Thinking I was going to allocate an out of the way beach destination in Gujarat, I booked a train ticket for Ahmedabad, its capital, with the idea of easily making my way to the coast. I found a simple and inexpensive hotel near the train station outside Gokarna and spent the night without doing much. The train was to leave early in the morning and I did not want to have to deal with allocating transport in the early hours, adding stress and possibly missing the train. I really wanted out of Gokarna. The hotel was not in a tourist area and I was the sole foreigner walking the dusty lanes, buying pineapple and simple meals at the local restaurants. The next day was about 24 hours on the train, passing through Mumbai in the middle of the night. Probably due to this big city destination the train was moving at quite a pace. I noticed once we neared Mumbai that the people were too. The closer we got to the city the more the demographic of folks around me transformed from rural and unhurried to loud, aggressive and just plain rude. Due to all the activity it was one of the least restful overnight journeys I have had on an Indian train. Thankfully as dawn approached the train sped further and further from that bursting metropolis.
The land grew more and more dry and sparsely vegetated. It looked like desert in many places. We pulled up to Ahmedabad in the late morning hours. It was a big, dusty station in what for me was a sizable city. For me Ahmedabad, like Dehli, was not a destination as much as a staging point. I had ideal visions of the Gujarati coast and the idea of going to Gujarat would not leave me alone. Some research with my host in Tezpur Assam led to some correspondence with his Gujarati friend who offered information and encouragement. This man was an employee in the Automotive industry in the state. Unfortunately his suggestions for safari’s and rented jeeps were far above my budget-traveler means. By this point I was pretty burned out from being on the road and this man offered fresh encouragement and information. Talking with an actual person with experience in a place has always worked so much better for me than searching for real, reliable information in the internet. Such a thing is harder and harder to find these days. Soon I was approaching Ahmedabad, with the idea of visiting Buj and other spots on the Gujarati coast.
The Ahmedabad station struck me as big, rough and ominous, just like the city. There I did not find any pre-paid rickshaw kiosk so I used the Ola app. With some difficulty I fielded a translator and found the driver circling around the outside of the station. There was some regulation that prevented him from driving in to pick me up, likely a taxi lobby effort. The man transported me to a large, modestly-priced hotel in the center of the city. I was exhausted and just glad to have a place to call home for a couple of days. It is always a mix of unsettled emotions, fear, and excitement arriving in a strange city. This one struck me as very dusty and drab; industrial even. The long distance the train had traveled had taken me from semi-lush South India to arid desert of far Western India. In the hotel the sound and the vibration of heavy traffic traveled through the walls and windows, keeping me awake long into the night.
I had researched a Jain pilgrim destination called Palitana. It looked to be a good stopover on the way to the coast. Trains were not an option so while in Ahmedabad I sought a bus ticket some socks and a new keyboard for my ipad. I had made the foolish mistake of taking a tablet, and keyboard, instead of a laptop. The keyboard had died in Assam. For months I had been handwriting a book I was working on as well as these travel notes. Uploading pictures of my sloppily-written text to Wordpress was cumbersome, time and data-intensive. Think back to the days of a dial up modem if you can. My hand was smarting from all the hours of writing. The next day I went out on a mission to get what I needed.
Ahmedabad was an arid place with a layer of dust on everything and a strong, dry wind blowing. Around me were straw-colored buildings and lots of people moving and driving around quickly. After being in the south for so long it was a bit of an upset to be suddenly in North India again. The soft, patient ways of so many of the South Indians had given way to gruffer sensibilities and a palpable harder edge to the people. I was not feeling all that comfortable in the new city. I sensed an edginess about and I felt the need to err on the side of caution here. Due to this as well as to being burnt out on traveling and being foreign, I barely took any pictures. Sorry reader!
I walked to a farmer’s market area about twenty minutes from the hotel. This led through narrow lanes and gulleys to what looked like an older, more modestly developed part of the city. It was hard to walk the lanes without being run over by traffic. Once I reached the market I bought a pineapple, some bananas and some okra, potatoes, garlic and onion. I had been occasionally preparing little vegetable and noodle meals in my little electric tea kettle for months. This was my way of getting some much needed fresh vegetables and fiber and skipping what can be the stressful endeavor of going out to seek a meal in an unfamiliar place. A rough and tumble lady hawking her vegetables at the market kept asking me if I was married. She hinted that she had a bride in mind for me. “How was that going to work?” I told myself. I politely joked, brushed off the suggestion and bought some tomatoes from her instead.
I returned to the hotel and rested for a while, then went out to find lunch and some socks. Again the noise and activity of the city overwhelmed me. I managed to find a modestly-priced restaurant and had some dal and chapati. I missed the South Indian food already. After lunch I wandered a little down the main road looking for socks and maybe a backpack. The zippers on mine had failed to work months ago. But all I could find were little school backpacks with cartoon characters on them. The boy that worked at the shop asked where I was from and upon learning requested that I take him back to the United States with me. It was flattering and unsettling. My day to day experience as a wandering, foreign, budget traveler could be very hard on me but I was still a rich and fortunate person to many that I encountered. This journey involves a lot of discovery, delight and improvisation as well as stress, hardship and isolation.
Being in the thick of all this sometimes prevents me from remembering how much better I have it than many of people I was encountering. I sensed that life of this shopkeeper’s son in Ahmedabad was hard. Traveling India for me has meant witnessing a lot of poverty and suffering in people, wishing things were different for them but not knowing how this could happen. Giving money was a dubious endeavor. I had experienced great failures at doing this on my first trip to India, where after handing out some notes large swarms of people engulfed me looking for handouts of their own. It was borderline dangerous. This boy told me where I could buy some socks, I bade him a polite goodbye and I went there. The socks were very thin and not likely to provide much padding or support but I bought some anyway. I didn’t end up using them much.
I called the Apple store regarding the keyboard and was told the price was $130 dollars. This was a gargantuan amount for me to pay in India. I decided against it and went about finding a bus ticket. Eventually I had some relative success buying a ticket with an app. But finding the bus at five in the morning and communicating with the ticket seller proved to be very, very difficult. I franticly hefted my packs from one bus stand to another on the dark streets and then back. The ticket seller kept calling and asking where I was. I kept asking where he was. The people at the bus stand were of little use and often contributed to my misdirection. Thankfully the bus waited for me and I got aboard once I finally found it. This was my first journey on a night bus and I learned later, they are often like this. Passengers picked up or dropped off at seemingly random spots on the side of the road, and leaving or arriving on their own schedule (usually when the bus is full). The bus was like a mobile disco- at the state fair. It had the neon colors and carnie vibe, and two rows of the little sleeper compartments, with upper and lower bunks. Sleeper busses are a common ways for travelers to get around as they are easier to get tickets for than trains and their are more of them. Anyway, I was on my way to Palitana.
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