Meeting Indian friends

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We came to Ahmedabad to spend a couple of days with some Indian friends. Kirsi's uncle gave us their email and they invited us to stay with them although we had never met them before. We arrived to Ahmedabad on a bus that dropped us off somewhere outside the city although we had been told that the bus would take us to the city center. When we got off the bus we were immediately surrounded by 20 rickshaw drivers offering us a ride but we had no idea where we were or should go. We called Nilendu and he told a driver where to take us. We drove through the crowded and polluted city on a rickshaw, the exhaust fumes giving us a headache and horns honking all around us making us partially deaf. But when we arrived to Nilendu's farm there was a calm and peaceful garden with a house waiting for us. We sat in the shadow of a huge tree listening to birds and having a cold beer.

We rested on the farm for the first day. On the second day Nilendu arranged us a private car with a driver and he took us around Ahmedabad visiting the most interesting places. At first Ahmedabad seemed like a big and unattractive city but the places we visited showed us a different side of it. Beautiful architecture, both old and new, and historically interesting places like Gandhi Ashram. We also visited the National Institute of Design where we saw that the modern Indian design seemed to be quite close to the western designs. In the evening we met Rishid, and he took us for a dinner with his wife and daugter. We had nice time making new Indian friends and enjoying good Gujarat and south indian food. The next evening we met more locals as Payal took us to her home where her mother Manu had cooked a splendid Gujarat dinner. We spent the evening with them and really enjoyed their overwhelming hospitality.

We had nice time in Ahmedabad but ten weeks of traveling in new cultures was starting to take its toll. We wanted to get out of the cities and take some time to relax on the beaches of Diu. Nilendu was kind enough to arrange us bus tickets and off we went on another bumpy night bus.

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Photos

A step well
400 years old step well with five floors.

IIM
Not everything in India is old and decorative, there's some modern architecture in Ahmedabad