A huge thank you to Manish, his family and especially Surbhi for making our Ahmedabad experience a wonderful and memorable one. They have arranged, coordinated and mostly paid for everything here for us. A magnificent bunch of warm, beautiful peole who have really welcomed us in and shown us the real beauty of the place.
What a great place. After some tentative sojourns into the scary world out there we have really warmed to the place. The chaos and the colour, the shambles and the smiles, the bustle and the beauty. It is complete madness on the streets. Cars, cows, rickshaws, dogs, motorbikes and people in all directions amongst the dust and the dirt. It is tenfold in the inner city. The road lanes are a rough guide only, red lights and direction of travel regularly ignored, indicators are optional, with the horn and big cahunas appearing to be the only necessities!
The food has been extremely delicious and as always we have well and truly over eaten. I'm sure we all have an inabilty to say no or stop shovelling food into our mouths disorder of some kind. After eating in the hotels, the restaurants and the family homes, three days in and the number twos are still solid, just a bit fiery after eating vegetarian curries for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Did we mention the dust and the dirt? I'd hate to see the place if it ever rained, it would be a quagmire. If only they invested in a couple of streetsweepers (couple of hundred?) the place could be beautiful. The roads, houses and shops etc are fine, but a serious lack of naturestrip and roadside maintenance is the towns only weakness.
It appears that Ahmedabad (or Ahmdavad as the locals call it) is not high on any westerners travel hit list as we seem to be a huge novelty. People everywhere stop and stare, kids follow us around and we regularly draw a crowd. We've even been interviewed by some TV show. Curious locals with the smallest English abiltiy constantly engage us to know where we are from and if we know Ricky Ponting!
After shopping for a couple of days, today we did some of the tourist stuff and saw historic places such as the Adalaj Step Well, Hutheesing Jain Temple, Ghandi Ashram, Sidi Saiyad's Mosque as well as Surbhi's Architectural University that she is most proud of. I mostly enjoyed the driving around through the older parts of town and seeing the streets, the people, the ratty old shops, the slums, beggars and homeless amongst the centuries old buildings and bright colourfully dressed people amongst the dust going about doing whatever it is they are very busy doing.
And tonight we are excitedly looking forward to the big wedding. We are fully prepared to be decked out in full Indian attire and get into the whole experience. It is, after all, the reason we set out on this journey in the first place and promises to be one of the most colourful and exciting highlights of the trip. I'm sure there will plenty of photos to follow.
What a great place. After some tentative sojourns into the scary world out there we have really warmed to the place. The chaos and the colour, the shambles and the smiles, the bustle and the beauty. It is complete madness on the streets. Cars, cows, rickshaws, dogs, motorbikes and people in all directions amongst the dust and the dirt. It is tenfold in the inner city. The road lanes are a rough guide only, red lights and direction of travel regularly ignored, indicators are optional, with the horn and big cahunas appearing to be the only necessities!
The food has been extremely delicious and as always we have well and truly over eaten. I'm sure we all have an inabilty to say no or stop shovelling food into our mouths disorder of some kind. After eating in the hotels, the restaurants and the family homes, three days in and the number twos are still solid, just a bit fiery after eating vegetarian curries for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Did we mention the dust and the dirt? I'd hate to see the place if it ever rained, it would be a quagmire. If only they invested in a couple of streetsweepers (couple of hundred?) the place could be beautiful. The roads, houses and shops etc are fine, but a serious lack of naturestrip and roadside maintenance is the towns only weakness.
It appears that Ahmedabad (or Ahmdavad as the locals call it) is not high on any westerners travel hit list as we seem to be a huge novelty. People everywhere stop and stare, kids follow us around and we regularly draw a crowd. We've even been interviewed by some TV show. Curious locals with the smallest English abiltiy constantly engage us to know where we are from and if we know Ricky Ponting!
After shopping for a couple of days, today we did some of the tourist stuff and saw historic places such as the Adalaj Step Well, Hutheesing Jain Temple, Ghandi Ashram, Sidi Saiyad's Mosque as well as Surbhi's Architectural University that she is most proud of. I mostly enjoyed the driving around through the older parts of town and seeing the streets, the people, the ratty old shops, the slums, beggars and homeless amongst the centuries old buildings and bright colourfully dressed people amongst the dust going about doing whatever it is they are very busy doing.
And tonight we are excitedly looking forward to the big wedding. We are fully prepared to be decked out in full Indian attire and get into the whole experience. It is, after all, the reason we set out on this journey in the first place and promises to be one of the most colourful and exciting highlights of the trip. I'm sure there will plenty of photos to follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment