Steven Raucher's World Tour

2000-12-17 in Daman, India
The Road to Bombay

�is the busiest road in India! It�s true, it really is.

National Highway Number 8 is The Grand Trunk Road and there is nothing grand about it bar the sheer volume of orange trucks and the suicidal drivers that accompany them.

The Lonely Planet tour guide warns that it is near impossible to do more than 200kms per day in India. Perhaps they would like to hear of our 650 km run from Udaipur to Daman. We did not quite make Bombay, which was still another 180 kms down the road. At about 4pm we realized that we faced a serious problem: the following day was my birthday and the Province of Gujarat is a �dry� state and I don�t mean the water either! Well, thankfully Robert did some fancy footwork armed with 3 maps and a GPS and found Daman. A remote former Portuguese colony on the way down to Bombay � it was also the only place to get a drink for 200 kms.

The tourist board of Daman chose their words carefully when they called Daman a �coastal resort� as all the beaches are a medley of black mud, rocks and litter. Don�t get me wrong: we were happy to spend the night there. As we arrived at sunset we did not see the beach and were just happy to eat fresh seafood and drink cold beer. It is the simple things in life that we all yearn for.

And that is really all I can say about Daman. It is a boozy pit stop for those in need of some severe inebriation.