Rest day in Sasan Gir National Park

 Today is  a rest day and it's also my birthday. With the time difference I got to wake up to many nice messages from lots of people via text, email, facebook, Whatsapp, Messenger etc . It's so great being so far away but in such easy contact with everyone.

This place is very much a rest break.  There isn't much to do apart from walk, swim and eat in very lovely surroundings. The hotel seems to be connected to some sort of farm / nursery which is developing different types of mangoes, including seedless ones. Unfortunately it's not quite mango season yet .

Last night we walked a bit around the hotel and local village. There is some quite intensive agriculture around here. I don't recognise all the plants but there seem to be many fields of some sort of legume. The restaurant, like all the ones we've been to in Gujarat, is purely vegetarian, not even any eggs, so I presume most of the food they cook is grown around here.

We haven't seen any lions but there is a crocodile in the river just by the restaurant. Unfortunately it's a bit far away to show up in a photo but we can actually see it. 

Given that this one isn't behind bars in a zoo I think I may forgo the photo opportunity. However we did walk along the river this morning and Tarun assured me that he'd save me if the crocodile attacked (not sure how) and told me that it is only a big lizard anyway!

There are a few concrete animals in the garden here, presumably to make up for not seeing the real ones.

The river walk was nice, even if it was a bit stressful keeping an eye out for crocodiles. Local women were washing clothes in the river. They were scrubbing really really hard on the rocks so I can't imagine their clothes would last very long at that rate. I asked Tarun why it was only women and not men who carried stuff on their head and his answer was 'because only the women want to be models.' Really!!  I can always trust him to come up with some answer even if he doesn't know.

The temperature here is in the mid 30's, even at 5 pm so we have spent quite a bit of time in the pool. This afternoon I was joined by 8 young Indian men and I was the only one who could swim! As yet I haven't seen an Indian woman swimming in any of the hotel pools we've had. Tarun's swimming is improving every day and he is really good now.

Tomorrow we are off to a place called Diu which is a very small island off the coast . I believe it was Portuguese until about 1961 or thereabouts , so I'm not quite sure what to expect. Every day is a surprise!