India – Ahmedabad

I checked out of the Treebo Paradise this morning. I’ve stayed in worse places for sure but good riddance was top of mind.

As the sun rose I noticed something new. The large tree across the street was being swarmed by a group of about 20 long tailed Langur monkeys. One of them left the tree and sat on a wall outside the Treebo.

I hadn’t seen monkeys in my wanderings yesterday but they were out in force today. And not only at the Treebo. In the afternoon as I headed to the station I saw monkey troupes all along the cross town ride.

Today I travel to Jaipur via an overnight sleeper train. At the station I went upstairs to an elevated walkway that crosses the stations 10 tracks. I had several hours to kill so I camped out there. The walkway had a good view of the station activities and a cool breeze so I settled in. Soon a large monkey troupe appeared. Yesterday when I scouted the station I noticed several dog packs had claimed parts of the station as their territory. Today I see a troupe of monkeys claiming the same territory. It seems that dogs, people and monkeys share the same physical world but each have their own semi-private social spaces. The dog and people spaces intersect peaceably enough with people sometimes feeding dogs but mostly they just go about their lives independently from one another. It’s a different story with the monkeys. Monkey-dog and monkey-human social spaces have larger less peaceful overlaps.

The monkey troupe moved with menacing grace and skill through the steel structure of the train station. Once one dog spotted monkeys he called in his pack to give chase. The commotion woke up a another pack across the track and they all joined in chase. The monkeys took easy evasive action, you could feel the distain in their movements. Most travelers at the station gave little more than a side glance to the action. An exception was a lady resting on the floor with her kids. Mom jumped up and came to the aid of the dogs. She charged the monkeys tossing her shoes at them as she ran. I suspect she has history with monkeys. A couple times the dogs got close to a monkey but never quite caught one. I don’t think they wanted to deal with the consequences, they just wanted a good chase.

Waiting at the station I checked on Carolyn’s location to verify she make it home. She had! Find my friends shows she’s 8522 miles from Ahmedabad. I also noticed that Zita is in Covington Louisiana some 8577 miles away and I realized that to walk the shortest path to Carolyn I’d head west but the shortest path to Zita would be to had east. That’s a pretty nice indication I’m about half way around the world. I googled around to verify and found this site. https://www.geodatos.net/en/antipodes/united-states.

Thanks to Vishu and Shubhangi I’m pretty confident I’m in the right place and have the right documentation for the train to Jaipur. They said all I need is the voucher PNR number and my passport , which I have! And unlike air travel you board the train without any ticket or ID checking nonsense. I just get on, find my bunk and wait for someone to come by checking tickets after we’re rolling.

I had a bit of a timing problem after checking out of the Treebo. My train doesn’t leave until 5:40pm so I’m stuck lugging my suitcase and backpack with me pretty much all day. That didn’t sound pleasant as It’s hard enough getting around even without dragging a bunch of attention getting dead weight.

Last night I found a nice solution in an ad from a fancy hotel. The House Of MG (MG stands for a couple names long enough that even Indians don’t want to be repeating them all day) offers a auto-rickshaw tour of old city Ahmedabad. Auto-rickshaw is what they call tuktuks when they’re trying to be fancy. It worked great. I checked luggage with the hotel and had a great tour through the alleyways and chaos of the old city returning to the hotel for a nice lunch and coffee.

The House Of MG is an elegant old place and at close to $100 a night it’s very expensive by Indian standards. The place has a large footprint but only 36 rooms. They were cool with me hanging out drinking coffee that afternoon and as a bonus most everyone spoke some English and a few spoke quite well.

Tuktuks are fun. Definitely the best way to explore Ahmedabad. My tuktuk ride took me through the old city. It’s a colorful, crazy, super active place. Lots going on in every direction. I stopped for a coffee and just stared at the traffic and listened to the sounds. I let my eyes defocus and just sat there for awhile. It felt like staring into a campfire. Mesmerizing.

Learning to drive here would take some time. I’ve not seen anything quite like it before. Driving rules exist but it’s not clear looking from the outside what they are. People nominally drive on the left side but that just a suggestion. I’d say at any given time 10% of the traffic flows on the opposite side. They drive much like we walk in a crowd. Honking is a big deal and the sound of it is almost continuous. It’s not an angry honk though, it’s more like the honking we used to do when I drove a fork lift in a factory. It’s just giving the other drivers a heads up on your intentions. Many vehicles encourage this with painted bumpers that say “Honk Please OK”.

Little things like crossing the street are very challenging. You basically just dive into the traffic and let it flow around you. I saw this old blind man cross the street. Total chaos all around as he slowly made his way from one side of the street to the other. Motorcycles, scooters and cars were constantly within a foot or so all around him for the journey.

I learned that the old city is 65% Muslim and 35% Hindu while the percentages swap when you look at the whole city. There’re mosques and temples everywhere. One synagogue and I didn’t see any churches but I’m pretty sure they are around somewhere.

Oh, I saw a really cute scene on the tour. I tried to get a photo but I was too slow. There were several cars trapped in traffic and this dog leaped up onto the roof of one, rolled onto his big and stuck all four paws into the air in a luxurious stretch.