Ahmedabad.
We arrived at the best time and place, you couldn’t plan it better. Right on check-in time and ten minutes from your hotel. We didn’t even have to haggle with the Tuk-Tuk driver.
But…
Where are we?
For three weeks we have travelled ever further from Delhi, not just the kilometers. As we wade through the traffic and turn into Relief Road, without any sense of relief, we wonder: ‘Have we just gone in a circle and found ourselves in an even worse suburb of Delhi?’
Our street, indeed for four blocks around our street, is the ‘car repair district’. My own conception, not a real designation. The small businesses that do all kinds of vehicle repairs in this area have a very small shop, the workshop of which spills out into the street. The Alka Inn had managed to secure a small stairway at the back of one of these street workshops. As we heaved our cases from our Tuk-Tuk, it was hard to see how we could reach this small staircase that led to the lift-door entrance to what was to be our home for the next three days. We did manage to weave our way through and once out of the compact, oddly shaped lift we found ourselves at the check-in desk.
Our booking had been cancelled, but we did not respond to that cancellation, believing that there would probably still be a room for us. Not only did we still have a room but the price was reduced by about a quarter for a room that until that time was probably the best we’d had so far in India. Not a place you’d want to hang out, but clean, comfortable and with a good measure of natural light.
Ahmedabad was only on our itinerary, because we wanted to avoid a longer journey. There are a few of those stops on this India leg and each time we researched them they proved to be part of that, as we’ve now come to regard it, the ‘UNESCO world heritage scam’. Ahmedabad doen’t have a UNESCO world heritage ‘site’ as such, the city itself has been granted UNESCO world heritage status. On the map there is also the Sabarmati Riverfront a very tempting place for a stroll and the ‘iconic Atal bridge’. We found it near impossible to access the Riverfront, when we did , we found ourselves barred from the footbridge and with no easy escape from what now felt like our riverfront prison. Despite the UNESCO designation it is only a very small part of the city that contains buildings actually labelled as worthy of preservation. Aside from a very small number of them the only visible attempts at preservation are the plaques themselves.
Ahmedabad, didn’t have much for the tourists, although it does have the swanky ‘Green House’ were we took most of our meals and some of the most honest Tuk-Tuk drivers we have met. We had concluded that the absolute minimum fare you could expect was 100 rupees and only after hard bargaining. When a driver straight off quoted us 40, we thought we’d misheard. There was still one who refused to take us the same distance for less than 500, but here they were the exception.
Another pleasant surprise was at the print shop. We’d decided it would be nice to have a stamp to make it easier to share our website with people we met. We popped into Ajanta Stamp and enquired how long it would take. Vaibhav said he could do it in two hours. After he’d found the graphic we liked he also offered to let us see how it was made at his other office. I’d say we were no more than half an hour until we had our stamp. When we went back to the shop to pay, we were told it was a gift and we could not persuade Vaibhav to take any payment. We are very grateful for that gift and have used it often.
On our way back from the visit to the stepwell we even had a taxi driver hail us a Tuk-Tuk and tell the driver what he was to charge us. Ahmedabad, for all it felt like a step back into the hell that was Delhi turned out to be very pleasant host to us. The stepwell and the Gandhi Ashram were well worth the visit, but most of all the people were honest and friendly.
