Streets clogged with rickshaws, beggars on the pavement, tuberculosis – there’s only so much you can take of London.

Then you have to go away somewhere and decompress – ideally, in a Robinson Crusoe setting where the sun shines all the time and you can survive on a few pounds a day.

Somewhere, in fact, like Goa.

The former Portuguese colony on the west coast of India must have seemed like heaven on earth to the weary hippie travellers who arrived in the 1960s. It was inhabited by laid-back, hospitable locals and blessed with sandy beaches as white as laundered sheets. After the perils of the overland trip, it didn’t matter if their Magic Bus broke down or they ran out of money; it was the excuse they needed to hang around for another month or three and delay the journey home.

“Like 1960s San Francisco, only hotter,” said one traveller I’d met while en route to interview the Dalai Lama in the 1990s. A magical place, then, buzzing with full-moon parties, psychedelic drugs and trance.

So, earlier this year, I finally booked my tickets and dusted down my rucksack – confident that it would hold enough for 10 days’ travel (“Don’t bother with a suitcase,” I was told. “You can take everything in carry-on luggage and buy everything you need in Goa for a few rupees”). It was only then that I began to realise how much things have changed.

First of all, there was the checklist. I needed a visa to get into India (half a day at the Indian embassy), vaccinations for hepatitis A, typhoid, meningitis, tetanus and polio, and a course of malaria tablets (£120 in total). I needed sterile syringe needles,in case I got bitten or scratched by a mammal and had to be treated at a local hospital. (A warning: my needles were confiscated at check-in, the inevitable consequence of having no hold luggage.)

Then there was the business of getting there. Nowadays, it’s a 12-hour flight to Goa (including transfer time) via Mumbai (Bombay); or, if you prefer, nine hours on a charter. Admittedly, it’s a mere moment compared with the six weeks or more that travellers spent on the ramshackle buses that trundled from Victoria coach station through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. But it’s no longer just the intrepid few making the journey. Now there are 1.5m visitors a year to Goa – more than its indigenous population of 1.3m. Roughly 250 charter flights leave from Britain alone during the tourist season, most of them filled with visitors from Newcastle, Manchester and London, drawn by £299-all-in offers and magazine articles with headlines such as Goan Have Fun and Give It a Goa.

I took the Mumbai option – which wasn’t much better – and wound up in Calangute, Goa’s commercial heart and its most popular package destination. Unfortunately, if the 1960s vibe is still there, it’s buried somewhere under the hundreds of tons of concrete that have gone into package hotels, nightclubs and shops selling tie-dyed shirts and sandals. If the bars served San Miguel instead of Kingfisher, Calangute would be hard to distinguish from the Spanish costas.

I quickly moved on, towards Palolem beach, one of the nicest and least spoilt spots in Goa, according to my guidebook. To get there, you drive for 2½ hours down the NH17 Goa-Bombay highway from Panjim, over the Zuari River, effectively the border between north and south Goa. Cargo ships loaded with manganese ore snake their way to Vasco da Gama, Goa’s harbour. The road stretches through rich, green fields to the vanishing point on the horizon. In the distance, hidden amid the betel, pepper and spice plantations, are gold-topped Hindu temples.

It looked promising after Calangute, but Palolem beach is no longer the postcard-perfect destination it once was. You may remember it from the opening scenes of the film The Bourne Supremacy. Jason Bourne looks for somewhere “off the grid” to hide from the CIA, and ends up at Palolem. What you don’t see in the film is the vast InterContinental hotel (where the cast and crew stayed) and the mini-city of coco-huts. One traveller I met blamed the “Lonely Planet effect” – thousands of visitors reading the same recommendation. “They should rename them Crowded Planet guides,” he said grumpily.

It was becoming clear that in order to enjoy Goa as it once was, you have to choose your destination carefully – serendipity is no longer an option, unless you have weeks to spare. That means a careful search on the internet before you go, or seeking recommendations from old Goa hands. The Lemon Tree, at Candolim, is an old Portuguese villa, now a five-star hotel with restored decor and private pool. It charges about £120 for a double room – a lot more than a hippie could afford, but a reasonable price to pay for the privacy it offers. The sheltered gardens are near the beach and not too far from Souza Lobo, a restaurant boasting India’s finest curries.

Other pockets of tranquillity include the Casa Baga, on Baga beach, a tiny 11-room hotel with a Balinese feel and a teak-decked roof terrace where you can watch the sun go down over the Arabian Sea.

But, really, to witness Goa in anything like its original pristine state – long, empty beaches, a scattering of coco-huts, a few fishermen’s boats pulled up on the sand – you have to track north towards a stretch of beaches across the mouth of the Chapora, Goa’s other great river. To get there, you pass Anjuna beach, where the original hippies settled. It’s still the epicentre of rave culture – a colourful, energetic place, but choked with bars playing Indian techno and bargain-hunters buying tom-toms and cheesecloth clothes.

Not until you reach Morjim beach does the atmosphere really begin to change. Morjim is also known as “turtle beach”, because the southern end is a sanctuary for rare olive ridley turtles. They once nested right along Goa’s coast, but increased tourism and pollution threatened River them with extinction. Locals who once sold the eggs are now paid to protect the creatures.

Panjim Accommodation is available at Britto’s guesthouse and Naga cottages (“air-conditioned and non-air-conditioned a speciality”).

Mandrem Beach, further north, is quieter still. Apart from a few elderly beachcombers, there was nobody else around, and the guesthouses all had vacancy signs. From here on north, you can discover the kind of peace and solitude that made those early travellers to Goa never want to leave. Querim beach, at the northern tip of Goa, is nothing but untouched sand and a couple of shacks.

After four sweaty days of travelling, this was where my Goan experience began. I settled down on a hammock that seemed to belong to nobody, slung in the shade between a couple of palms. I had a pile of books, bought for a few rupees from a book exchange by the side of the road. The only sound was the surf and the occasional thud of falling coconuts. A speck in the distance got closer; it took half an hour before the boy got close enough for me to read the sign on the rickety cart he was pushing – “Himalaya Ice Cream”. “Cool, man,” he said when I bought one and gave him a tip. Finally, Goa was beginning to chill out.

— Nick Rufford travelled as a guest of Somak Holidays and Virgin Atlantic

The smart guide to Goa

GETTING THERE

If you’re happy to endure the nine-hour charter direct to Goa, try Thomsonfly (0870 190 0737, www.thomsonfly.com) or Cosmos (0871 622 4317, www.cosmos.co.uk). Scheduled flights to Mumbai start at £375, with Virgin Atlantic (0870 574 7747, www. virgin-atlantic.com), British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com), Jet Airways (0808 101 1199, www.jetairways.com) or Air India (020 8560 9996, www.airindia.com). All fly from Heathrow. It’s then a one-hour hop from Mumbai to Goa with Jet Airways (as above); from £79 return.

WHERE TO STAY

The Lemon Tree Resort (00 91-832 398 8188, www.lemontreehotels.com), on Candolim beach, has doubles from £120, B&B. On Baga beach, Casa Baga (832 227 6957, www.casaboutiquehotelsgoa.com), has doubles from £30, B&B.

The true hippie experience is on hand at Dunes Holiday Village (832 224 7219, www.dunesgoa.com), on Mandrem beach; a collection of bamboo shacks on stilts, with prices starting at £6 a night.

For more creature comforts – and some of the best sunsets in the world – go to the Tiracol Fort Heritage Hotel (22 2404 2211, www.nivalink. com/tiracolfort; doubles from £88), an old Portuguese fort across the river from Querim.

TOUR OPERATORS

Somak (020 8423 3000, www.somak.com) can tailor-make classy trips to Goa. Three nights at the Lemon Tree Resort, and four more at Casa Baga, start at £749pp, B&B, including flights from Gatwick or Manchester and transfers. It also offers single-hotel packages and a range of trip extensions to other parts of India, including the Taj Mahal and Kerala.

Other operators include Audley Travel (01993 838300, www.audleytravel.com), Transindus (020 8566 2729, www.transindus.co.uk) and Abercrombie & Kent (0845 618 2200, www.abercrombiekent.co.uk).

GETTING AROUND

You’ll need wheels to escape the package hell. Buses can be crowded but fun, and a great way to meet people. You’ll pay just 25p for a journey that takes an hour. Bike rentals are ubiquitous and cheap (£1 per day), as are mopeds (from £2.50 per day) and the more powerful Enfield Bullets (from £4).

Times recommends

• The world's 10 weirdest things to eat
• Correspondents: hoteliers revenge for Tripadvisor
• A slow, ponderous journey up the Mekong