This post is meant to be informative for people who are looking into how much it costs to travel and spend some time in South Goa. I heard north Goa is a bit cheaper but can’t really say if true or by how much. We are traveling on a budget of 45 euro per day, or at least that was our goal. We ended up spending an average of €53.18 per day.
In total, for 12 days that we where in south Goa we spent €638.11. This is divided in:
| Category | Amount spent |
| Accommodation | €212.20 / 16,900 Rupees |
| Food | €217.63 / 17,130 Rupees |
| Transport | €103.17 / 8,130 Rupees |
| Tickets/Shopping | €80.24 / 6,325 Rupees |
| Coffee/Drinks | €22.88 / 1,800 Rupees |
Accommodation: We booked a hut located in between and around 8 minutes walk from Patnem and Palolem beach. The first three nights we booked via Airbnb, 1800 rupees p/n and once there, we renegotiated with our hosts for a better price, 1500 rupees p/n. We found a cheaper place, 750 rupees p/n for my sister who was also there for a few days. And the last day we switched to a cheaper room to save a bit of money, 1000 rupees p/n, in the same hotel where we were staying. The cheapest we found was the 750 for my sister’s hut, which was similar to our own, but our hotel/hut was cleaner, had a better communal area and the people working there were very helpful for getting transportation or information about tours, beaches, etc. Because of how helpful they were and how clean it was we stayed there and didn’t change to where my sister stayed. But her hotel had better food and wifi connection.
On the high end, you can find places for 40 euro or (much) more per night, closer to the beach and more luxurious.
Food: You will find different types of food, Indian, continental, Italian, etc. And you do need to ask if things are spicy, but you can usually find non-spicy food. Still, be wary when they say “no spicy, no spicy” it might not be spicy for them but it sure is spicy for people who don’t like spicy.
We usually spent 250 – 300 rpi per person for lunch and 300 – 350 rpi pp for dinner in a cheap place. If you want a bit more fancy restaurant, it can go up to 400 – 500 rpi pp for lunch and 500-700 for dinner. Also, keep in mind that my girlfriend is vegetarian and I eat chicken some times so if you want meat all the time, prices will go up. We also drank either water or juices all the time but you can have sodas if you want a cheaper drink. We didn’t buy water as we have a water filter with us so we just use that a couple of times a day to refill our bottles.
Transport: We paid 2000 rpi, about €25, from the airport to our hotel, it was a two and a half hours’ ride. The other times we took a tuctuc, also know as rikshaw, we paid 100 rpi to go from our hotel to Chaudi, the closest city, or 300 rpi to go from our hotel to Agonda beach, about 20 minutes away from our hotel.
Tickets/Shopping: We bought some clothes for our daughter Asami. Pants for about 200 rpi and shirts also for 200 rpi. We went for ecstatic dancing for 400 rpi a ticket (cacao ceremony not included). I needed to get passport pictures for buying the sim card, which was 100 rpi for 8 pictures. The sim card cost us 750 rpi for 90 days of service, unlimited calling and text messages (local) and 1.5 Gb of internet per day. We also went salsa dancing for 250 rpi. When visiting a spice farm we paid 550 rpi for the tour and one day before leaving Goa, we had our laundry done for 470 rpi in total, that would be for all of our laundry, my girlfriends, Asami, and mine. The way it works is they count the pieces of clothing you bring, different prices for different types, and you pay the sum of all your clothing, as opposed to the weight.
Coffee/Drinks: The cheapest coffee we had was for 50 rpi. Tea is a bit cheaper at 40 rpi and milk coffee was usually a bit more at 60 rpi. Fresh juices go from 80 to 140 depending on the fruit in most places.
So that’s about it. I mentioned already that we are on a budget so we tried to go to cheap places with good food. “Karma cafe” and “Woodo cafe” were the two places we went to the most, and the last day we found “Sea view” (i think) which had great food, good service, good view, and good prices.
M ost resorts in front of the beach had higher prices, some of them not so much higher but some of them were very high. You can check the menus in each and then choose the one that fits your budget best.