Ahmedabad-Diu-Ahmedabad

It turns out taking the bus her in India was a lot more comfortable then the 18 hr bus we took across Nepal...

We had booked a "sleeper" bus from Ahmedabad to Diu and not really knowing what it was we were pleasantly surprised to have quite a large upper berth for both Teresa and I to sleep on the 10 hr ride to Diu. It ended up being an upper berth which basically felt like we were riding on the roof of the bus the whole time and you could really feel the bus lean from side to side as it weaved in and out of traffic and felt like we were going to go flipping over quite a few times... So we slept on and off for most of the night between waking up so honking horns, screeching brakes, and bumping up an down...

When we arrived in Diu we got a rickshaw to take us over to a little hotel called "Sea Village resort," which is locate about 2 km outside of the actual town and over looks a secluded little cove. The rooms are all detached bungalow type rooms and I think that they actually were once large shipping containers. They all were pretty dirty and with out hot water, or even a shower for that matter, but the price is really really cheap and we were literally a few feet from the ocean. One really nice feature is that we had a really large porch which we probably spent the majority of time here just sitting on and watching the ocean.

The town of Diu is really pretty small and is located on the Western side of the island. It has a huge fort to the southern end, which we spent a day exploring, and is blocked off from the rest of the island by a huge wall with a moat around it that is left over from when the Portuguese settled here. The streets are all tiny and windy like the rest of India but here they are really clean and it feels more like a European town especially with all the Portuguese influenced architecture.. There are also a lot of churches instead of Hindu temples which were pretty neat to explore and all of the statues of the saints looked very different then the ones in the Catholic churches back home.

Being that our hotel was sort of out of the way and it gets really too hot to be walking all over the island we rented a little scooter to get around. It was a little nerve wracking at first, especially driving through town with all the cows, people, motorcycles, rickshaws, buses, etc.. to dodge. But once we made it out of town the rest of the island is pretty deserted and we had the roads mostly to our selves. I thought we were a spectacle before just walking around town with people always pointing and talking or staring.. but you should have seen it when they saw two white people driving around on a scooter..

Our days here in Diu basically went something like this... Wake up between 8am and noon and ride the scooter or walk into town for breakfast. Come back and lay on the beach and swim for a few hrs. Have a nice little snack and possibly a beer. Then we'd go back to laying on the beach or go exploring the island on the scooter to some of the other beaches, forts, or villages. Followed by some more laying around. Then we'd go back into town for some dinner, which I think I got sea food every night, and then go to bed and do it all again the next day.

Since our beach was pretty well secluded from the rest of the island it's where most of the westerners can go and swim with out being hassled by the drunk Indian men that are on the rest of the island. We made it up to Nagoa beach one afternoon to explore and found it almost unbearable having to deal with that many Indians who don't know how to handle their alcohol and we found ourselves having to yell at people from coming up and staring awkwardly at Teresa and from taking photos. For every 1 western girl there on the beach there was at least 50 drunk Indian men surrounding them taking pictures and staring... We decided to stick to our beach for the rest of the week.

We also drove the scooter across the island to a small fishing village on the eastern part of the island and it was really neat to explore. Although about half way there the scooter got a flat tire and we had to drive all the way back and find a puncture shop to fix the tire...which was an experience..When we finally made it over to the town it had a very laid back feel to it and there were entire forests of palm trees. There were dozens of ships being built around the town out of huge planks of wood. Everyone seemed really friendly but we still don't know any Gujarati so we didn't really understand what they were saying to us. Our plan was to hang out at a beach near the town that was supposedly always deserted but when we got there we found it to have quite a few people there and were greeted by a guy taking a crap right in front of us... so we retreated back to our little beach once again...

Today we are catching a sleeper bus back to Ahmedabad and we have a flight back to Delhi on the day after that and we are both pretty sad to go... This part of the trip really has been more of a "vacation" from traveling with out a lot of hassles and the whole island is actually pretty clean compared to the rest of India...


When we get back to Delhi on the 28th we only have about 8 days left before we fly to London so we don't really know what we are going to do.. probably just some day trips from Delhi to some of the museums and interesting things in the city. The whole country is becoming almost unbearably hot this time of year and there aren't a lot of tourists left so hopefully we can get some good deals on hotels and souvenirs...