Ahmedabad – Desperation and Delays

We didn’t have too much to report on Ahmedabad until we were about to leave. To us it seemed an ugly uneventful city that doesn’t look after its citizens (or at least it doesn’t hide them away from the few tourists that visit).

Touts

We arrived at the ungodly hour of 4.30am and alighted drowsily onto the platform. Awaiting us, stake-out style were two touts looking to make a quick buck- unfortunately for them they were barking up the wrong tree with us! We don’t like being constantly pestered and harassed by touts (who would?) but when they skulk along the platform cruising incoming trains for foreign faces, especially our faces that really gets out goat. It’s not like they have your best interests at heart or even the best deals, they, in our experience, are mainly there to extort from you. White skin = dollar bills. They are on the platform to be the first in line to rip you off. We had to threaten to call the police to get them to leave us alone and even that wasn’t enough to make them disappear altogether, we could see them waiting up in the shadows on the ‘Foot Over Bridge’ that we would have to cross to reach the exit. Stalking their prey, warning away the competition, did these aggressive tactics ever work for them we wondered?
On exiting we walked from the station to flag an auto rickshaw who would take us to the hotel district for a reasonable price, but even he would not leave us alone after our drop off. He followed us into every hotel hoping to claim a commission from the hotelier for recommending their hotel (even though he hadn’t). This is what we are faced with at every town we roll into with bags on our backs. Sometimes it’s not so persistent, if you have energy to engage with them (you need energy as this is never a one-on-one situation, hordes of drivers come at you, mainly engulfing Malachy, pushing me aside, one or two will try to engage me, if I respond that will add a few more to my attention) it’s possible to actually get a good rate in a decent guesthouse from them, they know everywhere in town (one that’s not in the Lonely Planet, thus the rates may still be reasonable, availabilities possible and standards not yet dropped!). But more then likely the hotel they recommend will probably be priced a little higher to accommodate the tout’s commission. Our usual ploy to avoid the touts is to walk away from the station and its long line of tuk-tuks, undoubtably to the cry of ‘Where are you going sir?’, ‘which hotel please?’, ‘Ma’am do you need a hotel?’, ‘10 rupees only to take you to any hotel’.
Now ten rupees is cheap and may seem like a tempting deal but the driver probably won’t bring you to the hotel you are looking for, but the one he wants to gain a commission from. So we walk a little, sometimes telling the touts the name of a hotel that’s around the corner according to our map, to prove that we don’t need a taxi (although they’ll still offer to drive you there- ‘very heavy bag ma’am’). Sometimes it’s a good idea to check our bags into the train station cloakroom for 10 rupee a bag for 24 hours; especially when arriving very early in the morning, or into a place we know is going to be busy, thus lacking accommodation. There is nothing worse than trawling through a new town with heavy bags on our backs and little sleep, the perfect ingredients for an argument!
On this fine morning in Ahmedabad we chose to bring our bags with us, walk away from all the touts inside and outside the station, told them we were staying in Moti Mahal, a hotel two minutes away and flagged down a tuk-tuk from the road. On seeing this the other drivers flagged our driver down and had a chat, which is why I think when we got to Relief Rd., our destination, he wouldn’t leave us alone, as mentioned before, following us into all the hotels.
Unfortunately accommodation was scares, after trying a few hotels we opted to pitch myself and the bags on a bench while Mal, and the stalking tout, did the rounds. Mal reported that the budget options were actually breading grounds for lice and roaches, the LP getting it very wrong. We had to stay in a ‘mid-range’ hotel, triple the budget, but worth it to stay disease free. The mid-range hotels are no luxury stays, the sheets, although somewhat clean are worn down with little stitched patches, the en-suite usually will have hot water, a rare treat, and there is room service and a TV. It was a long morning before we got to lay our heads down at 8am.

The city

We slept the morning and afternoon away, eventually leaving the room due to the grumbling of our stomachs near evening. We were a little worn out from the previous hectic week of Rajasthan sightseeing, desert safari and overnight trains. Our bodies were demanding a little time out. Ahmedabad is an ugly city, definitely not necessary to stay more than a day there. It’s got the usual temples and mosques, but we’ve seen a thousand of these already, and Ahmedabad’s aren’t nicer than elsewhere. But what it has in abundance is homelessness. There are beggars everywhere. The slums occupy the banks of the river for miles. There is a very fancy hotel built on the river, but I’d imagine the view from the rooms to be horrendous. How can you enjoy a luxurious room while being faced with miles of slums? I guess the rich of India can ease their conscious by throwing out a few rupees to the beggars passing their air conditioned cars. I wonder what these slum dwellers think of India’s recent space mission. Are they filled with national pride that their government can afford to spend 80 million dollars in search of water on the moon, when there is no fresh water in the taps of India? These dwellers don’t even have taps; they make their slums riverside so they have somewhere to toilet and to wash. The hassle we received was endless as we crossed the bridge from the old city into the new. Tiny, malnourished, underdeveloped, filthy children and adults were everywhere. They have nothing. The clothes on their backs are just about hanging on. They pull and drag at you motioning their hands to their mouths, as if you need an indication that they are starving.

80 million dollars to check for the possibility of water on the moon, where is India’s social conscious? Your people are starving!

The irony of this is that Ahmedabad is the home of Ghandi’s Ashram.

Ghandi in short

On our second day, we headed back over the bridge to Ghandi’s Ashram. Sorry to report that there is no change in the homeless/begging situation by daylight. The ashram is where Ghandi lived and taught from.

Now it’s dedicated to tell his life’s story and struggle for Indian independence.

He was one tough man, starving himself as a means of peaceful protest.
We learned that at the age of 13 he was married, he was very intelligent, studied law, eventually passing the bar exams in England. He retuned to India, only to leave again and move to South Africa to start a law practice helping the exploited Indian there. After a successful period, home called him back and he began his ashram in Ahmedabad.
Prayer, cleanliness and working for your daily bread were the main principles of the ashram. He championed equality amongst Indians, trying to eradicate the notion of the ‘Untouchables’. He believed in God and in freedom. He fasted in protest of high taxes on the poor, took a vow of celibacy (without first telling his wife, but after they had children), vowed to wear the loin cloth unto his life’s end, finally becoming political when he outwardly challenged the British rule over India in an open letter to the press.
He was found guilty for enticing unruliness, imprisoned, fasted over conditions endured by prisoners, and was eventually released. He continued along his political path, challenging British rule whenever he could, but always promoting peaceful protest. He was a thorn in their side. Ghandi had won over the people and they were no longer to accept British oppression. He began a long walk to protest the new salt tax that directly affected the poor in their daily lives. He was once again imprisoned, as was his wife. She died in prison after an illness. Ghandi was an old man when he was released a few years after his wife’s death and India eventually gained independence. He was assassinated, five days after a previous attempt, while attending a prayer meeting.

On leaving

We lunched at an extremely popular thali restaurant. Here, just a kilometre or two from the ashram, Ghandi’s belief in not indulging the body beyond its daily requirements was not on the minds of the patrons. The place was packed and the waiters were running around refilling dishes to fill the fat bellied fat cats occupying the seats. It’s hard to imagine that these people populate the same city as the starving people slum side.
Mal started feeling unwell as we walked to and around the city museum but relied on the flushing out system by drinking lots of water. Had we been living in Galway during the cryptospridium outbreak we might have recognised sooner that it was the water that was his undoing. We were sold a tampered refilled bottle that was polluting his system. As we waited on the station platform for our night train to Mumbai, Malachy was retching into a plastic bag. Our beds on this train were unconfirmed, although we were sold the ticket, it was reliant on somebody cancelling. This is very common on Indian trains, and if you are on a waitlist with up to 80 people ahead of you, your seat will usually be confirmed. Sometimes the list can be hundreds, but we usually wouldn’t book these tickets. However there is also a special tourist quota of tickets reserved for us, but on this train we were not having any luck. I frantically hunted down the conductor after the train arrived, running from carriage to carriage, with the help of a friendly Indian student I had chatted to, but to no avail. The train was full. Of course it would have been possible to board anyway, but without a bed or seat on an over night train, with Malachy sick, this was not an option. The Mumbai route is hugely popular and our only worry was that we had to make our connecting train from Mumbai to Chennai, so as we could make our flights from Chennai to Sri Lanka. That means crossing the entire breath of India! If we couldn’t catch a train the next day, there was always the bus!
We checked into the Moti Mahal across the road (at quadruple the price we usually pay, but when it’s 2am and your sick, we didn’t care), it was nice enough, the best being the 24 hour check out, therefore we had the room until 2am the following night.
I queued at 8am in the reservation office ... and queued and queued, all the staff shrugging from behind the counter, there was nothing they could do, the computers were down.
This is India.
Finally I got us two tickets on a slow train, leaving and arriving at terrible hours, meaning we would only get one afternoon in Mumbai, but it was better then the possibility of missing our flights. We made up for the inconvenience by locking ourselves away in the room all day, ordering room service, watching TV and I nursing my sick husband back to some sort of health.