The Westend Ahmedabad

... hotels. I argued for a little while, but had to surrender my privacy in the end.

After a quick snooze Dave and I set off to explore the city. We spent the first hour or so walking around looking for a place to eat, then we walked for a few more hours looking for the next eating opportunity.

After that we hit a couple of museums then stumbled upon a high ...

I decided to take the sleeper train from Udaipur to Ahmedabad which takes 9 hours instead of the bus which takes only 5 hours. This was a big mistake. The train was more like a washing machine and I think very few people managed to sleep. I couldn't even manage to lie down. At a certain ...

... they return. Marc is a Physical Education teacher and Robyn teaches Music. I found them to be very fascinating. We decided to stop and grab a quick bite to eat together in Ahmedabad. We were quite a sight...4 foreigners with their mountainous backpacks and multiple guide books. Marc had the Rough Guide for India and Robyn had the Lonely Planet's guide for Rajasthan/Agra/New Delhi. I have the Fodor's Book (which lacks in the cheap accommodations listing) and Yaarit has the full Lonely ...

... us from the sleeper cabins above. Some people had been on that bus for a very long time, days i think because a bus starts to get a humanity stench after too long and it was definitely stinking human here. Nice bus and all, but stink. The nightmarish bus crawled into Ahmedabad quite late at night so we hailed a rickshaw and made a bee-line straight for the cheapest hotel in the cluster of budget dumps in Regency Cinema Road. Dumpety-dump-dumps. We took the cheapest option at ...

... that I just wrote about terrorism and Gandhi all in the same blog. Today we went to visit some amazing temples made of sand stone. One was only recently excavated in 2002. To say they were impressive doesn't even do it justice. It's unbelievable how well they're preserved - they date them back to the 600 A.D. Wow! If the walls could talk...I'm sure they would have some stories to tell. The pictures probably will ...

... along the water through the reeds where we would come across and ultimately startle many different species of migratory waterfowl, from all over the world. Our guides would explain that these were from the Ukraine, these from Siberia, and so on. It was incredible. Eventually we came upon a spat of land and landed the boat there. We crept along some grassland that eventually turned into quite soft cracked clay-like land, where we silently observed a flock of ...

Ever since my previous trips to India, Ahmedabad in particular, I always thought it would be cool to be in Ahmedabad for the International Kite Festival, synonymous with Uttarayan. It just so happened that in planning this trip to India, the timing worked out so I could do just that. As an avid photographer, I have always dreamed of being here for this festival and taking some great pictures of the festivities. My good friend ...

... took five, obviously coach, Nat put h** heels in and said train, 'even if it w**e double the time, train!', I waited till she got tired and floated the idea around again, I could tell eight hours felt long** when fatigued and ready for bed and Nat gave in. I admit, I got stubborn, I was ded c**t this was the right decision, what is the point in needlessly travelling an extra three hours, pointless, absurd and in the end I prevailed ...

... The fact that Gene Kelly made it look so easy didn't help either. In my first three years of tap dance I struggled to find "a" rhythm, let alone my own. I clunked around helplessly, braved ridiculous costumes, all in search of a beat. Fifteen years of late night practices, refining steps I learned my first day of class, and warring with my often uncooperative feet, I can say I've finally found a rhythm-perhaps not always the right rhythm-but 'a' rhythm ...

... and made our way toward town. I was still feeling a bit odd at the idea of releasing all inhibitions and doing that which I normally wouldn't do. Mark and John suggested that we do things as simple as touch the feet of an elderly man or woman on the side of the road, but to also test our imaginations. Laxmi and I got off a few kilometers from Gandhi ashram. We were the first to get out of the cramped car. We stood there for a while, still a little dazed by what we ...