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Published: February 15th 2015
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Gujarat
Gujarat is awesome…..even without meat and alcohol! It’s as rural as it can get… desserts, curling mountains, lakes, vegetable farms, tobacco plantains, wild animals, such as bulls, horses, camels, flamingos, donkeys, eagles but also stunning palaces and temple ruins..The people are exceptionally nosy too. One morning after finally managing to set off early we discovered after a few kms that we'd forgotten 3 of our gloves. Whilst going through our bags on the roadside it got very difficult to continue our argument about who's fault it was, as more and more drivers and passersby stopped to stare and ask 'which country from?' Even private space for an argument in India is impossible!
Arrived in Gujarat our couchsurfer Roshan and his friends welcomed us with some whiskey and coke- what a nice surprise in this dry state. The next day he gave us a complete cultural program of the town.. visiting the big palace, modern art festival and a proper concert which we were allowed to enter for free to have some international audience there. The next day we cycled to a lovely little temple on hill where we got told to eat the traditional Gujarati Sunday dish…kaju curry
…a massive pot of cashew nut cream curry… great for nut allergic like Jude…fortunately nothing happened to him after trying it, unfortunately Yvi got a proper stomach infection after eating the stuff by herself..after a day of not moving out of bed we kept on cycling, yvi on dry biscuits, jude on Gujarati thali.
While cycling three days through vegetable and tobacco fields we finally arrived in Ahmedabad…a mega city (6mil citizens). Not fun to cycle in that’s for sure. Our couchsurfer Mysura forgot to tell us that she lived in a little dodgy area with only a single bed to offer us. After lifting our bicycles in the 5
th floor we decided a single bed is okay for a few nights. Like Roshan, Mysura also lived in a very spartan accommodation, her interior: a few books, a plate and a whiskey glass. Ahmedabad is another exhausting city with an amazing old Mosque and a big lake in the centre of town which promised to have a hot air balloon ride in the guide….excited to go on it we found out that it had crashed last month..shame.
Tired of big city noise we took a coach to Bhuj,
a charming little town in the dessert of Kutch. Here we stayed in the lovely City Guest House where we designed our new shirts and met nice traveler from Germany. When visiting the local museum we bumped into the son of the last king of Kutch without realising. On the border to Pakistan and just north of Bhuj lays the salt dessert. To get there it took us one day of cycling a looooong straight road through the dry tundra. The barren novelty wore off after 30 minutes, 5 hours later we got a bit hungry and followed a guy’s invitation to his house. His family lived in the tribal village Hodka which is famous for it’s special embroidery and the look of the village woman called Harijin (see picture).His wife tried to sell Yvi a similar outfit but something went wrong with the result when trying it on…maybe too much colors..
Arriving in the last village before the salt dessert starts we realised that all tent hotels were booked out or far too expensive for us. Luckily one of the hotel managers named Aladin saw our tiredness and kindly took us home to his tribal village. His lovely
Goat fashion
Discovered a colony of goats wearing polo shirts and sweaters..it was 28C. Now you know where your red cross clothe donations go to. sister made us a bed in one of their round little huts which are apparently round so they don’t collapse on earthquakes…how clever.. We also got introduced to the family’s friend Lorna(from UK) who comes to the village since 40 years and just published a book about the tribal villages and their history of embroidery. The little community seemed to be super traditional with buffalos and kids running around and woman doing embroidery all day. Every morning we got woken up by our neighbour buffalo and for breakfast we got thick buffalo milk Chai and butter fried chapattis with ‘Electro Gel’ as Lorna named it (Indians pink Strawberry Jam).
As Gujarat is home to India’s Priminister Modi the area now gets more and more developed which means that most kids go to school, many huts have a flat screen TV, Wifi access and bank accounts. We were lucky to be there at the time of the Kutch festival…a 3 month long festival in the salt desert, which presents local music every night. The salt dessert was unique by its emptiness… If you need a clear head or a special photo background we advise you a visit…you can walk for
days and just look at the white salt and the blue sky. After 3 nights staying with Aladin great family and chatting to Lorna it was time to hit the road back to Bhuj…back on the 100km straight desert road…we tried to hitch hike but the only trucks passing us were already brimming with people. Back in City guest House in Bhuj we promoted the idea of cycling tourism in Gujurat to the Manager who said he would take up our idea and buy 3 bicycles for the hotel guests to hire and go on local village tours.We seriously feel that (especially with our T-shirts on) we are pretty good in convincing Indian’s citizens that cycling is great alternative to motorbikes.
Funny enough the next day we took a train to Palanpur, West Gujarat as the desert just got a bit boring for cycling so we decided to have a look at the Aravalli hills, one of the world’s oldest mountain chain. Compared to East, West Gujarat is full of rolling hills, forests and lakes. We were seriously lucky to find some dingy hotels on our route and also restaurants are not common so we ended up testing all
types of Indians biscuits and crisps from the little sweet shops. One night we found a forest school with bungalows to stay over. Fortunately the only (little) English speaking local called Vimpul felt obligated to take care of us and gave us a tour through the ‘tribal villages’ on his motorbike (yes three people on one bike is normal). We crossed the border to Rajasthan to get some beer somewhere in a tiny forest shop and went back to his house where he wanted to cook dinner for us… Sadly he suddenly passed out, as he might have been drinking all day already.
After spending the night star gazing and eating more biscuits we spent the next morning exploring the surrounding forest which is full of stunning old temple ruins from the 15
th century. The next day we crossed the border to Rajasthan to go to Udaipur…since then we saw many little liquor shops along the single lane roads…luckily as Jude managed to stay dry for over a week by now… Yvi is looking forward to get a hot shower (after 3weeks cold shower!) and yes we started fantasising about English food.
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