Exploring Ahmedabad

Today I nearly got married but our plans were thwarted by logistics of conference transportation............

This morning Laura and I went on a walking tour of Ahmedabad which was fantastic. Laura is from Warwick but lives in the Czech Republic and we met on the first day of the conference and are now best friends for ever! You know how I am, but she really is a winner - we really clicked. Anyway, as I was saying..we took a really wonderful walk around the city which is beautiful. Housing communities are separated by caste, with each community having a gate (or at least an archway) a noticeboard, and a bird feeder. The bird feeders are fairly large structures, and are simply a reflection of the Jain and Hindu influence of tenderness toward all living things. Even the dogs on the street here are fairly well loved. In one of these communites we saw three houses next to one another - one from the Mogul Empire, one Persian, and one British - all adjacent to one another. Our guide was a beautiful man called Neo (as he said just like the Matrix) and as we passed a store he grabbed a little green turban and adorned his head with it, explaining that this was the hat one would wear for a wedding. However, he explained he just needed to find a bride to which Laura goaded me into inviting a proposal. So Neo and I decided to go and get breakfast, but the tour organizers wanted us all to come back together so ah well....my Indian 3 day marriage is not to be.

We visited Jain temples, Hindu temples and Mosques, found monkeys right in the middle of the city, in these tiny alleyways that we explored and let me tell you camels now seem blase since seeing an elephant in the street today! Children followed us, not asking for money, but asking for 'just one photo' - they love us to take their pictures and then show them their images on the digital screen.

We wandered through Manek Chowk, the largest market in Ahmedabad where everyone wanted to talk to us and give us gifts. Eating the fruit unwashed is a bit sketchy so we tried to put them off politely, but when one vendor handed me some limes, I gave him a rupee to say thankyou, and he promptly handed me about twenty limes. At one point, a group of men pushed us along a side street saying "photo" and we found ourselves at a beautiful small temple in a tiny Pol. Suddenly the hustle and bustle was gone and we quietly sat for a while enjoying the peaceful ambiance of the courtyard.