Ahmedabad Old City and more ...

Well, I bet you thought Leslie had run away. I'm still here and in fact although we are writing about Ahmedabad, we are safely in Singapore, having arrived this morning.

The first morning in Ahmedabad we visited the Calico Museum, a very hard place to get into, with bookings needing to be made ages in advance. No piccys were allowed and although we were marched through there fairly smartly to enable us to see everything on view in the time allocated, most of us agreed it was one of the highlights of the trip

First piccy is the view from our hotel room of the Sarbamati River. A huge wall has cut the river off from being viewed at street level by the general populace. The government has decreed that there will be a sort of promenade, but who wants that separated from  the rest of the world? The Hotel Cama there was a lovely old place which was home for 3 nights.

Morning of 2 November saw us walking through the old town with our guide Nirav Panchal. He has a great knowledge of the heritage of the old town as it is his home town and a particular interest of his. You can see his office in high up in part of the old wall. We also saw that goats lived amongst the people there as well as pigeons catered for in a coop like an artificial tree.

Robyn loves her doorways, and we saw a variety of those. She managed to show up the rest of us when she took on the ironing with a huge old iron filled with charcoal, help;ing out a woman in a Muslim part of town.

In many of the towns we saw little squirrels, and Ahmedabad was no exception. We also saw angels as well as other decorations on the houses.  Then, as usual, we sussed out the markets. Spices, seeds and dried fruits abounded along with goats ready for a ride.

Last place on the heritage walk was the  early 15th Century Friday Mosque which was being swept with a broom made from the tail feathers of a peacock.  Again, beautifully carved decorations as well as wonderfully incised stone screens.

As the market is so central to life, we always had to walk through part of it to get to anywhere else, at least that's our excuse. We stopped to admire some very glitzy work and were told it was part of a bridal outfit, and the owner insisted dressing me up in it, much to the high amusement of the other stall holders, and the group.

Another goat later, we were waiting for the shop of Gamthi Wala to open. Inside there were beautiful fabrics many of which were block printed on a fine cotton. Jill and I know what was the most beautiful thing in the shop.

Later that afternoon we visited Ghandi's ashram. It was moving to see the sparseness of his living quarters, his spinning wheel and his few possessions. This made me reflect somewhat on the possessions we had been gathering over our journey. A gentleman was demonstrating spinning cotton with one of the travelling spinning wheels Ghandi used. It folded up into a small box, just the right size for her to purchase, Robyn thought. Unfortunately for her, she never found one. However, she did buy some khadi cloth, the sort Ghandi had woven from his spun cotton.

One evening while in Ahmedabad we were privileged to see a performance of a play (in English, lucky us) that was part of the first Ahmedabad Festival of Arts. The amphitheatre was in part of a private home. How gracious of the family to share their love of the arts with the folk of the city.

The mother of all wells ....

The second serious momument was the 10th century Rani-ki-Vav step well.  

This extraordinary, elaborate piece of architecture, descends 7 stories underground and was designed to serve the caravanserei, the passing merchants - not the local peasants.  It was meant as both a source of water and as a cool place to socialise.  

Amazingly, it was lost until the late 19th century until a there was a subsidence in the local cricket ground .... from an archaeological point of view, I am sure I join with all my kind in extreme envy for such a find!!  Whohhh!!

Our guide is convinced the girl featured in the picture is applying her lipstick.  

Forgot to mention that one of the friezes I included for the SunTemple is a childbirth scene.

Indian Classical Bling - Sun Temple at Modhera

En route to the Gujarati capital of Ahmedabad, we passed a couple of serious monuments which created general awe and wonderment among our group.

The 10th and 11th AD centuries were not shining times in Europe, but something must have been going right in northern India.  There were some serious resources around to invest in some pretty spectacular architecture ...the likes of which probably havn't been seen since in Gujarat.  They were quite a contrast to the simple village and settlement life we have been seeing.

The first is the Sun Temple at Modhera - which was designed so that the sunrise light fell on the statue of the God during the equinox.  It no longer has religious significance because all of the religious figures were destroyed by later Muslim conquerors.  

Note our little squirrel friend - seeing quite a lot of them now.  There were also some bats high on an upper wall - hanging onto some of the naughtier bits of frieze.

Little Rann Safari

Well - we skirted around (and around and around) the edge of the Little Rann of Kachchh in jeep going very fast with a driver who didn't seem terribly intent on finding local wildlife .... we did get a flat tyre and we didn't find any nilgai (blue bull), chinkara, hyenas, wolves or Indian bustards of any size - but we did see a group of beautiful Asiatic ass busily helping themselves to a snack of non-indigenous cotton (much to growers annoyance.)  There are only around 4,000 of them left I think I heard.  We did pass a camel cart going about its daily business, people stooking up corn (or sugar cane?) sheaves - and we did get to visit a remote Rabari community of dairy farmers - a different form of Rabari than those met previously, and very much off the beaten track.

It was milking time when we arrived, around sunset.  Everyone wanted their picture taken.  The process is still magic to them.  Their homes seemed very simple from the outside - not much more than tents with brush fences but a big truck was parked in one of the yards.

One of the things that we thought was magic was what happened after the milking.  Everyone took their milk down to a little corrugated iron shed.  It was Leslie who noted that the corrugated iron shed had solar panels - and then she was intrigued when one of the men showed her the printed receipt he had just been given for his milk delivery.  It included the quantity and price - but there also seemed to be other very professional testing going on by a striking tall tanned man dressed in his centuries old herder's costume, complete with some spectacular gold earrings.

Somewhere along the way we picked up some of the villagers and gave them a lift - and a lot of laughter was had by all as we hung on over the rough and barely visible tracks over the dried out salt marsh.

All in all, wildlife or no wildlife, Leslie and I judged it to be a pretty good adventure.

Leaving Kachchh

I always seem to be a few steps behind.  We are now in Ahmedabad and tomorrow we leave Gujarat altogether and head for Udaipur.  Now, in the last week of my trip, courtesy of our new guide, I am in possession of a mobile internet stick .... which would have been very useful right from the beginning.  Problem is finding the time to use it however.  Tonight we have been very generously taken out to dinner by a friend of the tour organiser for a really top class version of the vegetarian Gujarati thali, after a very full day.

On 28 October we said goodbye to Bhuj and moved on to charming mud hut accommodation at Rann Riders, near the village of Dasada.  Many features at Rann Riders are inspired by the culture of local communities, including the mirror mudwork wall in the dining room.  One of the most charming features of our hut was the alfresco bathroom - open to the stars.  With not a hint of rain the air and the weather still pretty warm, we loved it.

En route to Dasada we met a full camel train progress - a group of Rabari herders on the move ... have a close look at the camels to see all the children and furniture up top!!

Once arrived in the area we travelled around in the Rann Riders jeep.  You can see how much fun Leslie and one of the other tour members were having!!

We loved Dasada - a true rural working village complete with doctor, tailors, potters, weavers and so on.  I bought a bit of bling at the local market.  We were guests in the home of one young women who showed us her collectin of embroideries - not as detailed as we have seen elsewhere but certainly the most sparkliest and most colourful.  There was no running water, fridge or stove in her small village home, but it was absolutely immaculate.

We drove home via the water source for the village, a bit out of town, and met the women at the well ... not exactly the case, but this scene is thousands of years old.

Next blog coming up right away!!

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