Booze out in Daman

Yesterday Valentin and I went to Daman to enjoy our free day there. Daman is a small former portuguese colonial town and around 30 kilometers south of Valsad. Actually Daman has not much to offer, there is not much left from the former portuguese flair and the beach is as dirty as in Valsad. The water quality must be of its finest around as Daman profits from its close situation to Vapi which just scored number five among the 10 worst polluted cities in the world. So the water must be full of chemicals toxic waste produced by all the chemical factories in Vapi. For sure a delicious cocktail. And this is what Daman is famous for, not waste water cocktails but alcohol in mass.

Gujarat the state where I stay at the moment is a dry state, means selling and consumption of alcohol is prohibited by law. But this does not mean that all Gujarati’s are clean, in fact some of them are worse drinkers than people elsewhere what becomes apparent when you are walking into one of the numerous bars in Daman. It is all about alcohol consumption but unfortunately there is nothing like clubs or so.

So after boozing here and there and having some really good food it turned 11 PM already. We came to know that now busses would be available this time. There was no life on the streets, no Rickshaw were inside and some people in front of the bar told us that we’d not be able to go back this night. But in fact we had to return as today (Sunday) is a working day and we had to be back to office by 8:30 AM. So we started walking towards the main Rickshaw stand of Daman not knowing how far it would be. After some minutes of walking a white Honda with loud music and two boozed guys stopped next to us. The guys were asking us where we’d be going and offered to carry us to the main Rickshaw stand. First they did not seem to be that much drunk so we got to the back seats also because we were lucky that there was someone to carry us we did not care much. After some meters already it turned out that both the guys where totally shit-faced. We just thought fuck, how can this dude still have control over his car.

Well somehow, I still wonder how, we arrived safely at the main Rickshaw stand. Luckily nobody was out on the streets. From the Rickshaw stand we had to take a Rickshaw long way back to Valsad what turend out to be quite expensive. So fortunately our well drunken driver sponsered us half the price for the ride back to our place.