BLESSED BACKWOODS
Where Talent Thrives
STUNNING SIOLIM

A village steeped in ethnicity, which inspired the Goan mando...Siole dongra sokolu...Siolim abounds with talent and exhuberance. The fascinating village treasures age-old traditions, to which they keep adding more and more.

A breathtaking view of Xell-Gaunsavaddo

Does Bardez begin in Siolim, one of Goa’s most bewitching northern villages, snugly ensconced in the verdant, palm-bedecked bank of the Chapora river, whose tributary sails right up to the Church of St Anthony? Even the image of the village patron, St Anthony of Padua, had been washed ashore via this picturesque waterway, they say. So also silt and civilization sailed up the river and settled along its banks, burgeoning their fertility in more ways than one.

To Siolim’s North lies sleepy Oxel; green hillocks hedge it towards Assagao in the South and the East; Camurlim too lies to its East, and in the West flows serenely the Chapora river with Morjim and its pine-wooded beach on the northern bank in Pernem.

The early settlers rowed up the river with their material possessions as well as the valuable nuggets of their ethnic culture. They farmed the bountiful waters for fish--xetkeo, tope and kallanduram in the ponds, and burantte, sangttam and mullets in the water-logged fields from Bankarvaddo t