Ahmedabad

Date arrived: 1st November 2023

Date Departed: 6th November 2023

Favourite sight: Dada Harir stepwell

Average Cost: £47.94 PPPD (But there is a reason!)

Ahmedabad is a modern megacity that mixes spots of unspoilt serenity with the noise and chaos that will, I suspect, come to define India for me. Read on to learn what we loved and loathed (?) about what is comfortably the maddest place I've yet been!

1st November

Having arrrived at Tbilisi airport early, and waited a patient 4 hours for our IndiGo flight to board, the last thing we needed was a 2 1/2 hour delay while we sat at the gate, awaiting "completion of some paperwork" - but that was what we got. Having planned our day around being ready to sleep as we boarded our 00:35 flight, to then not get underway unto 03:00 made us a little overtired, so sleep was not forthcoming!

The upside of this was that we arrived at Delhi with a 3 1/2 hour layover, instead of the 7 hours we had been expecting. We grabbed our luggage, cleared immgration, and managed to traverse the massive Indira Ghandi International airport in good time, and check in with 2 hours to spare for our onward flight to Ahmedabad. This time was easily killed with some breakfast, and then a mooch around the airport to the gate. 

And then - Ahmedabad! Collecting our luggage and leaving the airport, we were straight into the 35 degree heat that I think signifies the real start of a holiday to most British people. Having done some reading, I had an Uber account all set up, and managd to quickly organise a taxi to our hotel in the centre of this city of 7 million souls.

Okay. The next part requires some explanation. Ahmedabad was the main host city of the 2023 Cricket World Cup, and was about to host an England - Australia match, as well as 2 more heats, and ultimately the final of this tournament. That's right, a Cricket World Cup, in India, in a city with the worlds largest stadium - the 132,000 seat Narendra Modi Cricket Ground. This meant that hotel rooms were thin on the ground when we booked, so we'd gone with the best that we could find, but been slightly nervous - nay, trepidatious - prior to arrival.

We were right to be so.

The hotel itself was pretty ropey, situated as it was on the 2nd floor of a concrete "shopping centre" with an external concrete spiral staircase, and a tattered look. There was a lift to the 2nd floor reception, and after taking our passport details and requesting us to fill out a register, we were shown to our rooms. This involved going up the external staircase to the 4th floor (the lift stopped at the 3rd) then into the unlit bowels of the building, to a flimsy door in a dead-end corridor. We opened the door to a horrific smell of damp mould, and a room almost entirely filled with a double bed, The single window was covered with a filthy blind, and the walls stained with moisture. We nervously opened the door to the bathroom, which was genuinely filthy.

So this explains why, 30 minutes later, we completed another Uber ride to the Radisson Blu hotel on Ellis Bridge, with 5 nights secured at what must have been a last-minute-grab-a-cancellation rate. It was still rather more than we had allowed for in our "India" budget. Fortuitously, we'd arrived here earlier than planned, so still had a week of the slightly higher Europe budget left!

Four our first week in India, we would, it seemed, be easing ourselves in gently :-)

2nd November

Okay... time to try and get to grips with India a bit. When you step outside the air-conditioned calm of the Radisson, you walk through a gate which leads straight out onto a busy main road. There's no pavement. It's nominally 2 lanes of traffic on each side, with a central barrier separating the two halves of the road, and there is a set of traffic lights barely 60 feet up from the gate - but honestly, there are cars, vans, busses, Tuk-Tuks, mopeds and cyclists flying past in quantities you can't quite credit, and with a noise level that is phyically painful at first! Oh, and just as you start off looking right, somebody comes the wrong way up the carriageway to take you by surprise. I mean, they don't take you by surprise because they beep at you repeatedly - but so is everybody else, and it's a bit tricky to pin-point the exact source of the beeps sometimes!

We'd been 50 metres up the street to find a place for dinner last night, so we realised it was a case of walking at the edge of the road and trusting the vehicles to avoid you - which they do - but it was still a culture shock. We turned a corner onto a wider street, but a slightly more pedestrian friendly one, with a pavement, and wandered about 500M until we found somewhere to eat breakfast. This comprised small toasted sandwiches and Chai. Mmmm. Chai is goo-oo-ood.

From here we aimed for a park - the Law Gardens - and amazingly found ourselves in a genuine haven of tranquility in the midst of the chaos. This was also my first experience of the locals wanting selfies with foreign vistors! Slightly confusing at first, but you get used to it after a while.

Okay. It's 11AM. We've walked about 1KM, but no more than 400M from our hotel, and Amhedabad is vast. The nearest Metro stations are about 2KM away, and neither of us was quite ready to face that yet today. This was where we realised that the only way to cover any real ground in this city would be with wheels - and as Uber now offers Auto Rickshaws (Tuk tuks), we went with that. We ordered an Uber-Auto to the Gandhi Ashram, about 5KM away - and about 2 minutes later, he pulled up looking for us.

An Ashram is a collective living environment based on religious principles, and the establishment that Gandhi set up on the banks of the Sabarmati River in 1917 is now maintained as a monument to his life and his work. It's a peaceful place amidst the noise and movement of Ahmedabad, and the small museum of Gandhi's life is informative - and moving. We learned a lot, including some basic facts we felt we should have known - and it prompted us to do a bit more reading into Indian independance and the hstory of the partition. I would say it is very much worth visiting, although there are several other museums dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi, none of which we have yet seen to compare it to.

I think the  poignance of the place can be summed up by saying that I only took one picture in my 2 hours-or so here.

From the Ashram we took out new favourite friend, Uber-Auto, and went back to the good old Radisson. Well, actually we went to a cafe next door where we had some lunch, but from there it was straight back to the haven of western calm.

We braved the streets again for dinner that evening, going to an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant with a fixed menu. This seemed like a good way both to explore a little of the area, and to give ourselves another induction into the local cuisine. Ahmedabad is not really a tourist city, so we were moderately confident that the food being offered was aimed at Indians, both Gujaratis (Ahmedabad is in Gujarat state) and perhaps other domestic visitors vistiting this megacity. 

Interestingly, Gujarat is a dry state, so there was no alcohol available. It's also largely vegetarian, so whilst we did find the odd meat dish on menus, they were few and far between. We've largely embraced this so far, and are not suffering from it at all.

3rd November

We set out today with a mission. Firstly to explore the metro, and secondly to visit the Narendra Modi stadium to collect our tickets for the next day's cricket match. We identified the nearest metro station and plotted a route to it that included a nice sounding breakfast spot. Initially this worked well, as we found the restaurant and enjoyed a good breakfast of waffles and pancakes! Ahmedabad has a good food scene, which definitely stretches way beyond traditional Indian dishes. 

It went wrong when we tried to get to the metro. I mean - we got there, and we could see the metro station and the elevated line some 25M above our heads - however the road to the station was currently a building site, in what seemed to be quite a major piece of construction. Looking at maps, we realised that there were (apparently) no easy ways round for some distance - so I opened the Uber app once more...

We got to the stadium in our taxi (a rickshaw was more expensive for this distance) and the process of collecting the tickets was quite straightforward. Go to gate; get sent to different entrance; go back to original entrance; pose for a selfie; go through gate; go to ticket desk; pose for several selfies; retrieve hat from overzealous child; hand over ticket info, passport, proof of residency, blood sample, tissue sample, give fingerprints and DNA; pose for more photos; get tickets. Simples!

Our initial plan from here had been to take the metro into the old town, and explore somewhat, but we had our plans changed for us by the Calico Museum of Textiles. This is a strange but clearly substantial organisation that appears on every "must-do-in-Ahmedabad" list, yet only allows one guided tour group to visit the facility each day, which must be arranged by email in advance. Julie had contacted them months ago to request a tour, and neither of us had heard a thing from them until 10 o'clock this morning, when they said we had a place on a tour at 2.30PM, so to be there for 2.15 sharp.

So that changed our afternoon plans! We did manage to get on the metro from the stadium, and bought rechargeable metro cards, and made it to the nearest station to the Calico museum. This was still a couple of KM away, and in an area that seemed a little dodgy to us at this stage (day 3 in India remember) so we tried to reach out to good old Uber again - but with no joy.

We eventually managed to flag down a non-Uber rickshaw, and proceeded to have our first rickshaw price negotiation with a non-English speaking driver, in a combination of map-pointing, finger counting, and grabbing another passing driver to help him understand where we wanted to go - which did actually work!

The Calico Museum takes up a whole city block, and comprises a 12' high outer wall dotted at intervals with several substantial wooden gates - all of which were firmly closed. We managed to find a security guard behind one of them, who pointed us to the next gate down (of course - did we mention it's 35 degrees out here?) where we found an Australian couple sat on a bench outside the firmly closed gate. They had knocked and been told they could come it at 2.15 and no sooner, so we joined them for a 5 minute wait, and chatted a little about our respective reasons for being in Ahmedabad.

I'll admit, the museum was extremely well organised, and really quite interesting. They had our names on a list, and took everything from us except the clothes we were stood in, as no cameras, bags, bottles, or indeed anything, are allowed into the facility. This was all bundled together and given a tag, entered into a register and signed for, whereby we were given a matching tag with which to reclaim it. We were led through a beautiful woodland area up to one of the museums buildings, and once again experienced that strange sensation of being in an oasis of calm beauty in the midst of the greater madness.

As we were shown around the textile museum, I will admit to being slightly more interested in the incredible architecture than in the centuries old textiles, including silk mahorajah's tents, clothing, rugs, throws, saris, suits, and all sorts of genuinely very beautiful textiles. They were all stored in darkened rooms, and as the tour group of 8 or so was shown round, gentle lights were turned on to allow us to see the displays, and rapidly turned off afterwards. All of the fabrics were covered in plastic, and hung or laid out carefully to show them off and minimise damage.

We were led round all of this by an Indian lady who spoke excellent English, but had an entertaining habit of proclaiming each separate sentence, pausing for dramatic effect, and then moving on to her next proclamation. We did learn about the textiles, although I feel there may now be  shortage of exclamation marks in Gujarat.

I also got chatting to Chris, the Aussie, who was somehow unaware that our great nations were meeting in battle the next day in this very city. I suggested to him that tickets may still be available to buy - it's a bloody big stadium - but he was unfortunately booked on a train to Vadodora at 9 the next morning. This may be relavent later:-)

We were 2 1/2 hours at the Calico museum, so a quick Uber call later and we were whizzing back to the Radisson for a well earned lie down - at least until I proclaimed that it was time for dinner! We took a tuk-tuk to a nearby hotel with a well rated restaurant, where we were actually put on a table with another British couple - in this case, here for the cricket match. Nice food and a bit of unexpected chatter followed, especially when we realised they were here for 3 months, so had a similar plan to us.

4th November

So I think the least said about the actual cricket match the better, however it was certainly a very interesting day! We used the long day at the match as an excuse to have a naughty room-service breakfast (fancy pants, I know) and then set off in plenty of time to get to the stadium for the 2PM start. We located another metro station that we were reasonably confident we could make it to on foot, and did actually manage this, although it ended up with a few errors and re-traced steps along the way.

It turns out that Ahmedabad has two big North-South dividing lines, namely the river and the railway line. There are half a dozen bridges over the river, but actually fewer than that over the railway. As the North-South metro line basically follows the railway (but 20 metres above it) you might think that the brand new Metro (opened in October 2022) might have built it's stations with entrances on either side of the line. But no - it didn't! This was the second time we had arrived at a metro station only to find an impassable walled-in railway line in the way, and this time had a detour of almost a mile to get to the other side.

Anyway - we did it, we got the train, and we got to the stadium in loads of time. Cue various shenanigans about what you can and can't take in to the ground:

• Julies's comb - apparently an offfensive weapon.

• My bag - not allowed. Easily gotten round by putting it inside Julie's (much larger) bag. Obvs.

• A tube of lipsalve. Fine at the first two checkpoints, but a banned and dangerous object by the third!

Once this was all sorted, we eventually got into the worlds largest sports stadium - and I have to say, it's quite impressive!

So... England didn't exactly cover themselves in glory for Julie's first live cricket match, but it was a close-enough game to be interesting. And remember the Aussie couple we'd met who were on a 9 o'clock train this morning? Yep, we bumped into them at the break, having changed their plans to come to the match. At least their team won!

General observations were that the atmosphere was pretty good, and the mostly Indian crowd were certainly participating in the game! I'm not sure how much difference the absence of alcohol makes to this kind of event (I suspect it made England's slow and dragged out early batting performance even more painful for us) but the game was definitely interesting.

We ate a mini-Dominos pizza before the start, and then had a paneer wrap from one of the numerour vendors running around the seats in the stadium throughout the match, selling Pepsi, iced tea, Dominos, crisps, and even popcorn. It was certainly very different to a day at the test-match in Headingley!

The process of getting out of the ground was reasonably painless, although slow. The metro normally closes at 10pm, however they had provided a Special Paper Ticket which you could buy for use on CWC match days, when it remained open for the holders of these tickets. There was lots of queueing, but it was well managed, and the Indian cricket fans were very polite and interested to talk to us - and to make sure we knew which stops we needed to get off and where to go afterwards.

All-in-all, cricket result aside, it was an excellent day, and definitely a worthwhile experience.

5th November 2023

As this was our last full day in Ahmedabad, we decided to explore the old-town part of the city, and look at a number of monuments we had read about. We'd already visited the two "must see"sites - Gandhi's Ashram and the secretive and difficult to visit Calico Museum of Textiles - but that left us with a number of forts, mosques and, most intriguingly, an ancient stepwell that we wanted to see.

We tuk-tuked to the first detination, the Bhadra Fort on the edge of the old town - and OMG was this the moment for culture shock:

• Imagine the busiest place you've ever been. Perhaps trying to get into a huge stadium gig, or the finish line of a major sporting event.

• Now double the number of people. Yes, that's impossible. That's the point.

• Now add mopeds and motorbikes slowly forcing their way through the crowds, because this throng of humanity is actually covering a road.

• Oh, and make it all noisy. Really, really, noisy. Add market-vendors shouting to draw attention to their wares; the constant beep-beep of mopeds trying to clear a way through; the revving of 2-stroke engines whenever a gap opens up. Add people trying to have phone conversations, shouting to make themselves heard over the general din, and then double all of that because India is a NOISY PLACE. 

If you can do all that, you're probably somewhere near the experience of the Laal Darwaza street market, which is held outside the Bhadra fort. Bear in mind that this was the last Sunday before Diwali - so like the last shopping day before Christmas at home, and that goes some way to explaing why this craziness continued for almost half a mile, straight through into the nearby Bhadrakali Mandir market, and out for some distance along the Gandhi Road.

And the weirdest thing about all of this? As we gently eased our way through the crowds towards the ancient fort we'd come to see, we stepped through the open portal between 8 foot wide walls, and it all just went away. Within a matter of feet, we moved from chaos to calm, and found ourselves pretty much the only people in this solid 15th century bastion. Oh, we could hear it all, and see everybody outside, through the gate and over the railings, but the juxtaposition of calm to chaos was just insane!

From the Bhadra fort, we travelled very slowly through the crowded street/marketplace, posing for a few pictures along the way, and also keeping our eyes open for a new bag to replace my satchel, which had broken a catch. We visited a few significant monuments, including the storied Teen Darwaza, a 15th century gateway into the Bhadra fort built by Ahmed Shah, the founder of Ahmedabad. Like the market place, this was absolutely teeming with humanity, and was actually quite challenging to traverse due to the never-ending throng of people Tuk-tuks, carts and mopeds coming through.

We also visited the Jami Masjid mosque - built in 1424 - and whilst we found it, we were unable to find a way inside! I'm sure the buildng is beautiful, but externally the maket place has built up around it to the point where we could barely find it.

Similarly challenging to view was the Rani No Hajiro tomb complex, a little further out from the Teen Darwaza and the the fort. This ancient tomb of Ahmed Shah's wives is completely surrounded by a city block, with substantial buildings on 3 sides and a maze of smaller houses, lean tos and market stalls on the 4th. By persevering to spiral our way inside, we did eventually discover the beautiful monument within, and climbed a set of steps to reach a columned portico. From here we could see the inner courtyard through lattice screens, but also see the bolted and padlocked gates at each cardinal point.

This was an intriguing monument, and it was clear that whilst the city had gown right up to (and perhaps slightly beyond) it's edges, there seemed to be some kind of invisible line where the encroachment stopped and the monument was left in peace. One exception to this seemed to be a small family who were sorting through some things at one corner of the portico. As we were peering through the intricate lattices at the inner courtyard, a small girl of 12-13 years old left that group, and approached us, jingling something metallic. Embarrasingly, we assumed she was trying to sell us something - but no! She actually had the keys to the inner courtyard, and was offering to let us in to look!

Our "guide" proceeded to tell us some of the history of the place, and whilst she wasnt speaking English, we picked up a few bits. She also communicated, somehow, that we could take 1 photograph each of the coffins, placed in the centre of the square in the open. We were not allowed to take a photograph of her! This definitely felt like quite  a special experience, having this ancient place opened up just for us to explore.

From Rani no Hajiro, we made our way further east through the old town of Ahmedabad, stopping on the way at a beautiful Jain temple, as well as the Julta Minara mosque. All that remains of this 1450s mosque are two minarets and the arched gateway that connects them. As well as being the tallest minarets in Ahmedabad, they are famously known as the shaking minarets, as any vibration of one of them causes the other to vibrate in turn. We didn't experience this, as a modern mosque has been built around the monument - but we did take some pictures.

From the Julta Minara, we made our way up past the busy central train station and stopped for a Thali lunch at a very 'local' eatery. We had a really delicious combination of Chick-Pea curry, fresh rotis, Dal, and also a deep fried donut ball for the princely sum of £1.50 each. 

From here, we made up our minds to visit one more monument before heading back to the hotel - in a tuk-tuk - and fortunately decided to visit Dada Hari's stepwell. Stepwells were a relatively new thing to us, and I had recently read of them and seen pictures, and was very keen to visit one in the flesh. This example is not well known - although ironically was recently the scene for a photoshoot of the Australia and India Cricket teams , along with the Cricket World Cup trophy - ahead of the final in Ahmedabad.

Stepwells are traditionally built by Indian noblewomen - Maharanis, concubines, and other wives of Mahorajahs - for the betterment of their people, and comprise a deep hole cut down to the water table, with series of steps of varying complexity to allow people to reach the water. This particular one was built in 1485 by Dhai Harir, a household lady of Mahmud Begada (I think one of Ahmed Shah's wives) who also commissioned a mosque on the same site. After her death, a mortuary was built for her and other ladies of the dynasty, which is still there now. This is another example where pictures speak louder than words.

This stepwell was definitely a highlight for us - and it was a real pleasure to see if showcased on the TV in the CWC final just two weeks later!

From here we got a rickshaw back to our hotel, and quite lazily ate in the Radisson's buffet restaurant that evening!

6th November 2023

Our last day in Ahmedabad! We re-visited a favourite breakfast spot, and then checked out of the Radisson, jumping in a taxi this time (Uber, of course!) to head to the station with all of our luggage. The biggest challenge was then to find our carriage on the absolutely massive train to Udaipur! I would guess it was at least 20 carriages, and something like 500M long, and gave us our first introduction to these behemoths that transport millions of Indians the length and breadth of the country every day.

This being our first Indian train, we had invested a princely £11 each in first class berths (1AC, as they are known) and requested a Coupe, or 2 bed compartment. Our request was granted, and we found our way to our own private compartment, with a closing and locking door in the one First Class carriage on the train. We also took the opportunity to explore  the "2AC" and "3AC" compartments for future trips :-) From here it was just a matter fo relaxing for a mere 6 hours until the train delivered us to The City of Lakes - Udaipur!