Whenever we discuss a holiday near the beach, it is always Goa that wins the maximum votes.
Be it for the shacks, the food or the night life, people vouch for Goa because well, it makes for great Facebook albums. But to me, Goa feels like too much of a good thing and nowadays, a little boring too. So imagine my excitement when, over the last few weeks, every time I opened my Facebook account, there were ads that invited me to a picturesque Diu from every corner of the screen.
The union territory that is connected to Gujarat through a tiny village called Una, is hosting ‘Asia’s longest beach festival’ for one and a half months. I was intrigued – Asia’s longest? Beach festival? Was it anything like Sunburn or NH7?
In my quest, I started to plan a trip to the Festa De Diu.
The Beginnings of a Festival Diary
Turns out, the festival is confined to an area in Nagoa Beach that has luxury tent accommodations with facilities like food, king-size beds, television and spas. Within the same complex, is a large ground with a stage set for live music concerts every night; people who have booked the tents get to watch live performances by Indian artists like Indian Ocean, Neeraj Sridhar, Shreya Ghoshal, etc., from a vantage point. The rest of the tourists also get to enjoy these concerts, albeit from a different spot in the grounds.
Since I am not a believer of going to a new place and then staying restricted to a pitched tent, I travelled to the Portuguese town like any other tourist.
Diu has a lot to offer, to both the usual traveller and the ones living it up in the luxury tents. The beautiful, sparkling sea, the clean roads and the pollution free air are just some of the pros of a historically rich town.
However, the local tourism could do with ironing out some things to make Festa De Diu a more rounded experience than just the exotic tent living. Here are our observations:
Food and Chatter, Inside Museums
When we entered the Diu Museum, (which was initially St Thomas’ Church), the staff didn’t even look up at us. They were busy eating their tiffin. Inside the museum. Next to the several ancient statues of Catholic saints. If that wasn’t a sad state of affairs, they were also talking in high pitched tones, in complete disregard to the sanctity of a museum. While I was upset to view the cacophony inside a space that is meant to be quiet, it is tough to imagine what a foreigner would take home as a message.
The Disregarding of Heritage
The Naida Caves – believed to be cut out by the Portuguese to build the Diu Fort – are breathtakingly beautiful with rays of the sun playing hide and seek all across the cavernous piece of architecture.
While I was gaping at the sandstone rocks with their strange patterns and maze-like paths, there lay in front of us, quite bizarrely – a large set of clothes hung on the ancient roots of a tree. A little exploration further inside the caves and we realised that maintenance work was underway – and the construction workers had strewn their belongings all over the place!
Interestingly, the caves are also being used for concerts (in addition to the Nagoa Beach venue) so it is currently seeing a lot of tourists. It really is unfair on these amazing rocks to be hidden from view just because the workers didn’t know their worth.
The Unfortunate State of Litter
Litter is mostly a problem of the masses, not the local bodies. They can bring in any amount of rules but at the end of the day, tourists need to follow them. However, this festival is being celebrated between December 1 to February 15, and at least for these 45 days, keeping the monuments and beaches clean should be imperative.
A magnificent structure like the Naida Caves – which is also a venue for live concerts during the festival period – has beer and water bottles strewn about it at regular intervals. One wonders – if the first edition scores in cleanliness, it will go a long way towards the success of upcoming seasons.
Difficult to Access
For those not travelling by air, Diu can be a bit of a struggle. The nearest railway station is Veraval which is 90 km away. Buses take a good two to three hours to reach Diu and it can be a little too much for those who have elderly family members or babies – particularly since the roads are pretty bad.
Also, if you don’t have your own car, travelling within Diu is difficult, especially after night. With a beach festival that has concerts at night, we found it quite bizarre that no public transport plied after 9 pm. People had to either book a day-long cab or just get back to their hotels by that hour. There were quite a few visitors who found this a buzz kill to the fest they had been promised.
A few buses to cover the festival circuit would have been perfect.
Our verdict is, Diu is a charming town, waiting to be explored, but to make the well-marketed festival a success, it is important to iron out these issues.
(Runa Mukherjee Parikh has written on women, culture, social issues, education and animals, with The Times of India, India Today and IBN Live. When not hounding for stories, she can be found petting dogs, watching sitcoms or travelling. A big believer in ‘animals come before humans’, she is currently struggling to make sense of her Bengali-Gujarati lifestyle in Ahmedabad.)
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