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Hedonism has figured prominently in European images of Goa from the mid-sixteenth century, when mariners and merchants returned to Lisbon with tales of unbridled debauchery among the colonists. The French traveller François Pyrard was first to chronicle this as moral decline, in a journal peppered with accounts of wild parties and sleaze scandals.

Following the rigours of the Inquisition, a semblance of morality was restored, which prevailed through the Portuguese era. But traditional Catholic life in Goa's coastal villages sustained a rude shock in the 1960s with the first influx of hippies to Calangute and Baga beaches. Much to the amazement of the locals, the preferred pastime of these would-be sadhus was to cavort naked on the sands together on full-moon nights, amid a haze of chillum smoke and loud rock music blaring from makeshift PAs. The villagers took little notice of these bizarre gatherings at first, but with each season the scene became better established, and by the late 1970s the Christmas and New Year parties, in particular, had become huge events, attracting thousands of foreign travellers.

In the late 1980s, the local party scene received a dramatic face-lift with the coming of acid house and techno. Ecstasy became the preferred dance drug as the dub-reggae scene gave way to rave culture, with ever greater numbers of young clubbers pouring in for the season on charter flights. Goa soon spawned its own distinctive brand of psychedelic music, known as Goa Trance . Distinguished by its multilayered synth lines and sub-bass rhythms, the hypnotic style combines the darkness of hard techno with an ambient sentiment. Cultivated by artists such as Juno Reactor and Hallucinogen, the new sound was given wider exposure when big-name DJs Danny Rampling and Paul Oakenfold started mixing Goa Trance in clubs and on national radio back in the UK, generating a huge following among music lovers who previously knew nothing of the place which had inspired it.

In spite of the growing interest in Goa Trance, the plug was pulled on the state's party scene in 1994-95. For years, drug busts and bribes provided the notoriously corrupt local cops with a lucrative source of baksheesh. But after a couple of drug-related deaths, a series of sensational articles in the local press and a decision by Goa Tourism to promote upmarket over backpacker tourism, the police began to demand impossibly large bribes - sums that the organizers could not hope to recoup. Although the big New Year and Christmas events continued unabated, smaller parties, hitherto held in off-track venues such as "Disco Valley" behind Middle Vagator beach, started to peter out, much to the dismay of local people, many of whom had become financially dependent on the raves and the punters they pulled in to the villages.

Against this backdrop, news of the Y2K amplified-music ban between 10pm and 7am seemed to sound the death knell for Goa's party scene. At the time, locals and expats alike still believed the ruling would have little impact - that the police would simply use it as a pretext to extort still larger bribes from bar owners and party organizers. But they were wrong. Since winter 1999-2000, the nights on Goa's coast have, with a few notable exceptions, been silent. Only a handful of cafés and clubs can muster large enough payoffs to stay open through the small hours, and most of these are mainstream venues in Baga.

So if you've come to Goa expecting an Indian equivalent of Ko Pha Ngan or Ibiza-on-the-Arabian Sea, you'll be sorely disappointed. Only over Christmas and New Year, when tourist numbers ensure organizers can recoup the massive outlay on bribes, do parties take place, and these are a far cry from the free-and-easy events that once filled the beaches on full-moon nights