Daman, (nearest town Vapi, Gujarat, half an hour away), is a nice little Union Territory 6 hours from Ahmedabad. Easily accesible by all means of transport (especially rail, as Vapi lies on the regular Mumbai-Surat-Ahmedabad line), this place is worth a visit if you've exhausted all the standard places of interset in and around Mumbai, or if you stay in Ahmedabad or Baroda, which means you have nowhere else to go.
The first thing that stands out about this place is that every second shop, literally, sells booze. Every restaurant is a restaurant-and-bar, and the wine shops are inescapable. They almost invite you to step up and have a cold one for the road. Which is not a bad idea, cause the weather's muggier than one can tolerate.
In case i didn't mention it so far, this place is on the coast, and has a couple of decent beaches. The first of these, Devka , is 10 minutes away from the main town,Moti Daman, and is full of beachside hotels and expensive restaurants. This is, in fact the reason most people go to Devka, and the beach dosent get very crowded. A bit rocky at places, and the sand quite dark, it may not be the most attractive beach you'll ever see.
A note of caution: Travel with gujjus like I did. The more, the better. The hunt for cheap hotel accomodation took the better part of the forenoon the first day. At the end of it, I had given up and was ready to stay anyhere. Thats where the my companions took over and continued the search. We started hunting at Devka and quickly realised that that was the upmarket part of town. Back in the main town, the costs were much lower and after some serious hunting, we found a real good hotel room, comfortable and cheap. Hotel Gurukripa it was called, and here comes the best part: it had a midnight menu with room delivery (and 'wine', obvously), which went well with our plans for that night.
The other popular beach, Jampor beach, is farther away from the town but should not be missed. The road to it from the town passes over a bridge which was rebuilt only recently after getting knocked down in a storm a few years back, and dosent allow any motor vehicles over it except two wheelers. This means that the quickest way to get to Jampor is to walk to the bridge from the town and take a rickshaw after that. But i strongly recommend walking all the way. On the other side of the bridge lies Daman Fort, and cannot be enjoyed in any way other than by walking through it. More on the fort in a while. After the fort the road passes through a rustic expanse of small houses, palm trees and more wine shops. Now around 5 kms. away, it took half an hour to walk to Jampor, and the walk itself was quite pleasant, except in the hot afternoon, and that was when we did it.
Oh well, you can't do everything right. But you can have fun while not doing it. And thats what we did. The walk was long, but we got to go to the un-crowded part of the beach, away from the people and the wine shops. This would be a good time to introduce another peculiarity of the Daman beaches. In most beach resorts, you time your visit to the beach depending on whether it's hot outside or if it is populated by those worth watching. But here, you go depending on the tides. And the tides here are crazy. In the afternoons, the water recedes so far back that you can barely see it. Nah, just kidding. But recede it does. The deeper we went into the water, the more it kept receding. After an hour of chasing the tide and ingesting salt water, we got up to leave. The beach was long and good, and the sand was nice and fine. And not black.
Now hot and hungry as hell, we went to the more crowded parts for a place to grub, and saw that there was only one hotel. Only one hotel in that whole stretch, and as monopoly rules, the lesser said the better. Back in the town, we found a good restaurant, called Nana's close to our hotel. Good food, good range of cocktails and decent amience. A bit stiff on the wallet, but we didnt really care. trudging back to the room, we crashed like trees, Timberrrr! We got up a few hours later but were too lazy to go anywhere just then. The TV came to our rescue. Still later, we decided to sample the 'nightlife'.
Daman visibly improves in the night. The weather finally tolerable, with the sea breeze and all, the roads were crowded with shoppers, revellers and weirdly dressed men in unmentionable professions. Armed with my second wind that day, I get my lazy fellow travellers to walk a bit, and walk we did, all the way to Devka. The journey was good, this time, and walking on the beach, with the water in a spate of high tide and the sky full of stars was more than worth it. Later, we headed back to the town to grub some more, and were happy to find that the area around our hotel was full of decent eateries. A good meal later, we stockedp on supplies for the night. Again, enough said.
The 'morning' after was uneventful. Arguments over where to go next and the TV ,(the right combination of trip-wasters) took up whatever was left of it. Lunchtime came to the rescue, and matters of the stomach took priority. We would have made Pavlov proud. Anyway, the restaurant attached to our hotel, Daman Delite was really good, and like our lunch the previous day, left us quite empty of wallet. With only a couple of hours to spend before our train, we walked to the bridge not far from the town. Instead of walking over it, we decided to enjoy a touristey boat ferry to the other side. The fort handsomely overlooked that channel, the purpose for which it was built.
Here's a short history: captured from the local ruler by the Portuguese, they strengthened it and held onto it till independence. The inside of the fort was like a piece of history come alive. The churches and memorials were very well preserved, and the ancestral houses were quaint and attractive. The fort itself enclosed a little town, and we felt real stupid for not spending more time over it. A lighthouse at the top tier of the fort overlooks the entire seaface of Moti Daman, where the Daman Ganga river empties into the sea. after taking in the view for some time, we head over to the church. A textbook baroque Portuguese specimen, it was large and well preserved.
Then came the time to leave. A rickshaw back to Vapi railway station takes around half an hour and 20 bucks per head, and that was what we used.
Almost like a little Goad all in itself, Daman is, as i mentioned, a neat little place worth a visit. Nuff said.
Sid
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