Land of Gandhi

---

Just when you hoped that the transport complaints in this blog were over, think again! The overnight bus we took from Mumbai (a mere five hours after our arrival to Mumbai from Chennai) was a killer. For starters, the bus was non A/C, and, at this point in our journey, the deadly Indian heat was really starting to penetrate everything. Second, it took us nearly 4 hours to just get out of Mumbai as our bus would move at a snail’s pace through gridlocked traffic for 30 minutes before stopping at dodgy looking travel agencies along the side of the road for another 30 minutes to pick more people up. So, the first 4 hours we sat in the early evening heat on a non A/C bus in a sleeper compartment with virtually no breeze. After slow-cooking for the first 4 hours, we finally reach the critical 120% capacity mark (with literally 4 people sleeping on the floor of the bus), and began the brisk part of the journey traveling at an estimated 35 mph for the duration of the trip across bumpy roadways dodging other buses, lorry, cars, animals, and motorbikes along the way. All up, we covered a massive 320 kilometers in a journey that lasted 14 hours…yes, if you just pulled our your calculator as I did, you now know that our average pace was a whopping 23 kilometers per hour (or somewhere around 14 mph). If I were Kenyan, I could have made it to Ahmedabad faster by foot. If I were smarter, I would have booked the train a month ago, but I’m not, and I have the sweat-soaked t-shirt to prove it. Regardless, we persevered through the pains of yet another sweaty sleeper bus and started our day waking up to the sweet, sweet voice of the rickshaw drivers.

I’m not going to continue on with my complaints of our morning struggles on the local Ahmedabad bus, because, at this point, my transport woes are simply redundant. Instead…we finally made our way to the target, Sidi Saiyed’s Masjid situated across the street from our soon-to-be favorite eating joint in Ahmedabad, Lucky Restaurant 2 (which was right next to Lucky Restaurant, assumedly #1). We checked into our turd of a hostel across the street entitled “Gulmarg” which I’m pretty sure is Gujarati for “shithole”. The cavernous building Gulmarg slumped in was multi-tasking as the spooky lower levels of the building apparently serving as some sort of medical facility. This was indicated by cobwebbed pictures and medical degrees of some Patel character and some ancient looking signage mentioned a child care facility; strangely, we never saw any doctors or patients (or anyone at all) on the lower levels and the environment felt right for an episode of Scooby Doo. Regardless, we were thankful that the T.V. worked and the windows had locks, so we settled in quickly and did the next reasonable thing…head to Lucky Restaurant 2 (first of many trips) for dosa, chai, and fresh grape juice.

Lucky restaurant isn’t only a spot for good food, it also feature excellent service, and, a décor quite unlike any we had seen before…a massive tree growing right through the middle of the restaurant (straight up through the roof), and (decidedly more fascinating) no less than a dozen graves sites scattered around the floor of the restaurant painted green and featuring tiny metal fences surrounding each grave standing about 12 inches tall. These silent companions were a new twist on eating dosa and a welcomed addition to our breakfast, lunch and dinner tables. I, for one, became addicted to drinking fresh grape juice and munching crispy dosa with my new dead friends.

Our first order of business in the sight-seeing category was to pay a visit to Sabarmati Ashram (or, more popularly known as Gandhi’s Ashram), Mahatma’s headquarters during his battle for a free India. The ashram was beautifully simplistic and had a wonderfully displayed timeline of Gandhi’s life. The ashram (obviously enough) struck the perfect tone with which to tell the story of a man who truly embraced humanity and lived his principled life dedicated to the promotion of peaceful coexistence of all people. Powerful stuff and an exhibit not to be missed on a trip to India…btw, don’t you want to know the detailed story behind this man and why he is printed on every single currency note in the country!?

Other adventures in sightseeing included wandering around the Old City in search of shaking minarets (minarets designed to withstand earthquake tremors), rubble left over from the 2001 quake, Bhadra Fort and anything else that may pop out at us. Along our path we encountered an over-exuberant Hindu man apparently hopped up on a lethal combination of ephedrine, caffeine, and methamphetamine whom, at first, we thought was selling something, but later learned he was simply networking to increase his chances of snagging a foreign bride…I’ll need a minute to explain…

First of all, it was hot out, I won’t deny that, however, this man manage to nearly sweat his bindi (red dot on forehead) off completely in our 20 minute conversation. The little stream of red flowing down from the center of his forehead was not only distracting, but it also seemed to reinforce the drug theory as sweating isn’t normally this profuse. Red-faced and clutching a coconut fragment, some flowers, some beads, and a diary, Hitesh rushed into a one-sided English conversation in a dialect understood by a nation of one. Rozy and I slowed him down several times and worked to identify key words in order to glean meaning from his flood of syllables. Together we worked out that he desired 3 things from us:
1. Hitesh wanted us to follow him to a nearby ashram to drink tea with him in a beautiful garden and to meet his swami
2. Hitesh wanted to exchange contact information and wanted me to connect him to single women in the USA
3. Hitesh wanted the password to my gmail account…huh?

Regarding item #1 above, Hitesh was extremely welcoming and wanted Rozy and I to follow him straight away to his ashram to relax and talk further about the many things we could barely understand. When we declined he asked if we could come by later on or even perhaps on another day. Regarding item #2 above, Hitesh mentioned something about a girlfriend and how was looking for one, and, after learning we came from the US, he threw out a website (www.shaadi.com) that Rozy recognized as a “find a bride” website used regularly by Indians searching for that perfect match. Hitesh was then keen to get our contact information not only for a much anticipated rendezvous in his ashram at a later date, but also to keep in touch as we searched out viable bridal candidates for him back in the US. Regarding #3 above, Hitesh (although a self-proclaimed student of IT) didn’t realize that a person only needs an email address to communicate via email and that the password was private. Upon Hitesh providing us with his yahoo address and password (written in our travel book), Rozy visibly scratched out his password and attempted to explain this importance to him so that he didn’t make the same mistake in the future.

After peeling ourselves away from Hitesh and his jacked-up craziness, we had a bit of a laugh at how strange the whole situation seemed to be. Two days later, I received an email from Hitesh “cordially inviting me and Rozy to visit his ashram”. The contents of that email are quoted as follows:

“Dear Mr. Daniel,
I have learned that you are in Ahmedabad, therefore I extend hereby my invitation to grace our house by visiting us at any time of your convenience. My address is
Hitesh {lastname}
{address & telephone number}
Looking anxiously for information on your visit, sir.
Yours Sincerely
Hitesh {lastname}”

One day after receiving my invitation to Hitesh’s ashram, I received a follow-up email, the contents of which are directly quoted below:

“when u coming ????
and u coming at railway station or at home????”

It has been a number of days now and we haven’t heard anything else from Hitesh. Our assumption is that Hitesh came down from his vicious high, forgot who we are, forgot his email address and password and is in his IT class right now studying the exquisite art of password protection.

Note to travelers in Ahmedabad…don’t bother going to the train station to seek out the tourist quota for trains…there is only one single counter there that serves foreign tourists, handicap, bulk sales, senior citizen, armed services, diplomats, and cancer patients. This line never moves because the bulk buyers are obviously greasing the hands of the ticket sellers and the general manager as they pop in and out of the manager’s office and simply stand around the ticket counter window all day long preventing anyone else from buying tickets. Plus, the train ticket you want to buy to get from Ahmedabad to anywhere else in India was sold out over a month ago…take an A/C bus instead and enjoy the comforts of a luxury whip…happy trails!



STATISTICS

• Flights taken = 10
  
• Intercity trains rides taken = 17
  
• Intercity bus rides taken = 36
  
• Times lost = 20
  
• Total instances of diarrhea = 7
  
• Total number of requests for pictures with Daniel = 36
  
• Total megabytes of pictures taken = 32,750
  

---

Photos

MY DEBUT NOVEL AVAILABLE NOW!
Visit me at www.danielshortell.com for purchase information.

Comments

[Rani]

Hitesh
lol...thats a classic.....how do you meet characters like that man? My mummy told me not to talk to strangers but it seems that l'm missing out on meeting all these cartoons. And ohh how cute are you Rozy for trying to explain to Hitesh regarding his password.

[shivani]

any more news on hitesh...i think tops the list of crazies u have met