became unrecognizable because it became commercial. And now people seek Gokarna or other “undiscovered” places, beginning the cycle again.

What happened to the vibe? It was consumed by the success of the search for it. The counterculture became the culture, the alternative became the mainstream, the escape route became the tourist trail.

You can’t go back. Goa in 1968 is as gone as any historical era. The beach shacks that served cheap food to long-haired travelers are now restaurants serving expensive fusion cuisine to package tourists. The sense of discovery has been replaced by TripAdvisor rankings. The community of misfits has been replaced by a constantly refreshing stream of visitors who stay two weeks and leave.

But here’s the thing: maybe that’s okay. Maybe nostalgia for a time you weren’t there for is just another kind of tourism fantasy. Maybe every generation creates its own version of the vibe, and what looks like degradation is just change.

The kids in Gokarna aren’t wrong to enjoy it. They’re finding their version of the experience, even if it’s not the version from forty years ago. The vibe hasn’t died; it’s just transformed into something the previous generation doesn’t recognize.

And someday, these backpackers in Gokarna will be old, and they’ll complain about what happened to their beach town, and a new generation will be seeking something even further south, even more “authentic,” even more temporary.

The coast keeps going. The beaches don’t end. And somewhere, always, there’s one more place that hasn’t been ruined yet.

Until it is.