Guest Rooms in Goa

Every Goan home with space seems to have one: the room kept for visiting family at Christmas and Carnival, for friends who come down in the season, for the cousin home from the Gulf. For most of the year the door stays shut, the fan off, the windows closed — and in the monsoon, a closed room in Goa is where damp, mildew and that musty smell take hold first.

Then the guests arrive, often tired and on a different clock. They need to sleep in the afternoon, close the room to the morning sun, find somewhere to sit and put a suitcase, and feel the room was made ready for them rather than unlocked.

So we plan guest rooms for two lives: the long empty stretch, where materials must resist damp and need no attention, and the short busy one, where the room has to darken, sleep an extra person and feel welcoming without fuss.