Beachside New Year

Alas, we've finally made it to the beach! Never has there been a more welcome sight than a long strip of sand and ocean where we can rest and swim away the grime and dirt accumulated from the general Indian atmosphere.

The Indian people also celebrate new year (though they call it something different) and the small island of Diu has been totally packed out with Indian tourists, mainly due to the ready availability and cheapness of the beer and other alcohol. Every bar and hotel have been full and the Indians know how to drink, chasing most beers with half pint glasses of dodgy rum or whiskey.

New year was a total blast and we are sufficiently rested to continue on down the coast.

Christmas In The Hills

Trying to seek out a bit of the cooler weather we associate with being at home for christmas, we headed off to Mt. Abu, a tiny hillstation on the border between Rajasthan and Gujarat. It definitely had that holiday feeling albeit not a very festive one. It's the winter holiday for all of the Indian people too and loads head to Mt. Abu for the cheap and readily available alcohol and beatuiful scenerly.

I'm not really sure you could really class it as christmas as the Hindu's don't really have any concept of the christian calandar, but we managed to sneek in a christmas curry with six other europeans pining away for a proper christmas dinner.

After a quick stopover in Amdavad (our first stop in Gujarat) we headed down to small pilgramige town of Palitana, probably the most important holy site for the Jain religion in the world. The climb up 3700 steps rewarded us with over 700 intricately carved temples probably containing tens of thousands of buddha effigies.

With new years looming we are plannig to head down to the ex-portuguese island of Diu in the far south of the state to catch up on a bit of beach-time.