North Goa in Three Nights — Candolim, Aguada and the Beaches to Chapora

Your driver meets you at either airport: Mopa is about an hour north of Candolim and Dabolim about an hour and a quarter to the south, so choose the flight that suits you and the transfer adjusts. Check in, and walk the short way down to Sinquerim beach in the late afternoon, where the Candolim strand narrows below the walls of Fort Aguada and the shacks thin out. The sunset from the sand here is the reason the package starts on this beach and not at Baga. Dinner is your own choice along the Candolim road.

Fort Aguada opens at 09:30 and is at its best in the first hour, before the heat: the freshwater cistern that gave the fort its name, the four-storey lighthouse of 1864 and the ramparts over Sinquerim. Drive north along the coast road to Calangute and Baga for the long strand and the painted fishing boats on the sand, with lunch at a shack. In the afternoon continue to Anjuna, where the beach is a shelf of laterite rock under a green headland rather than sand; on a Wednesday the flea market runs beside it until evening. End the day on the ridge of Chapora Fort, a short climb, for the sunset over Vagator beach and the river mouth. Back to Candolim for the night.

Boats leave the Sinquerim jetty from early morning for the hour-long trip along the Aguada headland and across the river mouth; dolphins are seen on most runs in season but they are wild animals and no operator can promise them. The afternoon takes the river road east to Reis Magos, the sixteenth-century fort restored in 2012 and open Tuesday to Sunday, whose ramparts look straight across the Mandovi at Panaji. Cross the bridge into the capital for the last of the day: the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception on its zigzag stairs, the riverside promenade and, if you like, one of the evening cruises from the Panaji jetty. Return to Candolim.

A last breakfast and, if the flight allows, a final hour on Candolim beach or in the shops along the main road, where the cashew and feni sellers are more honest than the ones at the airport. Your driver takes you to Mopa or Dabolim in time for your flight; allow an hour and a quarter from Candolim to either terminal in the daytime traffic. The package ends at the airport.