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I like to think that I have both a great sense of humor and a fair amount of tolerance…but India is trying really hard to test those two qualities at every opportunity.  Cousin Helen and I arrived in Ahmedabad exhausted from the constant jostling of nine hours of being stared at and touched by other Indian commuters on our train – it’s not that it’s bad, immersion is the whole point, but it’s not what we had prepared for mentally so it tested us.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that we were the only Westerners on the train that day – and probably the only ones taking it on any given day.  But with our lesson dutifully learned, we caught a tuk-tuk from the train station to Hotel Alka – we only planned to stay two days in the city although the Lonely Planet described Ahmedabad as having “old-world charm…fabulous night markets…and a pulsating Indian city.”  Sometimes I think that the Lonely Planet writers must be on something…or they simply feel that they can’t say anything negative about any location – even when it is totally deserved.

There was little charming about the city itself – and I am a glass half-full kinda gal!  I tried really hard to like Ahmedabad.  I swear I did.  But when you couple the city’s rampant smog with dingy, dirty streets…well, I wasn’t loving it.  Our hotel, while quite nice with hot showers and clean sheets, was right across the street from the Indian equivalent of a waste-management system.  By day, the garbage from the immediately surrounding area is brought to this dump and then sorted for plastic bottles by a team of poor Indian women.  The plastic is then removed and presumably traded for money.  As evening settles all of the cows in the vicinity migrate to trash heap and clean up all of the scraps of food and paper (yes, cows here can frequently be seen munching on loose cardboard and newspaper).

And that would be the questionably effective trash system here in Ahmedabad.  While I thought that perhaps this was an isolated incident, my subsequent weeks here have indicated that this is, in fact, the way it’s done in many cities and towns.  I have yet to see any actual garbage trucks or other form of landfills.

There were two redeeming parts to Ahmedabad – Satyagraha Ashram, Gandhi’s ashram, and FabIndia.  We immediately knew that we wanted to make a tuk-tuk ride over to Gandhi’s ashram when we perused the “Sights” section of our guidebook.  The Ashram was biult in 1915 and Gandhi lived here with his wife for much of his life and this is where his followers were able to live by his principles and live away from the hustle and bustle.  There is a Gandhi museum here with pictures of his life and posters with some of his philosophy and quotes.  One of my favorites comes as a part of the core Ashram policies:

XI: Equality of Religions:

The Ashram believes that the principle faiths of the world constitute a revelation of truth but as they have all been outlined by imperfect men they have been affected by the imperfections and alloyed with untruth.  One must therefore entertain the same respect for the religious faiths of others as one accords to one’s own.

Other quotes I liked:

The only drawback to the Ashram was the fact that a group of men began to follow us around within mintues, covertly snapping pictures of myself and Helen on their archaic 35mm film as we looked at the pictures and read the facts.  Once we confronted the picture-takers they begged for “just one picture.”  At this point we weren’t wise to the fact that “one picture” really means as many as they can force you into.  What started as a small group of four guys morphed into as many as a dozen men slowly stalking us as we attempted to go back to looking through the museum.

They forced us to flee the museum and head out to the green manicured lawns of the Ashram.  The women and children here are just as fascinated by our Western-ness but much more easy to handle.  We ended up taking some great shots with a large family of women and children out on the lawn – they were all so very sweet.

Within a few minutes though the same group of men hunted us down and began the slow stalking…then a huge school group of 60 or more children joined in with the gawking.  We took that as our cue to leave, grabbed a tuk-tuk again and headed the driver straight to FabIndia.

Our hopes for FabIndia – that Indian-style dress would be our “incognito clothes” and hopefully help us blend in a bit more.  Considering we both tower over all of the men and women in the country and Cousin Helen rocks the red hair, blending in is a tall order but one we had hopes would work.

We found some awesome deals at FabIndia and had a blast searching through the vast colors and styles of kurtas and saris.  With these purchases we considered our time in Ahmedabad well spent.

Oh, and on our hunt for a grocery store we found a vegetarian McDonalds – sweet!  We snapped some pics with Ronald and ordered up a Paneer Tikka Pita – kinda awesome, kinda disgusting, but it was an experience nonetheless.