As you drive off the dusty NH8 towards the cool breezes of Daman, it's obvious that things in the former Portuguese colony are very different from the forbidding puritanism of Gujarat. Even the palm trees here are freakily fecund. Unlike the singularly lanky palm trunks elsewhere in the country, many of Daman's trees split into a candelabra of branches, each of which sprouts a crown of giant, grasping Congress-symbol leaves.

Bursting with the Mediterranean-influenced charms of Goa, but without the hordes of Euro-laden foreign tourists bidding up the prices, so common to Goa, this picturesque port town offers a revitalising reverie away from big-city reality. The locals, it's clear, are quite taken with the beauty of their little harbour and even now, as you walk through the quiet Tarapur area at dusk, one can occasionally hear old men warbling that ancient folk tune Barra de Damao (Port of Daman): On leaving this port/ on the sands of the beach/ even the stones weep...?

An important link on the sea route between the other Portuguese posts of Diu to the north and Goa to the south, as well as a staging point for ships to Africa, Daman bears cultural traces of both its European colonisers (who didn't leave Daman until 1961) and their possessions in Mozambique and Angola. A history of the region written in 1925 by Antonio Francisco Moniz contained the musical scores of Christmas songs of Daman's black residents. Come on in, Daman seems to say, everyone's welcome.