India – Vadodara To Ahmedabad

We left Vadodara early morning for a relaxed couple hour drive to Ahmedabad. I’d arranged for a room at the Treebo Maher in Ahmedabad and our plan was to go straight there get settled in and go out again to explore the town. It was great having our own driver and car. Thanks Shubhangi and Vishu!

Named streets and addresses are an evolving concept in India which made it a challenge to find the Treebo Maher but we did. I was in for a surprise when I attempted to register. They had our reservation and plenty of rooms but wouldn’t give us one. After a bit of fumbling around I learned that this hotel wasn’t licensed for foreign guests. Who knew there was even such a thing as a locals only hotel? More fumbling around and the Tree Maher staff was able to move our reservation across town to the Treebo Paradise which was licensed to accept foreigners. Events are more likely to unfold as planned in India than Mexico but not by much but on the upside people are better prepared to improvise. The staff at the Maher was quite helpful even though English was definitely not the best language for this interaction. Another ride across town and our driver found the Treebo Paradise and got checked-in.

I found the combination of poor quality and staff officiousness annoying at the Treebo Paradise. Several times I found myself complaining but the truth is the dynamic range of hotels and pretty much everything else in India is huge. Looking at the bigger picture the Paradise is towards the top of the range.

It’s been fun traveling around India as a couple in part because we are treated as celebrities. The celebrity treatment would definitely get old but for a few days it’s kind of fun. Folks everywhere approach us and ask to have their pictures taken with genuine Americans. Sometimes they even thrust babies into our arms. We had similar experiences in Russia and Mongolia last year.

Carolyn started her long journey home at 3 am this morning. I dropped her at the Ahemdabad airport at midnight. From here she flies to Doha and then starts the long 18 hour flight to LAX. Yuk!

I headed back to the Treebo Paradise to get a nights sleep and I woke to see the sunrise over a nearby building. It’s a mess of a building like many others in India. India constantly reminds me of the Dylan lyric “He not busy being born is busy dying”. In every direction there’s a fractal like blend of birth and death.

I went upstairs and had a breakfast of reheated rice with unidentifiable vegetables, stale toast and instant coffee. Oh, and a kind of banana that was pretty good.

I then took an Uber across town to the central train station to verify whether yesterday’s attempt to purchase a train ticket to Jaipur worked. Speaking with a train guy at the station I verified some level of claim to ride the train but it’s not clear if the claim is strong enough to allow actual boarding. Every interaction here is full of ambiguity. The guy says my emailed ticket confirmation is all I need but the text of the email instructs me to use the confirmation to get a paper ticket. I hope/think I booked an overnight sleeper for Jaipur. I’ll find out for sure how that goes tomorrow.

Wandering the streets around the station you see life everywhere. People, birds, dogs and cows are the most obvious. Women in saris and headscarfs carrying 100 lb bags of cement to men mixing and forming it into big bricks which are dried onsite and used to repair and extend older collapsed sections of the station.

The construction of buildings while they’re in-use reminds me of an old Larry Niven sci-fi book where these guys are driving across town in a vehicle that’s constantly being repaired and improved as they travel.

In addition to the cement carrying women I saw other examples of women performing pretty hard labor while men watched.

At the station there’s an elevated walkway across the many train tracks. It was a surprisingly peaceful place especially compared to the activity below. The walkway had a nice cool breeze, snoozing dogs and a good view of the station chaos below.

The large majority of dogs in India seem healthy. I think you don’t last long if you’re not. I wondered how the dogs find food and I was surprised to see that in addition to scavenging they are actively fed by strangers. I watched this guy walking up the stairs of the walkway stopping at each dog and depositing a handful of a dried food snack in front of each dog. The dogs politely accepted the food without even getting up and unlike dogs at home they don’t immediately gobble up the food.

I expected beggars and vendors to be constantly trying to get something from me but that hasn’t been the case in Ahmedabad. Ahmedabad is a city of 8 million and sort of laid back. I’m guessing it’ll be more intense at my next stop of Jaipur.

I grabbed a tuktuk or auto-rickshaw ride across town to the Calico Textile Museum. It’s reported to be worthwhile tourist site but I was shocked to learn that you need to make a booking 4 weeks in advance! Failing to get inside I tuktuked across the river Sabarmati to the Ghandi Ashram.

Tuktuks are definitely fun!

Carolyn and I visited the Ashram yesterday. I returned to get a little piece and quiet while I decided what to do next.

From the ashram I went in search of a coffee shop. You’d think that’d be easy but no. I did find several places that bill themselves as coffee shops but don’t open until 11 am. What kind of coffee shop is that? So I walked to the Metropol Hotel, which while not outstanding is a much nicer place than the Treebo Paradise. I stayed there a couple hours and had some coffee, a small bowl of ice cream and took some trip notes. Both the coffee and ice cream were tasty. India offers a much more advanced ice cream than coffee culture.

Driving and walking Indian streets can get crazy. Here’s a video snippet from our ride Uber ride last night to a Valentine’s Day dinner.

So far I’ve walked 20,000 steps today. That’s pretty good for me. Most of the walking was along the banks of the Sabarmati river opposite from the Ghandi Ashram. It’s a rather pretty walk loaded with romantic couples, lazy dogs and kids laughing with me.