Transport Links
Epidemics devastated Mormugao during the eighteenth century, but after that its fortunes turned. As the importance of one of India’s best natural harbours grew more apparent, Mormugao, which the British called Marmagoa, became a key trading point. It was chosen for the terminus of the new metre gauge railway linking the Portuguese colony to British India. For a fabulous price, the Western India Portuguese Guaranteed Railways Company, a British enterprise, modernised the port and built the railway. Both were opened to the public in July 1886.
Mormugao’s city of Vasco da Gama was planned and built in the early years of the twentieth century. A colourful city of officials, traders and migrant labourers, it had its Portuguese academies and British club life for several decades. Now rather scarred, Mormugao district continues to be unique in Goa.
With Goa’s airport at Dabolim, the railway terminus at Vasco da Gama, and the busy port, Mormugao is many visitors’ first experience of Goa.
Read more about this topic: Mormugao
Famous quotes containing the words transport and/or links:
“One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us, and whereto our passions transport us; but those which by long habits are rooted in a strong and ... powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)