Go makes this choice so that there is nothing like a CLASSPATH (ie: Java) to deal with. You specify a $GOPATH that has a consistent src tree inside of it. If your repo makes references to particular git commits (rather than the ones checked out into $GOPATH/src/github.com/$githubUser/$githubProjectName), then those will be in the ./vendor directory of your project.
If you have a different Go project that uses a completely different set of checkouts, due to versioning issues, then you can have multiple $GOPATH values to deal with that.