A Quaint Little Piece of Wonderful Oct 24/25

The current location is my favorite so far. This post is real long but today was incredible so that is fine with me. Diu is a little town of maybe 20,000 people that sits on an island just off the south west coast of the state of Gujarat. The whole island is known as Diu but the town we are in is also called Diu and takes up the eastern part of the island. It was formerly one of the major Portuguese colonies for this part of Asia and it has a fort that is very hard core. Scott and I rented scooters (about 2 dollars a day) and drove around most of the island.

The town is very nice. The trip to the town was real bad. I like to be optimistic but the trip was bad. We spent 11 hours in a bus that seemed to go through and stop at every village along the 400 km journey. At first I loved it because I got to see a lot of the countryside and different villages. That lasted about an hour until it seemed to all be on repeat as it got more hot and dusty. I talk to some of the guys behind me and would ask them how much longer. When we got on they were saying “2 pm we be there no problem.” That sounded fine until it was 1 pm and they said “maybe 5 more hours.” We ended up getting there at 7:15 and it was well worth it.

The place we are staying was formerly a catholic cathedral built by the Portuguese and has been turned into a guest house. We got a room for about 3 dollars a night and it is right next to a balcony on the top of the church. There are steps to climb up to the top of the church and from there it is possible to see the whole town and a good portion of the island. The balcony seems to be the hangout place for everyone staying here and there is a big fish grilling party tomorrow night. George runs the place and he is very friendly and hilarious.

The fort is set on the north east corner of the island and was built in the 1540s. As we were walking through it I was amazed at how absolutely enormous it is. The outer wall is 8.4 kilometers long. That is a complete guess but it might be close. Whatever I say wont do it justice so here is the wiki site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diu_Fort#Structure

After leaving the fort, we hopped on our crotch rockets and headed west not really knowing anything about the rest of the island.  We got lost getting out of the town but eventually found the one road that crosses the island and another wonderful journey began. As we were traveling I found out the basic layout of the island from east to west. First is the town of Diu and it is followed by nothing but sand and bushes. That lasts a while but finally gives way to a beach area with a few hotels and resort. These things are nice but far and away my favorite part of the island is the west side because it has a several random villages. The children yell hilarious things and the people do mostly fishing and prawn farming (explanation of that will come later).

The highlight of this endeavor came as we were wandering around the villages and found a community center slash temple surrounded by hundreds of people listening to Hindi music. We walked up to see what was going on and a man  introduced himself and began explaining the cause for the festival activities. Apparently today is the birthday of one of the Hindu gods and they were throwing a huge and super fun birthday party. Our host showed us around and then led us over to a tent with a few hundred people in it sitting in rows with plates. The whole shindig was awesome but the food was especially awesome. There were people walking around with buckets and ladles putting food on peoples plates. I dont know what any of it was called but it was delicious and every time I finished something they would insist on giving me more. By the time we finished I just wanted to roll over and take a nap but there were more festivities to partake in. Our host took us to sit under a tree and told us more about the area and the festival (he seemed to be our host by default because I did not hear anyone except him speak English). It was an incredible experience and I feel very blessed to have been a part of it.

The last part of our interaction was a tour of their prawn farms. Prawn are essentially giant shrimp (8-10 inches) that they raise in large ponds and then harvest.  The idea I got (through the language barrier) is that they start the process by putting a  bunch of baby prawns in the pond. They feed them some sort of grain mixture that comes in bags and then harvest the batch every three months and start everything again. The people in the villages just started doing this about 7 years ago and it sounds like it has been very successful financially.

After our tour the festivities were winding down so we departed and began making our way back to the town.  On the way back we stopped at some caves and grave yard that looked like a town. Each grave was a little stone house that had candles and stuff in it. I dont really know what was going on but it was multi colored and looked pretty  cool. Back at Diu Scott wanted to get some sunset pictures so I got a strawberry sweet lassi and sat on top of the church to look at the town and watch the sunset. It was pretty stinking close to a perfect end to an incredible day in a wonderful little town. Now I am at a cyber cafe telling you all of this. I hope you enjoyed because I certainly did.

A Strawberry sweet lassi is some sort of mix between thin yogurt, strawberry, sweet lassi and delicious wonderfulness. Sidenote about Diu-> Gujurat is a no alcohol state except for a few places and Diu is one of them. This translates to a massive quantity of cheap liquor and bars. I think it is pretty hilarious how it the name is dui misspelled.

The lesson of this trip is to never under any circumstance take the local bus system between cities.  I have an even stronger love of the trains here.

Alright. Now I shall go chillax and make some new friends on top of the church.