RAJAN NARAYAN reminisces about life and times with Martin Joseph…

TRAVELLING for business or pleasure is always a stressful experience. A million things can go wrong. Though both my Tamil Brahmin parents are from Kerala I had never visited Kerala even for a holiday. However, a decade ago I first met Martin Joseph who was successfully running Freedom Holidays Pvt Ltd, a destination management company (DMC) based in Goa, for many years. The catchy Freedom Holidays has been a travel, tours, aviation, import-export, events, properties and academy management company for the last 30-going-on-31 years from its inception on August 15, 1994. Due to Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns and other factors to date, including it being season of Lent, and Martin’s recovery from chronic leukemia, the company had to postpone its 30th anniversary celebration to date – however, it is all set to celebrate it with jubilation on April 26, 2025. Martin’s latest blood report returned negative on February 14, 2025. Call it a double celebration if you like!
Some ten years ago Martins had suggested that we (my wife Tara and I) take a trip to “God’s Own Country” Kerala. We opted for a visit to the hill station of Munnar which is located amidst the clouds of huge tea plantations in Munnar hills in Kerala.
We caught the flight to Cochin from Dabolim airport in Goa. At the Cochin airport a Freedom Holidays chauffeur was waiting to receive us with our names on a placard. We followed him out of the airport to be made comfortable in the air-conditioned limousine and we began our long, long ride to Munnar. It was a comfortable car and our friend helped us to store our luggage. He was a smiling chauffeur with a welcoming face. We got into the back of the car and enjoyed a very scenic drive up to Munnar. The long winding ghat stretch was soon over and we arrived.
Munnar is a much favored holiday hill station as it is located literally in the clouds. Within six hours of the drive we were up as if driving in the sky. Our hotel was more or less perched on top of a hillock and our stay was already pre-booked. We identified ourselves at the reception and were taken to our room. A very neat, comfortable room with these grandstanding huge retractable glass windows to delight the eyes. There was a clean washroom. We had arrived just in time for lunch and were requested to go down to the dining-room where a typical Kerala-styled feast awaited us on plantain leafs. After lunch we returned to our room to relax since we were tired from the long, long drive up.
OPEN the windows and we were delighted to welcome the clouds wandering in…there was cross-ventilation but we enjoyed the feeling of wispy clouds drifting in and out of the windows. It was however very chilly and we had to close the windows quickly. Outside a spectacular blue sky sported huge silvery cumulus clouds rolling across the valley of tea plantations … tea pluckers in colorful headgear were going about their work of plucking tea leaves.
We soon learned that the tea shrub is actually a bonsai type bush, the bushes are chopped minutely for they are not allowed to grow beyond four feet. So the tea plucking people could easily pluck the new tea leaves growing on some very ancient looking tea trees. Our tour manager Martin had organized for us a trip to the Kannan Devan tea plantations. Originally a Tata company, its employees have bought it over and they manage it for Tatas.

On our evening outing we visited the Tea Center at the heart of the tea plantations all around. It is a lovely garden complex akin to a tea museum, we were taken on a round to see how tea was processed and how tea leaves turned into a cup of tea…the plucking, the curing of the tea leaves, the variety of tea leaves, the size of tea leaves, their aroma, etcetera. There was a tea tasting ceremony tool accompanied by small Kerala-styled snacks – there were the premium teas and the common teas of the garden variety. The session concluded with meeting the Dorai or master who managed the tea plantation. We were invited to the Tea Managers Club for an evening of cocktails and dinner.
All through the trip we had our vehicle to take us around up hill and down dale Munnar. We saw the proverbial sunset point, the oldest villas, the Mahindra Holiday Resort which was then the only five-star facility in Munnar. The quaint old church and cemetery…it was a few days of literally holidaying in the mists and clouds of Munnar. Enjoying the cool breeze we felt a little intoxicated, the fresh pure air was full of oxygen or ozone.
AFTER three days in Munnar we returned to Cochin at the Kerala Tourism Development Corporation (KTDC) Palace Hotel. It had rooms with high ceilings, a very ornate lounge and all the trappings of a former palace of the kings of Travancore.

Cochin is a very historical city which is full of not only churches but also beautiful synagogues marking the early occupation of the city by Jews. St Francis Xavier, the patron saint of Goa, first landed in Cochin and there are churches devoted to him. The prime commercial city of Kerala, Cochin, has a flourishing port and harbor and it is also a major centre for the textile industry, spices and handicrafts too.
While we were touring Cochin we got an invitation from Capt Krishnan Nair of the Leela Group to spend a couple of days at the Leela resort at Kovalam beachside. The Leela Group had taken over and developed an old resort of the Indian Tourism Development Corporation. We informed Martin Joseph of Freedom Holidays of the extension of our holiday. Martin assured us we could keep our vehicle for the entire duration of our holiday. So we travelled from Cochin across 206km or more to the southern tip of Kerala.
After our Kovalam stay we returned to Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram) where 1st-class railway tickets on the Rajdhani Express were booked for us to return to Margao in Goa. The entire holiday trip to Kerala was so seamless and we felt very refreshed for it.

FREEDOM HOLIDAYS
WHICH brings me back to the USP or unique selling proposition of Freedom Holidays. Freedom Holidays believes in personalized, curated services for every traveler or travelling group. Whether it is a vacation for Goan tourists to Thailand and Vietnam or onward travel for charter tourists from Goa to the Delhi-Agra-Rajasthan circuit. Every tourist party is met at the airport. The charter tourists from abroad who put their trust in Freedom Holidays are welcomed with a Goan live band, song and dance, flower garlands and a welcome drink at the airport.
They are then taken by coaches and cars owned by Freedom Holidays to their pre-booked hotels. At the hotels breakfast, lunch and dinner are on offer as part of the holiday package. There are experienced licensed guides to take tourists sightseeing. Everything is meticulously planned and graciously implemented. Freedom Holidays urges its guests to relax and leave all the holiday planning and worries to the company. It has a team of very highly qualified and experienced staff to take care of every small detail for a tourist’s comfort.
If a guest has forgotten his glasses he is taken to an optician. If he is in need of urgent dental treatment it is organized. If someone wants to see Goa beyond its beaches, explore the countryside of spice farms and heritage homes, temples and waterfalls, historical monuments, there are organized tours for these too. Or some tourists make up their own itinerary with a trained guide to help them.

Freedom Holidays takes care of visas, all the permissions needed, the transportation and every single minute detail of your holiday. Pick up and drop from airport to airport.
It’s an amazing journey for Martin Joseph of Freedom Holidays. I can tell you the story first hand. The journey of Freedom Holidays started on August 15, 1994 when Martin and his English wife Carolyne decided to branch out on their own. Martin was working for UVI Holidays and Carolyne was working for Inspiration Holidays, a UK-based company which opened its doors to the 1st British charter to Goa, thereby opening the gateways between Britain and Goa. Inspiration Holidays brought the charter to Goa and UVI Holidays handled them.
Martin was looking after the domestic tourists while Carolyne coordinated the stay of the chartered tourists from the UK. Carolyn and Martin had met through their work and fell in love to begin with. Martin left UVI Holidays and started Freedom Holidays on Aug 15, 1994.
THE more interesting background is of how he came to Goa to become a Goenkar. Martin’s father Mr Joseph worked for the Indian Navy as a civilian in the Naval base in Cochin. He came to explore Goa on his own in 1969 and fell in love with the beaches and caju feni. He rented a small room at Bogmalo near the Dabolim airport. As a staunch Roman Catholic he touched base with the parish priest of St Damio Church at Bogmalo. The friendly priest arranged for him a job at the INS Hansa naval base at Dabolim. His father started working as one of the security personnel at the air traffic control section of the naval base.
In a giant leap of faith his father went back to Cochin and told his wife and two children that they were moving to Goa. Martin was two years old when they took the train from Cochin to Goa. It couldn’t have been easy way back in the late 60s. They took a train from Ernakalum to Mangalore and from Mangalore it was a bus ride to Karwar; they crossed the Kali river in a traditional boat. The last leg of their journey was done by bullock cart transport which took three days to reach port town Vasco da Gama.
The family rented a room which was part of their landlord Mr Fernande’s house. They lived here till his father got a permanent job as a civilian at the INS Hansa Air Station of the Navy. They next moved to a big house in the vicinity of the current civilian enclave at Dabolim. The family never went back to Kerala. Except for the occasional summer holidays.
Young Martin studied at the Regina Mundi high school (picture) run by the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers school in Chicalim. This is a branch of the St Columbus school in Delhi. His youngest brother Jude was born in Dabolim. Right from the time he was in school Martin always thought of starting a business of his own. Perhaps influenced by the huge construction boom in Vasco, Martin while in the 5th standard of schooling, started dreaming of a construction company. He had a close friend named Milind Arolkar and the two of them even thought of a name for their real estate project. It would be called Milmar Constructions, a combination of their two names. But later the friends went their different ways after finishing the 10th standard.
Though Martin wanted to become a marine engineer or an airline pilot, his middle class family could not afford to fund him. So he reluctantly did a BCom in financial accounts, which he hated. Soon after he finished his college education and went to Bombay to work for a year. On his return, he joined UVI Holidays Pvt Ltd which was a Bombay-based company.

FATHER’S GOOD CONTACTS
FREEDOM Holidays did not start as a tour operation. Martin’s father had very good contacts with the naval authorities. Since he was their civilian employee at INS Hansa, he was also closely connected with the Dabolim airport which is actually a civil enclave and a defense airport. Martin’s then British partner and girlfriend and later his wife was the regional manager for Inspiration Holidays, which was a British charter company. Carolyne and Martin leveraged their contacts to become supervisory agents to the 1st British charter – that is, Caledonian Airways.

By the time Freedom Aero Services Pvt Ltd entered the aviation business a large number of charter tourists had started arriving to holiday in Goa. There were as many as a dozen flights a week between October and April the next year. There were also charter flights from Europe.
In fact, the first charter flight to land in Goa was a Condor Airlines, of a German company, around 1984, soon after the Commonwealth Heads of Government Retreat happened in Goa. Freedom Holidays were the supervisory agents involved ensuring that the aircrafts were turned around after their long trip from Gatwick to Dabolim. The aircrafts had to be cleaned, catered and refueled for their return journey with the charter tourists. Supervision extended later to handling transport for the charter tourists to their hotels. Martin had a very good business sense. Over a period of time he expanded the range of facilities and services. He picked up an agency for aviation fuel so that he could supply fuel to the charter aircrafts (Tui, Caledonian Airways, My Travel, Thomas Cook).
BUT it is still the aircraft supervision business which is the backbone of Freedom Holidays. Over 60% of the company’s turnover comes from supervision and 40% comes from ground handling business. Besides charter aircraft holidays Freedom Holidays also provides services to NSO/general aviation aircraft which use Dabolim and Mopa airports.
Freedom Holidays started from a brief case at Mason’s communication centre, opposite present Delmon Hotel (now Delmon Grand). As business expanded, they moved to Saldanha business centre in Fontainhas and after that to a three-bedroom flat in Altinho-Panjim.
Martin was aware that Victor Alburquerque’s Alcon had a large office space at Patto Centre in Patto Plaza, which was originally meant for the Goa Ore Exporters Association. When they failed to take up the premises Martin pleaded with Victor to sell it to him for his office. Victor asked him to take a loan from Saraswat bank of Rs9 lakh, which the bank kindly gave without the need of a guarantee. Victor, being a first generation entrepreneur, was understandably sympathetic for the young budding businessman Martin. Martin treated Victor Albuquerque as a fatherly figure.
Freedom Holidays continues to occupy the 79 sq metre office at Patto Centre in Patto Plaza which is now worth over a crore surely! Freedom Holidays has grown from a company devoted to supervision of international charter Airlines to a complete destination management entity. It offers the entire range of travel and tours. Ranging from ticketing, visas and other permissions, booking of hotel accommodations, guides for meeting and greeting services. Arranging for guides to take tourists on personalized tours depending on their special interest. Ensuring that every aspect of their holiday is full of joy. A holiday where they can rest and relax, leaving all the worries to the Freedom Holiday Team. Whether you want to go to Kerala, Taj Mahal in Agra, or Rajasthan or anywhere, Freedom Holidays has the best and most competitive custom-made packages for you and your group.

VERY COMPETITIVE MARKET
THE journey has not been easy. Not only the challenges of growing in a very competitive market. But maintaining the high standards of quality to preserve existing customers and grow the business further. Freedom Holidays has always adopted the policy of Goa First. The employees of Freedom Holidays are Goans. Martine believes in looking after his employees, he loves them and they love him and cherish him in return.
Martin’s greatest challenges have not been in business but in his personal life. More than one time he was at death’s door but he fought back with grit, determination and bounced back. Way back in 1996, when his company was still very young, he met with an accident while driving his Maruti van down Porvorim. He was blinded by the headlights of an approaching car and lost control of the car and hit the traffic island at the O’Coqueiro restaurant junction. The thin metal of the Maruti van door sheared through his forehead, causing a deep head injury.
This accident happened at 10pm in the night and a bleeding Martin tried to stop traffic and sought help. Nobody was willing to help him. He walked to the nearby Chodankar Hospital and begged the nurses there to stop the bleeding. There was no anesthetist present, so Martin told the nurses to stitch him as he had lost a lot of blood and could sense that he was going down. In great pain he survived the crude stitching up of the gaping wound on the side of his head.

In the end, Martin reveals, it was Dr Wilfred D Souza who saved him (photo needed). Dr Willy was a consultant at the Chodankar Hospital. Dr Willy and his wife Grace D’Souza were good friends of Martin’s wife Carolyne, that’s how they came to see him in the hospital. When Dr Willy, a surgeon, saw his face and head wound he found pus and said that it was infected. Martin needed to be airlifted to Bombay immediately. The six hour operation known as a scalp turn procedure took place at Bombay hospital. Dr Willy arranged for everything and Dr Tambekar was the surgeon who operated Martin.
Martin stayed in the hospital for three months to recover before returning to Goa. Carolyne stayed by Martin’s side right through the whole time and their daughter Katie was with her grandmother in Goa, she was all of one year old. His wife and partner Carolyne managed the business in his absence. However, Carolyne decided in 1998 to return to England with Katie.
Martin did not want to fold up the business which was doing very well. So the shares in Carolyne’s name were transferred to Martin’s sister Miriam Joseph. Though divorced he Carolyne continued to be good friends. Martin continued to look out for his mother as also run the Freedom Holidays. He sacrificed his British passport and better standard of living in the UK. He also didn’t want to leave his staff without a means of employment. Martin wanted his daughter to be a journalist, “I had recommended that she meet Barkha Dutt, the then best electronic media journalist. Katie, however, opted for a career in fashion designing in which she is doing very well.” Someday soon she wants to have her own label!

DEPRESSED WITH CHRONIC LEUKEMIA (BLOOD CANCER)

A LITTLE after the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns Martin Joseph thought he wasn’t able to hear very well with his right ear and was losing weight so he consulted an ENT specialist, Dr Ehrlson D’souza. A routine blood test shockingly revealed that his hemoglobin count was drastically low. He was referred to the Manipal hospital where the hematologist Dr Mahadeva Swami gave him the shocking news that he was suffering from chronic leukemia (blood cancer). And his whole world came crashing down. As Martin wanted to live more and see his daughter getting married!
In a state of shock Martin took some time to absorb that. He then thought over it again and again and after a few months he decided to fight back the cancer instead of giving into it. He was prescribed chemo therapy in drug form, as a tablet called Itinib. He also changed his lifestyle, passed up alcohol, meat, junk food and switched over to a healthier, nutritious diet which included organic food. With his new disciplined outlook on life, along with prayers, meditation, and above all a will to live, he succeeded in overcoming his chronic leukemia.
On February 14, 2025 the blood report (BCR) showed negative, in other words there was no trace of chronic leukemia. He was in remission, there was no more leukemia haunting his blood, it confirmed that Martin Joseph was back on track to live his life anew. Humbly Martin says he is completely cured and attributes this miraculous recovery to Almighty God, his parents, his first wife Carolyne, his daughter Katie, his family members, his staff at Freedom Holidays and his friends. Martin celebrated his recovery with his staff.

He has won many awards for the performance of his aviation and travel agency like for being the Best DMC business. Freedom Holidays has handled over 5,000 flights of various charter airlines and business aviation and cargo as well. From the US, UK, Canada, Europe, Russia, CIS countries and even the Middle East in the last 30 years. Just last month in March 2025, he welcomed the first Iranian charter, Qeshm Air from Tehran, to arrive in Goa, to coincide with Navroz, the Parsi New Year.
Martin Joseph is the Chairman IATO of the Goa chapter of Indian Tour Operators Association till date. Recently he welcomed the president of IATO and the EC members at the Heritage Village Resort down south Goa in March. The event saw a Martin at his best, as the energetic and networking genius that he is. He organized a sightseeing city tour of Goa which included Old Goa churches and the Maruti temple at Mala Fontainhas district in Panjim which is the only Maruti temple in Goa. It was followed by a boat cruise on Paradise Cruise and dinner at the Taj Cidade De Goa, where a cake was cut to celebrate his birthday.
After this event he celebrated his 58th birthday at the ITC Grand hotel, owned by the ITC Group. Goa’s amazing magic-man Martin is gearing up now to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the foundation of Freedom Holidays on April 26, 2025. No, he is not going to retire. As Manohar Parrikar, who suffered from pancreatic cancer, had exclaimed, Martin too quotes, “Hosh bhi hai, aur josh bhi hai!”

He is making plans to start a Freedom Holidays Academy to provide training for young Goans in skills needed in aviation management, ground handling, hospitality and air hostess training. It is an apprenticeship scheme for young Goans interested in the aviation and hospitality industry! Says Martin, he dedicates his life to Goa and Goans who have showered so much love and affection on him. He came to Goa as a boy of two years and now considers himself at 58 a niz Goenkar! Nobody can challenge him in this. He eats, sleeps repeats travel, tourism and aviation! He is an inspiration to youngsters who want to make a living in the tourism line! And is a shining inspiration to people suffering from cancer! Especially the manner of laughter therapy, watching cartoons like Tom & Jerry, Pink Panther and Charlie Chaplin to keep himself cheerful and happy.