kicked out of the India experience

When I was in the comfy cozy international village of Arambol I felt ambivalent about jumping into the “India experience”. But I trusted myself to be able to do it. And when people asked me where I was going after Arambol and I told them I was going to Ahmedabad the reactions I received affected me. At first the quizzical looks on their faces and the bursts of “WHY?” made me feel nervous and even question myself even though my decision was a sound one. I was compelled to go to this unpopular location for some unknown reason. After a day or two of ambivalence from traveler inquiry of my onward travels I had a shift. I began approaching the subject in a Tom Sawyer-esque way. Suddenly other travelers’ interest in traveling to Ahmedabad was piqued. By adding mystery & allure to a place often associated as a pit of a place no one would ever want to go to, I was able to transcend my apprehension and get pretty psyched. And it not only paid off but Ahmedabad walked my talk.

Ahmedabad was the largest and most developed city in India in pre-British occupation. The British elevated cities like Bombay and New Delhi into their cosmopolitan status of recent years. So what made Ahmedabad so pleasing is that it held its own and had some really nice history. Wandering through the old part of the city was sweet. The people of Ahmedabad are so gentle and friendly. I never once felt harassed like I often do in other locations in India. I was able to stop and chat with local people and there were no other tourists anywhere to be seen. Not only that, I was gastronomically ecstatic. Ahmedabad is the foodie capital of India. I ate at probably the most amazing restaurant I’ve ever been to in my life. The meal is well over my budget but I think it is really a shame to miss out on an occasional splurge while traveling for the sake of the experience. I mean seriously…I was at a beautifully white tiled mosaic seat and table covered with rose petals with classical Indian music playing and a seemingly never ending offering of more courses of traditional Gujarati dishes, all made organically and with locally grown produce brought to me by a wait staff coming from local villages.

I was able to geek out on Gandhi, one of my biggest heroes, by visiting the former Gujarat native’s homestead on the banks of the river. While there I noticed an American consulate program set up with banners, a podium and chairs and wondered what was going on. The next day I read in the paper that Martin Luther King III had visited the same spot just hours after I did!

This season in India I am trying to avoid booking anything in advance so I can be as “in the flow” as possible. So it was only a few hours before I left Ahmedabad I decided to leave on a train without a ticket. You see, it’s totally cool to do that sort of thing in India. You just board a train and when the conductor comes you pay him and he finds you a seat. So anyway I’m sitting there in what ended up being an air conditioned car…and drinks and food starts showing up without any payment asked for. It didn’t occur to me that anything was too odd there…plus I was hungry and I just ripped into my samosa and chai without a care in the world as I let the nearby conversation in Hindi drift into white noise as I gazed out of the tinted window out onto fields filled with buffalos slowly chewing hay. I assumed when the conductor walked away from me with little comment and not asking me for money that there was an unfortunate language barrier and he just assumed I had a ticket and would leave me alone. Some delusional fantasy became my reality and I believed I was going to ride what ended up as being a luxury Rajdhani train for FREE! Sweet!
We arrived to our first stop right on time, one hour after our initial departure. I was so comfortable and happy after my meal and hot chai. And then the conductor came over just as the train slowed to a stop and waved me over to the door and said “you leave now”.
Yep, I got kicked off the train and found myself at some random village in northern Gujarat.

It didn’t bother me much because another train going the same way was coming in 30 minutes…and I was actually enjoying the adventurous curveballs life was throwing me.

The next train showed up and I went into the lowest class available, Class II. If I can describe it in a word to give you an idea of the scene: sardines. Part of the time I was standing and the other time I half leaned on my upright backpack. Everything was a seat for people in this car: the actual seats, the floors, the window sills, other people’s laps, the luggage racks, etc. Anywhere you could put a person, there one was. So the friendly and gentle Gujarati people were there with me up close and personal. Entire families squished together, an elderly man picking his toes up high in the luggage rack, two young boys sexually fondling each other to my left and an old man who lovingly played with his baby granddaughter, shaking her up to make her laugh and turning to me to say “in India, children are god.”



Then, just 30 minutes before my train reached my destination I got the cherry on the cake…an Indian transvestite clad in a beautiful mirrored sari made his way through the car, man by man, extorting money by intimidating each one into giving him-her money by caressing his hair or ultimately sexually fondling the more hesitant and stingy ones. Ultimately though, each man coughed up 5-10 rupees.


Next stop the hill station of Mt Abu in southern Rajasthan.What a gorgeous place! High atop a “mountain” is a lake and an ideal tourist destination for Indians from Ahmedabad, Gujarat and Mumbai. It was pretty cool to see a tourist destination where there were barely any international types like myself. 95% of the people in Mt Abu were Indians. This was perfect in my post Goa plan of getting more into the Indian experience. This past weekend Mt Abu was teeming with more vacationing Indians than usual because it was a three day weekend for the Maha Shivaratri holiday. My noncommittal reply to my guesthouse manager about how long I’d stay ended up biting me in the ass. Getting ready to settle in to my 2nd night there my hotel room phone rang and the manager told me I had to leave the next morning. Yep, now I got kicked out of my hotel room to make room for a high paying upper middle class Indian family.

I was cool with this too. I hadn’t gotten to visit the Dewari Temple but I also wasn’t attached to staying or leaving Mt Abu. And other than getting a nice stroll around Nakki Lake, I was able to experience the super kitschy Spiritual Museum put together by the Brahma Kumaris. Although it was only 5 minutes into the English version of the “Meditation Laser Show Experience” before about 40 Indian came into the theater loudly talking as they waited impatiently to view the Hindi version. So in a sense I was kicked out of that too. But again I was cool with that. 5 minutes of the meditation laser show was enough of an experience for me anyway.

I arrived to Pushkar last night and was pretty sad to see that Pushkar Lake is a puddle surrounded by mountains of dirt and mud being pushed around by a team of loudly churning and banging bulldozers. My first night I was in my favorite hotel here that is butted right up to the lake…er, correction: work area. I decided to stay there anyway. The blaring Shivaratri music carried across the lake throughout the night was no problem at all…I slept right through it. But being awakened at 7am by the banging of the bulldozers I knew immediately I had to change my scenery.

Now I am back at my other favorite place in Pushkar: Shiva Guesthouse, with the cheap room rates, good location, nice travelers and cucumber munching turtles in the courtyard…and my bag is fully unpacked. I am at home.

Photos:
Ahmedabad
Mt Abu