Characterless, chaotic PONDA , 28km southeast of Panjim and 17km northeast of Margao, is Ponda taluka 's administrative headquarters and main market town, but not somewhere you're likely to want to stay. Straddling the busy Panjim-Bangalore highway (NH-4), the town's ugly concrete centre is permanently choked with traffic, and guaranteed to make you wonder why you ever left the coast. Of the few visitors who stop here, most do so en route to the nearby Hindu temples or wildlife reserves further east, or to take a look at Goa's best-preserved sixteenth-century Muslim monument, the Safa Masjid , 2km west on the Panjim road. Built in 1560 by the Bijapuri ruler Ibrahim Adil Shah, this small mosque, with its whitewashed walls and pointed terracotta tile roof, is renowned less for its architecture than for being one of only two Islamic shrines in Goa to survive the excesses of the Portuguese Inquisition.