Advertisement
Published: January 8th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Diu
Diu market...
First of all, Happy New Year to all of you!
Now I have got that out of the way, it is time to tell a bit about our New Years celebrations in Diu... It all started with Tori and I picking up my parents from Diu airport... A very small airport it is, and we were not allowed inside the grounds... No we had to wait outside the gates... But soon after the plane landed Tori spotted my mother running out of the arrival hall waving frantically at us! They had arrived! I had been looking forward to seeing them since I knew they were coming over... This is the first time I was taking my parents on a trip in stead of the other way around... So I whisked them in an auto rickshaw to the hotel they had booked and after this we had a nice and refreshing beer on their balcony... We chose a nice quiet place of the main drag for our New Years dinner and had a delicious sea food dinner all washed down with some fine Kingfisher... Than after having had dinner we returned to my parent’s balcony and had the piece the resistance:
Diu
New Year on my parents balcony...
wine and cheese! Yes my parents had brought some real wine with them and some Dutch and Swiss cheese! After 4 month in India this was a real treat! On top of this all, Sinterklaas (the Dutch Santa Claus, celebrated on the 5th of December) had given my parents a chocolate letter (traditionally given on the 5th of December) and some ginger cookies, with the specific instructions to hand them over to me! You can imagine that all this brought tears to my eyes... Wine, cheese and chocolate to top it off! Tori was also delighted, because being the nice fellow I am, I of course shared the chocolate... The Old Year ended with some fine fireworks and a load of drunken Indians to keep us entertained and I assume we entertained them as well... At least judging that they were staring at us up on the balcony more than at the fireworks! A good time was had by all one can say...
After a few more days of rest in Diu, walking around the town, visiting the fort it was time to leave... It was time to see if we could spot a rare Asiatic Lion in Sasan
Diu
Diu Museum
Gir, the last refuge for those majestic cats... We managed to stay in a nice family cottage and booked a tour for the next morning... As it was we turned out to be very lucky and spotted a lioness after two hours, with thanks to our knowledgeable guide! And to understand how lucky we were... Of the 30 vehicles that went out that day, we were the only one to see a lion! We also got to see a lot of other wildlife, like the Spotted Deer, Antelope and an Indian peafowl... Tori finally managed to get a photo of the common Kingfisher, which she has seen a lot of on trains and busses, but never managed to get a photo of... Also the peafowl was big on her bird list, so it was happy times for all of us... We celebrated our success with some fine Whiskey that my parents had bought and smuggled out of Diu (Gujarat is a dry state and you are not allowed to bring alcohol into the state either)...
Then we decided to visit Somnath, whose Sun temple is supposed to have witnessed the creation of the universe, according to Hindu legend... The
Diu
Gateway to Diu Fort
first temple was built in Gold by the moon god, the next was in Silver by Ravana, than in wood by Krishna and finally in stone by Bhimdev... Than it was razed to the ground by a successive wave of invaders... The last time in 1706 after which it wasn't rebuilt until 1950 according to original design... Quite an impressive history for such a little town... While it might have been something to behold when it was built in gold, I wasn't that taken back by it now... Still it wasn't bad, but as I told Tori when I got out of the grounds... Just another temple...
As I thought it was now time to try to work of some of the excess fat we had accumulated during Christmas and New Year, I took all of us to Junagadh to try and scale Girnar Hill with it's supposedly 10000 steps to the top... There weren't quite that many, more like 5500 or so, but it did the trick... We all lost a few kilo's on the way up and are all sore in our legs now... The Jain temples two thirds of the way up are the most impressive
Diu
My mother, me and Tori at the moat of Diu Fort
feature along the way, as the top is not much more than a small Hindu temple with a lot of small eateries around it... Good for getting some energy back into us after the climb... In the evening we had a very nice meal, served by a suitably grim waiter, whose smile seems to have vanished somewhere in the 60's... He only turned grimmer after he saw the size of the tip that we left behind... We decided not to take our chances there again lest he spit in our food next time... But not to worry the next evening we found a much nicer place with equally if not better food... And today we walked around Junagadh itself, which has a nice fort, but the best sight in town is undoubtedly the richly spiraling dream of a mausoleum close to the railway station...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.232s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 38; qc: 166; dbt: 0.1685s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.5mb