After two very early morning safaris in the Sasan Gir Lion Sanctuary and National Park, I was happy to sleep in until past 7 on the morning of the 18th and then spend most of the morning sitting in the sun, or when the morning warmed up, the shade, outside my room. There are buses to my next stop, Veraval on the coast, but I decided to take the narrow gauge train, scheduled to leave at noon. I walked down to the station about 11:30 and bought my ticket for all of seven rupees (fourteen cents). There were quite a few people waiting at the little station, many of them colorfully dressed tribal people. A train soon arrived going in the opposite direction from where I was headed. It remained at the station until my train arrived about 12:30 and before my train's arrival I enjoyed watching the people as they got on and off the train waiting for it to get going again.
My train was not very full and I enjoyed the trip of less than an hour and a half as we headed southwest to Veraval. I found a hotel, had a good lunch and then took a shared autorickshaw about three or four miles outside of town to the famous temple at Somnath, right on the sea. This temple was once one of India's richest and that is what attracted the attention of Mahmud of Ghazni (in what is now Afghanistan). He used to make an almost annual plundering and pillaging trip to India in the 11th century and in 1026 or so arrived at Somnath. Supposedly, a Hindu army of 70,000 soldiers died trying unsuccessfully to protect Somnath, but Mahmud plundered it and destroyed it. It was rebuilt again by Hindus and then destroyed again by Muslims several times over the centuries, the last destruction by the intolerant Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1706. It wasn't rebuilt again for almost two and a half centuries, until 1950.
The temple is in the style of old temples, but is rather ugly. I couldn't tell if it is made of stone or cement. It is painted a light yellow (in fact, painters were painting part of it), but much of the paint is peeling. There is some sculpture inside and out. There is also some gold leaf inside, with a notice asking for donations so the temple can be restored to what it once was, encrusted with gold and jewels. A black lingam (one of the twelve jyotirlingams) reposes in the sanctuary. Outside the compound, which you can't enter with bag or camera, is a statue of Vallubhai Patel, India's Home Minister from independence in 1947 until his death in 1950, a Gujarati and a rival to Nehru. On the pedestal he is acclaimed as something like "consolidater of India" and rebuilder of the temple. He was always more of a Hindu nationalist than the secular Nehru.
Arriving about 4, it took me no more than half an hour, less in fact, to look around the temple and the dioramas off to one side illustrating episodes concerning Shiva, to whom the temple is dedicated (hence, the lingam). The seashore below the temple is not particularly nice, but I enjoyed sitting on a bench above the sea just outside the temple watching people and enjoying the sea breeze. At 6 a drummer and a guy playing those Indian horns used to charm cobras played for a while from a balcony over the gateway to the temple. The sun disappeared into the mist over the horizon about 6:40 and just before 7 the evening aarti began in the sanctuary of the temple. There was quite a large crowd in the main hall adjacent to the sanctuary as drums were beaten, bells rung, a horn played and a conch occasionally blown while a Brahmin priest in the sanctuary waved a fiery candelabra. I got glimpses of him through the clapping crowd. The ceremony lasted about twenty minutes with the music growing increasingly faster and even frantic. It was a little mesmerizing. Near the end the crowd was clapping above their heads and then raising their hands palms forward as it all ended. It reminded me a bit of a Sufi whirling dervish performance I saw in Cairo years ago. While I was filing out with the crowd, a man said to me, "Good to see a white man here." I was back in Veraval by about 8.
I left Veraval the next morning at about 9:30 on an uncrowded bus bound for Diu to the southeast. Diu, a former Portuguese colony, is an island just off the southernmost tip of the Kathiawar Peninsula. It was warm enough that morning for me to wear only a tee shirt as we bumped along on a bad road, with lots of detours and on-going repairs. Cotton and other crops were growing alongside the road. We reached Diu shortly before 1, passing first through a small mainland peninsular enclave that is politically part of Diu and then crossing a bridge onto the island of Diu. Diu politically is not a part of Gujarat, but part of a separate Union Territory of Daman and Diu. (Daman is another former Portuguese enclave.) The Portuguese conquered it in 1535 from the Sultan of Oman, who apparently had controlled it for a couple of centuries, and held it until 1961, when India forcibly removed them from their colonies in India (Goa, Daman and Diu).
Diu Island is something like seven miles long and two miles wide, with the small town of Diu at the eastern end. The bus stop is just outside the old city walls, which I passed through under a gate with two Portuguese lettered plaques dated 1570 and 1584. I walked through town to a nice little hotel run by a family from Goa and got a room. The town is quite nice, especially for India, with relatively clean streets and many houses painted in bright pastel colors. The family running the hotel speaks Portuguese and I enjoyed speaking a little Portuguese with them. I have noticed they say "bom dia" with a hard "d' rather than a "dj" sound spoken by Brazilians.
I walked to a nearby garden restaurant called O Coqueiro (Portuguese for "The Coconut") and had a wonderful lunch of swordfish and french fries, along with a banana lassi. Afterwards I walked around town in the bright sunshine, passing three big whitewashed churches or former churches. St. Thomas is now the town museum, though there isn't much in it other than old wooden statues of saints, albeit hundreds of years old. St. Francis of Assisi is now part of a hospital. Only St. Paul is still a church, originally built about 1600 by Jesuits and then rebuilt about 200 years ago with a neo-classical facade. They are all blindingly white in the sunshine. St. Paul (and it does say "St. Paul" on the sign outside rather than "Sao Paulo") has a very nice interior of blue and white with very large carved wooden retables in the sanctuary and an equally elaborately carved wooden pulpit.
I walked to the fort at the farthest eastern end of the island and town. It is a massive structure, with massive walls. Originally built by the Portuguese in 1535, improved in 1546 when the Sultan of Gujarat tried to capture it and further improved over the centuries, it is bordered by the sea on three sides. On the land side, to the west, are two massive walls each maybe a thousand feet long and two very deep moats, one moat before each wall. The moats have been cut right into the rock and must be twenty to thirty feet deep and maybe forty to fifty feet wide. They are connected with the sea and presumably fill when there is a high tide. The tide was low and they were mostly dry that afternoon. I walked along the outer moat to the cliffs above the sea, with great views of the imposing moat and outer wall. I've never seen such an impressive moat.
I entered the fort over two stone bridges crossing moats and through a couple of gates. Part of the fort is still the town jail, but most of it you can explore. There are several bastions topped by old iron cannons, many with Portuguese inscriptions (one had a Spanish inscription and the date 1624, during the eighty years Spain and Portugal were united under a single king). Cannons can be found on the walls, too. Several buildings, most in ruins, are inside the fort, including several churches, one with Santiago on his horse carved just above the door. In one ruined building are six World War I era howitzers. One is dated 1916 and labelled "4.5 Inch Howitzer Mark I." Another is dated 1918 and labelled "4.5 Inch Howitzer Mark II." A third has Russian labeling. They all look the same and I am guessing they are British made, at least one for the Russians during World War I, and somehow they all were acquired by the Portuguese military.
There are great views out to sea and around the fort. Just offshore is a very small island turned completely into a small fort, which you are not allowed to visit. The interior of the main fort is quite large, but was teeming with Indian tourists on that Sunday afternoon, and some of them were a real pain, grabbing me and insisting on photographs. I usually accommodate those who ask politely (though that can get a little tiresome), but those, mostly young men, who just grab you and insist on a photo I often refuse, though they keep grabbing you and insisting. I have to say that while I have met many nice people in India, Indians in general are not my favorite people, compared to, say, southeast Asians or Africans or Latin Americans. Not as bad as Chinese, but that's about the best you can say. My reaction is pretty much typical of other western tourists here. I've been told that southern Indians are kinder and gentler, so I'm looking forward to reaching the south eventually. Of the 120-130 countries I've visited, I've only had a negative reaction to Chinese and Indians (with many individual exceptions), which doesn't sound so bad, until you realize that together they represent about 40% of the world's population.
I didn't have enough time to explore the whole fort before it closed at 6. I sat outside on the fort jetty for a while, looking out at the blue sea and getting my photograph taken, though eventually I refused to get up to be photographed. After sunset I walked along the seafront facing the mainland to the north to the center of town. There were lots of Indian tourists in town for the weekend. Lots of Gujaratis come to Diu to party as it has alcohol while Gujarat is dry, but I haven't seen any drunkenness. I went back to O Coqueiro for dinner and had a delicious fish and coconut curry on rice, plus another banana lassi.
The next morning I was out before 8 (sunrise is about 7:30, I think) and was quite comfortable in only a tee shirt. I walked along the southern seafront, passing a small beach, then exiting through one of the three gates in the city wall and walking to and along another, longer beach further west. The beaches, of brownish sand, were relatively clean, and very clean for Indian beaches. I turned around and came back to the city wall and walked north along the outside to the central Zampa Gate, painted red with carvings of lions, angels and a priest on it, and reentered the city. I walked through the narrow lanes of this tightly packed part of town, filled with old buildings. Again, the streets were relatively clean, although there was some garbage and a few cows. Bent over women with little brooms were sweeping here and there (India does not seem to have discovered the long handled broom) and the streets were not noisy and clogged with traffic. It was pleasant to walk along them, something very unusual in India. There were, however, some motorcycles coming through and invariably honking. I was talking to a German woman who has been coming to India for about 15 years and she said the worst development in her opinion has been the profusion of motorcycles.
Many of the buildings are painted in bright pastels and some are quite elaborately carved and painted. A couple had lions and soldiers and other figures carved on them, along with fruit and vines and other designs, and were painted in perhaps seven colors: blue, green, yellow, reddish orange, white, black and brown. As I was looking at one old unpainted house of three stories, a man invited me in and showed me around. He told me it was 230 years old. The front room contained old furniture, an old photograph of his mother and father and a bust of a king of Portugal. He told me he doesn't speak any Portuguese and showed me the contents of the big wooden cabinets along one walls. Inside were various old knickknacks, along with old coins and stamps. Most of the stamps seemed to be from Portugal and Mozambique. He had some very old, pre-colonial Indian coins, as well as coins from Britain, France and the United States. One of the silver US coins was dated 1795 and must be quite valuable if it is genuine. Upstairs were rooms with more old furniture and on the floor a row of framed photographs of Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, his father Motilal Nehru and a few others. Judging from Nehru's relatively youthful appearance, they may date from the 1930's.
I walked to O Coqueiro and had a leisurely breakfast from about 10 to 11 and then spent a few hours, during the hot part of the day, at an internet cafe. I had a late lunch at a restaurant on the seafront, eating a Kashmiri naan, which is bread filled and topped with fruit, nuts and cheese, and it was very good. At a nearby ice cream shop that makes its own ice cream, I had three scoops, rum raisin, date almond and saffron pistachio, all very good. From there I walked along the seaside to the fort and spent the end of the afternoon there. It was far less crowded than on the previous Sunday afternoon, but there were still quite a few people there. I wandered around and eventually climbed the highest bastion, in the center of the inner wall. Atop it are cannons and a lighthouse originally built in 1897 but reconstructed several times since then. You can climb the inside spiral staircase to near the top and I did so, enjoying the great views all around. The lighthouse is about 50 feet high and the top of the bastion is about 100 feet above sea level. I got an excellent view of the double line of walls, each with three bastions, and moats to the west and the town beyond, including the three big white churches. There is a wide expanse of open ground between the outer moat and the town.
Leaving the fort at 6 when it closed, I sat on the fort jetty until about sundown and then walked back to town, with a stop to see the end of mass at St. Paul. The mass was in English, not Portuguese, with about 25 in the congregation, including three nuns in white. Lights lit up the blue and white ceiling and walls and in the apse behind the altar were strings of little blue lights. I had dinner again at O Coqueiro, this time caldo de camarao, a soupy shrimp and vegetable Portuguese dish served over white rice, and a papaya lassi.
I was out and about about 8 the next morning, walking to St. Thomas (the museum) and St. Paul to see their east facing facades in the morning light. I had breakfast at O Coqueiro and then walked through the narrow lanes of the western part of the city, near the city wall. I made a more extensive walk than I had made the previous day and saw more old buildings, some brightly painted. One building, perhaps containing two separate homes, was very brightly painted on one half, with painted figures and designs on the facade, while the other half was a unpainted and in need of restoration, with weeds growing on portions of the building. It got fairly hot after about 11. The newspapers I've read here report highs in the low and mid 90's in nearby cities, with lows about 60. Perhaps Diu, being on the sea, has temperatures a bit more moderate. There is usually a very nice sea breeze.
I ate lunch at O Coqueiro about noon and then spent the hot part of the afternoon at an internet cafe. About 4 I walked again to the fort and explored the westernmost wall (the outer wall) and the moat between it and the inner wall. There was a little path in part of the scrub filled moat, which was completely dry. The outer moat has a solid rock bottom, no vegetation, and a bit of water in it. There were great views from the bastions and ramparts of the outer wall, with a few cannon here and there. It really is an impressive fort. As usual, I ate dinner at O Coqueiro, fried calamari. I can certainly see why people, myself included, tend to spend more time in Diu than they plan.
I slept till almost 8 the next morning and then walked to the fort about 8:30. I wanted to see it in the early morning light. I was also hoping it would be fairly deserted at that hour, but it was not. I walked around a bit and then climbed up the lighthouse atop the highest bastion to enjoy the great views. With the sun to the east, the views to the west towards the town and its churches were good, as was the view down to the western walls and moats. I stayed up on the lighthouse until it closed for the morning at 10.
I headed to O Coqueiro for breakfast and read newspapers and magazines there until noon. I spent the afternoon at an internet cafe until the connection failed and then again walked around the narrow lanes of the old town. I had a late long lunch at O Coqueiro and then walked around town a bit before dinner at, yes, O Coqueiro.
The next morning I arrived at the fort about 8:30 and for almost an hour had it pretty much to myself, along with the parrots, pigeons, crows, squirrels and the guy who lets you into the lighthouse. I walked around just a bit before climbing the lighthouse for the great views. The sun shone on the green backs, wings and tails of the parrots flying below me. Five fishing boats, one after the other, made their way from the strait between Diu and the mainland, passed between the two forts, and headed south into the Arabian Sea. Not too far out the stopped and, I assume, began to fish. Buses of tourists started to arrive sometime after 9 and I left the fort about 10, walking along the cliffs overlooking the sea just west of the fort and along the southern shore (the usual approach to the fort is along the northern shore of the island), before circling back into town.
After a late breakfast at O Coqueiro, I rented a scooter for all of about $4, plus $3 of gas, and headed out of the town through the northernmost gate and along the Arabian Sea until I reached a little seaside temple called Gangeshwar only about two miles from town. It contains five flower-covered Shiva lingams in a shallow cave right by the sea, with the small waves at high tide washing into the cement floor of the cave and wetting the lingams. I watched the pilgrims scooping up handfuls of the seawater to pour on the lingams and then take photos of each other in front of them.
Inland from the temple about 700 feet are two Parsi towers of silence. Parsis are Zoroastrians who ancestors fled Persia (Parsi means Persian) for India at the time of the Arab conquest in the 7th century. They dispose of their dead by leaving their bodies in towers to be eaten by vultures. I'm guessing these towers are no longer in use as I was able to enter the walled compound and go up into the towers. The biggest one, on a slight hill, is circular and made of stone with an opening about halfway up reached by a ramp. Inside is a stone floor with a circular pit in the center and grooves in the stone floor, perhaps to drain blood into the pit. The tower is open to the sky. There were no signs of any use. The other tower is smaller, down the side of the hill, and filled with rubble.
I continued west through the little towns of Fudam and Malala to a seashell museum with several thousand shells collected by a sea captain from all over the world over several decades. They were interesting, as was he. I continued west along the sea and passed through the beach resort of Nagoa, with a fairly nice beach, hotels and lots of tourists, most if not all Indians. Not much further (the island is only seven miles long) I reached the town of Vanakbara at Diu's western end, with lots of fishing boats, including some under construction. I headed back to Diu city, with a stop to see a memorial to a ship and its crew that went down after being torpedoed by the Pakistanis during the 1971. I got back a little before 5 and got something to eat at O Coqueiro, took a little walk (stopping in again at St. Paul to see the end of mass), and came back to O Coqueiro for dinner. There are some interesting fellow tourists here in Diu, some who have been here for a month or more.
I spent the next day in Diu, not doing much. I didn't even make it to the fort. I read, walked around town just a bit, spent time at an internet cafe, and relaxed. I stopped in at the ice cream parlor, had four scoops of ice cream, and talked to the owner. It was started in 1933 by his great grandfather, and he pointed out to me on the wall photos of his great grandfather, grandfather and father, the first two with impressive mustaches. He told me they make their ice cream in the nearby village of Fudam. He had a Portuguese flag in the parlor and spoke some Portuguese, but said he wasn't of Portuguese descent. At the bus station I talked to an interesting Indian man who has been living in Zimbabwe since the 70's and was back in Diu for his father's final illness and funeral. I had my final dinner at O Coqueiro and then went back to the ice cream parlor for my final two scoops of ice cream.
My train was not very full and I enjoyed the trip of less than an hour and a half as we headed southwest to Veraval. I found a hotel, had a good lunch and then took a shared autorickshaw about three or four miles outside of town to the famous temple at Somnath, right on the sea. This temple was once one of India's richest and that is what attracted the attention of Mahmud of Ghazni (in what is now Afghanistan). He used to make an almost annual plundering and pillaging trip to India in the 11th century and in 1026 or so arrived at Somnath. Supposedly, a Hindu army of 70,000 soldiers died trying unsuccessfully to protect Somnath, but Mahmud plundered it and destroyed it. It was rebuilt again by Hindus and then destroyed again by Muslims several times over the centuries, the last destruction by the intolerant Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1706. It wasn't rebuilt again for almost two and a half centuries, until 1950.
The temple is in the style of old temples, but is rather ugly. I couldn't tell if it is made of stone or cement. It is painted a light yellow (in fact, painters were painting part of it), but much of the paint is peeling. There is some sculpture inside and out. There is also some gold leaf inside, with a notice asking for donations so the temple can be restored to what it once was, encrusted with gold and jewels. A black lingam (one of the twelve jyotirlingams) reposes in the sanctuary. Outside the compound, which you can't enter with bag or camera, is a statue of Vallubhai Patel, India's Home Minister from independence in 1947 until his death in 1950, a Gujarati and a rival to Nehru. On the pedestal he is acclaimed as something like "consolidater of India" and rebuilder of the temple. He was always more of a Hindu nationalist than the secular Nehru.
Arriving about 4, it took me no more than half an hour, less in fact, to look around the temple and the dioramas off to one side illustrating episodes concerning Shiva, to whom the temple is dedicated (hence, the lingam). The seashore below the temple is not particularly nice, but I enjoyed sitting on a bench above the sea just outside the temple watching people and enjoying the sea breeze. At 6 a drummer and a guy playing those Indian horns used to charm cobras played for a while from a balcony over the gateway to the temple. The sun disappeared into the mist over the horizon about 6:40 and just before 7 the evening aarti began in the sanctuary of the temple. There was quite a large crowd in the main hall adjacent to the sanctuary as drums were beaten, bells rung, a horn played and a conch occasionally blown while a Brahmin priest in the sanctuary waved a fiery candelabra. I got glimpses of him through the clapping crowd. The ceremony lasted about twenty minutes with the music growing increasingly faster and even frantic. It was a little mesmerizing. Near the end the crowd was clapping above their heads and then raising their hands palms forward as it all ended. It reminded me a bit of a Sufi whirling dervish performance I saw in Cairo years ago. While I was filing out with the crowd, a man said to me, "Good to see a white man here." I was back in Veraval by about 8.
I left Veraval the next morning at about 9:30 on an uncrowded bus bound for Diu to the southeast. Diu, a former Portuguese colony, is an island just off the southernmost tip of the Kathiawar Peninsula. It was warm enough that morning for me to wear only a tee shirt as we bumped along on a bad road, with lots of detours and on-going repairs. Cotton and other crops were growing alongside the road. We reached Diu shortly before 1, passing first through a small mainland peninsular enclave that is politically part of Diu and then crossing a bridge onto the island of Diu. Diu politically is not a part of Gujarat, but part of a separate Union Territory of Daman and Diu. (Daman is another former Portuguese enclave.) The Portuguese conquered it in 1535 from the Sultan of Oman, who apparently had controlled it for a couple of centuries, and held it until 1961, when India forcibly removed them from their colonies in India (Goa, Daman and Diu).
Diu Island is something like seven miles long and two miles wide, with the small town of Diu at the eastern end. The bus stop is just outside the old city walls, which I passed through under a gate with two Portuguese lettered plaques dated 1570 and 1584. I walked through town to a nice little hotel run by a family from Goa and got a room. The town is quite nice, especially for India, with relatively clean streets and many houses painted in bright pastel colors. The family running the hotel speaks Portuguese and I enjoyed speaking a little Portuguese with them. I have noticed they say "bom dia" with a hard "d' rather than a "dj" sound spoken by Brazilians.
I walked to a nearby garden restaurant called O Coqueiro (Portuguese for "The Coconut") and had a wonderful lunch of swordfish and french fries, along with a banana lassi. Afterwards I walked around town in the bright sunshine, passing three big whitewashed churches or former churches. St. Thomas is now the town museum, though there isn't much in it other than old wooden statues of saints, albeit hundreds of years old. St. Francis of Assisi is now part of a hospital. Only St. Paul is still a church, originally built about 1600 by Jesuits and then rebuilt about 200 years ago with a neo-classical facade. They are all blindingly white in the sunshine. St. Paul (and it does say "St. Paul" on the sign outside rather than "Sao Paulo") has a very nice interior of blue and white with very large carved wooden retables in the sanctuary and an equally elaborately carved wooden pulpit.
I walked to the fort at the farthest eastern end of the island and town. It is a massive structure, with massive walls. Originally built by the Portuguese in 1535, improved in 1546 when the Sultan of Gujarat tried to capture it and further improved over the centuries, it is bordered by the sea on three sides. On the land side, to the west, are two massive walls each maybe a thousand feet long and two very deep moats, one moat before each wall. The moats have been cut right into the rock and must be twenty to thirty feet deep and maybe forty to fifty feet wide. They are connected with the sea and presumably fill when there is a high tide. The tide was low and they were mostly dry that afternoon. I walked along the outer moat to the cliffs above the sea, with great views of the imposing moat and outer wall. I've never seen such an impressive moat.
I entered the fort over two stone bridges crossing moats and through a couple of gates. Part of the fort is still the town jail, but most of it you can explore. There are several bastions topped by old iron cannons, many with Portuguese inscriptions (one had a Spanish inscription and the date 1624, during the eighty years Spain and Portugal were united under a single king). Cannons can be found on the walls, too. Several buildings, most in ruins, are inside the fort, including several churches, one with Santiago on his horse carved just above the door. In one ruined building are six World War I era howitzers. One is dated 1916 and labelled "4.5 Inch Howitzer Mark I." Another is dated 1918 and labelled "4.5 Inch Howitzer Mark II." A third has Russian labeling. They all look the same and I am guessing they are British made, at least one for the Russians during World War I, and somehow they all were acquired by the Portuguese military.
There are great views out to sea and around the fort. Just offshore is a very small island turned completely into a small fort, which you are not allowed to visit. The interior of the main fort is quite large, but was teeming with Indian tourists on that Sunday afternoon, and some of them were a real pain, grabbing me and insisting on photographs. I usually accommodate those who ask politely (though that can get a little tiresome), but those, mostly young men, who just grab you and insist on a photo I often refuse, though they keep grabbing you and insisting. I have to say that while I have met many nice people in India, Indians in general are not my favorite people, compared to, say, southeast Asians or Africans or Latin Americans. Not as bad as Chinese, but that's about the best you can say. My reaction is pretty much typical of other western tourists here. I've been told that southern Indians are kinder and gentler, so I'm looking forward to reaching the south eventually. Of the 120-130 countries I've visited, I've only had a negative reaction to Chinese and Indians (with many individual exceptions), which doesn't sound so bad, until you realize that together they represent about 40% of the world's population.
I didn't have enough time to explore the whole fort before it closed at 6. I sat outside on the fort jetty for a while, looking out at the blue sea and getting my photograph taken, though eventually I refused to get up to be photographed. After sunset I walked along the seafront facing the mainland to the north to the center of town. There were lots of Indian tourists in town for the weekend. Lots of Gujaratis come to Diu to party as it has alcohol while Gujarat is dry, but I haven't seen any drunkenness. I went back to O Coqueiro for dinner and had a delicious fish and coconut curry on rice, plus another banana lassi.
The next morning I was out before 8 (sunrise is about 7:30, I think) and was quite comfortable in only a tee shirt. I walked along the southern seafront, passing a small beach, then exiting through one of the three gates in the city wall and walking to and along another, longer beach further west. The beaches, of brownish sand, were relatively clean, and very clean for Indian beaches. I turned around and came back to the city wall and walked north along the outside to the central Zampa Gate, painted red with carvings of lions, angels and a priest on it, and reentered the city. I walked through the narrow lanes of this tightly packed part of town, filled with old buildings. Again, the streets were relatively clean, although there was some garbage and a few cows. Bent over women with little brooms were sweeping here and there (India does not seem to have discovered the long handled broom) and the streets were not noisy and clogged with traffic. It was pleasant to walk along them, something very unusual in India. There were, however, some motorcycles coming through and invariably honking. I was talking to a German woman who has been coming to India for about 15 years and she said the worst development in her opinion has been the profusion of motorcycles.
Many of the buildings are painted in bright pastels and some are quite elaborately carved and painted. A couple had lions and soldiers and other figures carved on them, along with fruit and vines and other designs, and were painted in perhaps seven colors: blue, green, yellow, reddish orange, white, black and brown. As I was looking at one old unpainted house of three stories, a man invited me in and showed me around. He told me it was 230 years old. The front room contained old furniture, an old photograph of his mother and father and a bust of a king of Portugal. He told me he doesn't speak any Portuguese and showed me the contents of the big wooden cabinets along one walls. Inside were various old knickknacks, along with old coins and stamps. Most of the stamps seemed to be from Portugal and Mozambique. He had some very old, pre-colonial Indian coins, as well as coins from Britain, France and the United States. One of the silver US coins was dated 1795 and must be quite valuable if it is genuine. Upstairs were rooms with more old furniture and on the floor a row of framed photographs of Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, his father Motilal Nehru and a few others. Judging from Nehru's relatively youthful appearance, they may date from the 1930's.
I walked to O Coqueiro and had a leisurely breakfast from about 10 to 11 and then spent a few hours, during the hot part of the day, at an internet cafe. I had a late lunch at a restaurant on the seafront, eating a Kashmiri naan, which is bread filled and topped with fruit, nuts and cheese, and it was very good. At a nearby ice cream shop that makes its own ice cream, I had three scoops, rum raisin, date almond and saffron pistachio, all very good. From there I walked along the seaside to the fort and spent the end of the afternoon there. It was far less crowded than on the previous Sunday afternoon, but there were still quite a few people there. I wandered around and eventually climbed the highest bastion, in the center of the inner wall. Atop it are cannons and a lighthouse originally built in 1897 but reconstructed several times since then. You can climb the inside spiral staircase to near the top and I did so, enjoying the great views all around. The lighthouse is about 50 feet high and the top of the bastion is about 100 feet above sea level. I got an excellent view of the double line of walls, each with three bastions, and moats to the west and the town beyond, including the three big white churches. There is a wide expanse of open ground between the outer moat and the town.
Leaving the fort at 6 when it closed, I sat on the fort jetty until about sundown and then walked back to town, with a stop to see the end of mass at St. Paul. The mass was in English, not Portuguese, with about 25 in the congregation, including three nuns in white. Lights lit up the blue and white ceiling and walls and in the apse behind the altar were strings of little blue lights. I had dinner again at O Coqueiro, this time caldo de camarao, a soupy shrimp and vegetable Portuguese dish served over white rice, and a papaya lassi.
I was out and about about 8 the next morning, walking to St. Thomas (the museum) and St. Paul to see their east facing facades in the morning light. I had breakfast at O Coqueiro and then walked through the narrow lanes of the western part of the city, near the city wall. I made a more extensive walk than I had made the previous day and saw more old buildings, some brightly painted. One building, perhaps containing two separate homes, was very brightly painted on one half, with painted figures and designs on the facade, while the other half was a unpainted and in need of restoration, with weeds growing on portions of the building. It got fairly hot after about 11. The newspapers I've read here report highs in the low and mid 90's in nearby cities, with lows about 60. Perhaps Diu, being on the sea, has temperatures a bit more moderate. There is usually a very nice sea breeze.
I ate lunch at O Coqueiro about noon and then spent the hot part of the afternoon at an internet cafe. About 4 I walked again to the fort and explored the westernmost wall (the outer wall) and the moat between it and the inner wall. There was a little path in part of the scrub filled moat, which was completely dry. The outer moat has a solid rock bottom, no vegetation, and a bit of water in it. There were great views from the bastions and ramparts of the outer wall, with a few cannon here and there. It really is an impressive fort. As usual, I ate dinner at O Coqueiro, fried calamari. I can certainly see why people, myself included, tend to spend more time in Diu than they plan.
I slept till almost 8 the next morning and then walked to the fort about 8:30. I wanted to see it in the early morning light. I was also hoping it would be fairly deserted at that hour, but it was not. I walked around a bit and then climbed up the lighthouse atop the highest bastion to enjoy the great views. With the sun to the east, the views to the west towards the town and its churches were good, as was the view down to the western walls and moats. I stayed up on the lighthouse until it closed for the morning at 10.
I headed to O Coqueiro for breakfast and read newspapers and magazines there until noon. I spent the afternoon at an internet cafe until the connection failed and then again walked around the narrow lanes of the old town. I had a late long lunch at O Coqueiro and then walked around town a bit before dinner at, yes, O Coqueiro.
The next morning I arrived at the fort about 8:30 and for almost an hour had it pretty much to myself, along with the parrots, pigeons, crows, squirrels and the guy who lets you into the lighthouse. I walked around just a bit before climbing the lighthouse for the great views. The sun shone on the green backs, wings and tails of the parrots flying below me. Five fishing boats, one after the other, made their way from the strait between Diu and the mainland, passed between the two forts, and headed south into the Arabian Sea. Not too far out the stopped and, I assume, began to fish. Buses of tourists started to arrive sometime after 9 and I left the fort about 10, walking along the cliffs overlooking the sea just west of the fort and along the southern shore (the usual approach to the fort is along the northern shore of the island), before circling back into town.
After a late breakfast at O Coqueiro, I rented a scooter for all of about $4, plus $3 of gas, and headed out of the town through the northernmost gate and along the Arabian Sea until I reached a little seaside temple called Gangeshwar only about two miles from town. It contains five flower-covered Shiva lingams in a shallow cave right by the sea, with the small waves at high tide washing into the cement floor of the cave and wetting the lingams. I watched the pilgrims scooping up handfuls of the seawater to pour on the lingams and then take photos of each other in front of them.
Inland from the temple about 700 feet are two Parsi towers of silence. Parsis are Zoroastrians who ancestors fled Persia (Parsi means Persian) for India at the time of the Arab conquest in the 7th century. They dispose of their dead by leaving their bodies in towers to be eaten by vultures. I'm guessing these towers are no longer in use as I was able to enter the walled compound and go up into the towers. The biggest one, on a slight hill, is circular and made of stone with an opening about halfway up reached by a ramp. Inside is a stone floor with a circular pit in the center and grooves in the stone floor, perhaps to drain blood into the pit. The tower is open to the sky. There were no signs of any use. The other tower is smaller, down the side of the hill, and filled with rubble.
I continued west through the little towns of Fudam and Malala to a seashell museum with several thousand shells collected by a sea captain from all over the world over several decades. They were interesting, as was he. I continued west along the sea and passed through the beach resort of Nagoa, with a fairly nice beach, hotels and lots of tourists, most if not all Indians. Not much further (the island is only seven miles long) I reached the town of Vanakbara at Diu's western end, with lots of fishing boats, including some under construction. I headed back to Diu city, with a stop to see a memorial to a ship and its crew that went down after being torpedoed by the Pakistanis during the 1971. I got back a little before 5 and got something to eat at O Coqueiro, took a little walk (stopping in again at St. Paul to see the end of mass), and came back to O Coqueiro for dinner. There are some interesting fellow tourists here in Diu, some who have been here for a month or more.
I spent the next day in Diu, not doing much. I didn't even make it to the fort. I read, walked around town just a bit, spent time at an internet cafe, and relaxed. I stopped in at the ice cream parlor, had four scoops of ice cream, and talked to the owner. It was started in 1933 by his great grandfather, and he pointed out to me on the wall photos of his great grandfather, grandfather and father, the first two with impressive mustaches. He told me they make their ice cream in the nearby village of Fudam. He had a Portuguese flag in the parlor and spoke some Portuguese, but said he wasn't of Portuguese descent. At the bus station I talked to an interesting Indian man who has been living in Zimbabwe since the 70's and was back in Diu for his father's final illness and funeral. I had my final dinner at O Coqueiro and then went back to the ice cream parlor for my final two scoops of ice cream.
Thank a lot for this post that was very interesting. Keep posting like those amazing posts, this is really awesome :)
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