Day #4 - Diu - Somnath - Navibandar - Junagadh

Wednesday, September 7, 2011


The Hoka Island Villa  is a nice little hotel/guest house /villa/ resort or whatever you want to call it... either way... it's nice. The ambiance is lively with colourful walls and impressive art - in fact when we first checked in last night we were given a choice of rooms... not that the facilities were any different... just the colour of the walls. We were probably the only other couple in the resort too! 


I love travelling off-season!


The hoka island resort is named after the unique 'Hoka - Branching Palm' tree found in this region.


After dinner we took a leisurely walk to the Nagoa beach and sat there for a while.The place was deserted. We tagged it for The borderline Drive. 


I love travelling off-season!!


As we left the Hoka Island Villa, this morning, the operations manager Virendra Singh said that he had just seen a weather bulletin on BBC that there was a flood alert in Jamnagar... that is where we were headed for the night. We promised to be careful and took off... decided to take-it-as-it-comes.


As we were leaving the Hoka - a local Chhakada came here with the daily supplies. 


The Chhakadas run on modified Royal Enfield engines, are available for travel within the town and surrounding areas... they kind of reminded me of the Pahat-phati's of Old Delhi - but those were Harley Davidsons - these are more desi!






We tanked up, taking advantage of the 'cheaper' fuel rates of the Union Territory of Diu we headed back into Gujarat and the lousy National Highways. Like I said before the state highways of Gujarat are better maintained... but our path for the day was along the NH 8D.


After a brief stopover at Somnath beach (near the shrine Eternal - one of the twelve Jyotirlinga shrines of Lord Shiva), we had lunch at Sukh Sagar. The menu did not have any Gujarati stuff so we asked them to make something special and they came up with Tamatar sev, Undia, Lassoni Alu with some Bajra roti and rice.


After lunch we headed on to NH 8E Extn. - how's that for a nice long name for a National Highway. I really can't get it.. why not give it another name. It reminded me of a classmate of mine (from kakinada) with his long name - SSVS Subramaneshwar - I'm sure somewhere in the name was his father and grand-father.


Along the scenic beach road which almost touches the water we found that the road had windmills that were vigorously turning away thanks to the rain and "a storm near Pakistan". 


Probably the flood alert was right... lets see.




As we crossed the bridge at Navibandar - just before Porbandar (the birth place of the Mahatma) we were brought to a grinding halt. The road in front of us had been partly washed off and there was no way of getting to the other side of that. A few trucks made it towards us and they all said - "no chance... you will get stuck. There are huge boulders in the road and the causeway 3kms ahead is also flooded with water of about 3 feet running across it. Better turn around!"


So our plans of reaching Porbandar, Dwaraka and Jamnagar were abandoned and we drove all the way back to reach Junagadh's Hotel Harmony for the night.






Harmony Hotel is a jazzy and kitsch and gaudy... the rooms we like that too. The hotel itself is located in the top floor of a Prisam Shopping Complex (Prisam - kindle note the spelling) and is also 'proudly' attached to the 'finest dining restaurant' in Junagadh.


I tried the 'fried idly sambher' on the menu and it was awful - they deep fry the idli and put it in a bowl of sambar. Wonder what fascination the Gujaratis have for idli and sambher. This was only for tasting/testing... we had some other stuff for dinner that was good - nothing Gujarati was on offer though. Ramu (from Nepal) was our waiter/host for the day and he took good care of us.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Madhuram Hotel in Somnath has a complete package for any Religious or Business Holidays; we do have facility of Multi-cuisine Pure Vegetarian Punjabi, Chinese, Continental, and South Indian & Gujarati Kathiawadi.

Unknown said...

Hotel Maheshwari one of the bestBeach hotels in diu located in Upper West Side Neighborhood, Close to Nagoa beach.All Rooms Running Hot,Cold Water Fully Furnished, Intercom,T.V. Channels,Doctor on Call Rental, Air booking, Travel booking. A/c Restaurant With A/C. Bar Facilities.

Unknown said...

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Unknown said...

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