Eclectic Read: Gujarat

Ahmedabad on 12th January

In the evening of 12th January, I took a Volvo bus from Vadodara to reach Ahmedabad. During my expensive (a low budget traveller would consider taking an AC bus to be expensive) bus journey, I took a look at the Gujarat map to plan a little bit and decided to visit a tourist office for The Rann Festival booking.

On reaching a bus stop in Ahmedabad, I went through another bewildered situation.
I asked a lady regarding my destination and took the bus to the place she mentioned. It's pretty hard to catch a local bus with rucksacks on your back and front as the buses do not tend to stop for more than three seconds.
Once I got down the bus, I asked an auto-rik driver about my destination. I was taken aback at his reply that I came all the way opposite to where I was supposed to reach. Lesson learnt - Ask multiple number of humans about a place even if the first person sounds very confident. It was already near 8 pm and I didn't have the energy to go through another bus ride for the tourist office. Plan procrastinated for the next day.

Another problem that Ahmedabad created for me was the unavailability of CS hosts.

I asked the middle-aged driver to drop me off at a decent hotel with moderate tariff.
The Grand Eden Hotel turned out to be pretty grand. With the 3300 rupees out of my pocket, I couldn't think of staying for more than a night there.

13th January, 2016

The next morning, I decided to take a bus to Modhera for a Dance Festival after a city tour in Ahmedabad.
After the complimentary breakfast and check-out, I approached the nearest auto-rik. The man was greedily brave enough to ask for 800 rupees for a city tour. And I was ignorant enough to bargain just by 200 rupees.
He was a nice man apart from the fact that he charged me double of what was to be paid.
Lesson learnt - Check for city tours in the city or ask the locals regarding the tariff.

Below are the pictures of

A picture of

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and

Kasturba Gandhi in Sabarmati Ashram

A temple

Sidi Saiyyed Mosque, a lady isn't allowed to enter a mosque.

I did enter to get a good view of the semicircular windows covered by mesh

popularly known as 'Jali' but soon told to get out by an old man.

Adalaj Stepwell or Adalaj ki Vav

Kankaria Lake

Soon, the good news of the availability of a CS host arrived. Bandish already had two couchsurfers reaching his place. I told him about my struggle to find a host before he showered his generosity to host me. I was exhilarated and decided to stay in Ahmedabad for the Kite Festival.
After the tour, I reached Bandish's place at the same time when the other two CS guests arrived - Caroline and Matt. Bandish lives with five others in a huge apartment.
Caroline, Matt and I were given a room for our stay.

After a short conversation, three of us decided to go out for lunch at a bistro suggested by Bandish. I had a chicken shakshuka for the first time along with a cup of tea. Tea was just to relieve myself from the nascent stages of cold I had gotten.

A siesta seemed to have deteriorated my throat and deprived me of my voice. Missed out on a Poetry event.
The impending night was worthwhile when all of us went for a group walk to see the market place during the Kite Festival preparation. If one enters the crowded streets of kite shops, it's hard to stand still to take a good shot. People would be buying good number of kites and holding them up to save them from getting damaged, youngsters would buy noisy plastic toys to whistle, small stalls of creams rolls and other street food are necessarily present including people like us to observe the action and take some good memories.

The walk ended with a discussion about individual observations and experience, some snacks and hot tea.

14th January, 2016

The next day was all about Kite Festival - kites and Chinese lanterns.
Bandish took us to the old city of Ahmedabad for kite flying. After trying once, I was sure to consider it a skilled sport which it might be. The morning passed with all the hard work to successfully fly a kite. The evening was all about Chinese lanterns in the sky.

Below are the pictures of