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Published: February 4th 2007
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We departed Udaipur and after a relatively painless daytime bus trip south, we were soon struggling through the hot and dusty streets of Ahmedabad, trying to find some habitable accommodation. This was our penultimate stop before getting to Mumbai and for Thailand in a few days time.
First stop was the city museum, a ‘must see’ according the guide book, but when the rickshaw driver had no idea where it was, nor many of the people he asked for directions we started to get suspicious. When we finally found it, it appeared to be a deserted multistory car-park, but to be fair, there was some interesting history about Gandhi and with only 2 other people and the security guard there was no problem getting to see the exhibits. As we were about to leave the care taker asked us if we wanted to see the view from the roof… Well, as there was no one else around and he seemed friendly we said yes, slightly intrigued.
We followed him up dusty, unlit, not for public access passages, thinking ‘what have we done’, ‘why did we say yes’ and the ever present question in your mind when offered anything
by an Indian ‘how much is this going to cost!’. Eventually we emerged on the roof and an earlier question about whether we were Architecture Students, suddenly made sense. Apparently the place is a Mecca for architecture students, as this concrete monstrosity was designed by Corbusier (I’ve probably spelt that wrong, isn’t that a drink..) also ‘famous’ for designing the layout of Chandigahr, one of India’s few planned cities.
Well we smiled and looked as interested as we could and took all the photos that he insisted on. You’ll be glad to know that we deleted most of them and have only included a couple here for your amusement and delectation! The tour finalé was actually quite cool, as he unlocked the door to a long defunct lift shaft on the roof and we peered into the darkness and disturbed hundreds of bats! Anyway after we had parted with the inevitable Bakshesh (back hander), we walked away giggling like teenagers and tried hard to remember not to follow strange men up dark staircases ever again.
Before our train down to Mumbai the next day we thought we might as well squeeze in one last attraction, but had little
expectation of finding anything particularly interesting given the time available. We jumped into another tuk-tuk to the Dada Hari Wav, a well (water) somewhere on the outskirts of the city.
Like the previous day the driver had no idea where to go and regularly veered across to the roadside to ask a passer-by. A few people seemed to know what we were looking for, but as we weaved through anonymous looking backstreets, we weren’t convinced that we were close to an ancient well or regular tourist destination. Even when we pulled up alongside an area of rough ground with a few blocks of stone on the surface, amidst a collection of run down local houses, we had to check with a local that we were in the right place!
It turned out that we were and this was confirmed by a guy appearing out of nowhere and asking us if we would like a tour. Soon we were descending the steps through many flights of pillared ‘rooms’ that had been built alongside the vertical well-shaft itself. The pictures give some impression of what it was like, but can’t come close to actually descending into the half-light of hand-carvings
and spiral staircases that made up this 15th Century (we think) well.
It was all a lot more impressive than we expected and it felt good to be visiting one of the more unusual sights. To add to the atmosphere, it was home to lots of bats, who despite their well known echo location abilities, weren’t very good at avoiding tourists… We reckoned they must have got used to where all the walls and pillars were and didn’t bother ‘looking’ any longer, meaning they flew straight into us!
After the well we were given a quick tour of the adjacent mosque, including the room used to store dead bodies (and yes there were…) and led along some death defying ledges up to the roof, thinking oh no not again!
In the UK this kind of place would have turnstiles and a gift shop selling Dada Hari Wav T-shirts that glowed in the dark. All they had here was a minute plaque invisible to the passer-by and a guy that hung around all day, stopping too many people writing graffiti on it.
So, that was Ahmedabad and that afternoon we caught the Shatadbi Express to Mumbai, arriving there
that evening. We were welcomed with an argument with the taxi driver, who did his best to rip us off saying, in order of desperation whilst trying to justify his astronomical price:
- It’s 20km (I think it was about 5km)
- It’s rush hour, traffic is terrible (It was about 8PM)
- You must pay another Rupees 50 for each bag
- Etc.. etc
It’s a fact of travelling life that you receive the most hassle when you are at your weakest, i.e. when you first arrive somewhere (it’s very difficult to disguise the fact that you are new in town when you are white and carrying a large rucksack….). They pounce as you stumble exhausted from a ridiculously long journey, lacking in local knowledge of directions, distances or prices and encumbered by a large backpack. Even if initial attempts to get your custom fail, they know that you can’t get far in your current state and will quite happily follow you kerbside, until your mental or physical breaks.
On quite a few occasions we made a point of walking far further than either of us wanted to, in order to avoid what could be described
as Magical Mystery Rickshaw rides. These involve being taken to random ‘cheap’ or ‘good’ hotels and/or shops and given the ‘hard done-by’ look when you start to get annoyed! Most of the time it is very light hearted, as they pull up alongside you sweating half a mile down the road and smile broadly!
Anyway, the taxi into town was only the start of that night’s stress. We had imagined that it would be easy to find accommodation…, oh no…. It wasn’t easy and certainly wasn’t cheap - in fact more expensive than Delhi.
We trudged around downtown Mumbai for over an hour, being led down backstreets with rats running around our feet and rushing after touts who ‘knew where there were cheap rooms’ only to find that they were all full. At about 11PM, we ended up in what I can only describe as a shoe box - a large room partitioned into lots of smaller ones each with twin beds in. These had no roof, so noise was rather communal, including the man who sounded like he was dying of TB all night in the adjacent room.
Anyway, we were off the streets and after I
had headed back outside for another fruitless hour searching for somewhere nicer to stay the following night, we were just glad we had found somewhere.
We don’t have many pics of Mumbai as we put the camera in for a service (the CCD sensor and the lens didn’t appreciate being drenched in water that had leaked out of a drinking bottle). We seemed to do a huge amount of walking around the city; to the camera shop, to the post office and generally taking in the chaos that is Mumbai. For such a big, international city, it was amazing to find unmade dusty streets, that merged into main tarmacked roads right outside posh office buildings and designer boutiques - it doesn’t make any sense to us, but I don’t think the locals notice.
Maybe we need to give Mumbai some more time, but it didn’t really do anything for us. The dirty beaches, the dirty roads and hassle left us even more ready to get over to Thailand and the promise of less hassle and beautiful beaches.
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