Ahmedabad-Delhi....dirty...smelly..hot...Delhi

Ahmedabad turned out to be one of the friendliest cities we have visited in India... and also very clean for its size.

We arrived really early from our overnight "sleeper" bus from Diu which turned out to be in much worse condition then the one we took down there. The berth was covered in some old cheesy vinyl that was all cracked and was really irritating to lay down on.. but I guess that's why they supplied us with an old, musty, never been washed, carpet type of mat to sleep on...

The bus ride went pretty un eventfully... I didn't get a wink of sleep due to all of the rocking, bumping, slamming on breaks, and more then necessary rest stops... When we made it to the out skirts of Ahmedabad we saw that the bus we had hoped we were going to be on had gotten into a head on collision with a milk truck... The front end of the bus was completely smashed in and the milk truck was flipped on its' side with milk spilling everywhere...

The month of May turned out to be on the the deadliest ever for road crashes in the state of Gujarat. We heard on the news that night that more the 80 people were killed in the last 3 nights alone... Looks like someone was watching out for us again and there was probably a reason we got stuck on the dirtier bus rather then the one we had wanted...


Anyways we ended up going to the same hotel we stayed at the last time in Ahmedabad since it had fairly cheap a/c rooms and it was well over 100 degrees there... We spent most of the day trying to catch up on sleep. Although we did duck out a few times to get some food and to wander around a bit. The people were all really friendly again and they all wanted to shake our hands and as where we were from. It's pretty fun to be the only westerners around when the people are so nice.

Since our flight back to Delhi left at the ungodly hour of 6:00 am I tried to get the desk clerk at our hotel to arrange a rickshaw to be waiting for us at 3:30 am to take us to the airport. He didn't speak very good English and despite trying to convey my request many of times I was only met with the Indian "head wobble".. Which is sort of a shaking of the head up and down and side to side all at the same time and can mean anything from a "yes" to "no" or "I know what you are saying" or even an "I'm happy to see you"... Needless to say I went to bed that night a little stressed out about how we were going to get to the airport...

Woke up at 3:00 am the next morning and made our way past the hotel staff (who all sleep in the lobby of the hotel) and found that the front door was pretty securely shut... luckily it was locked from the inside and after a little bit of a struggle we managed to get it open and found a rickshaw waiting for us!

The rest of the trip back to Delhi was pretty uneventful. We made it to the hotel where we had left a lot of our luggage and were relieved to find it all still there.. and we ended up staying a few nights in that same hotel again.

We've been doing quite a bit of exploring around Delhi despite the fact that it is usually well over 110 degrees and the pollution is worse then ever. There is thick layer of black soot that covers everything in Delhi and despite the fact everyone tries to sweep, mop, burn, and splash water on it nothing seems to get anything clean around here. A waiter will wipe off a table just before you sit down to eat and by the time your food has come you can already notice the layer of blackness beginning to settle again. The sky is also tinged a brownish grey color which is much worse then any of the smog I've ever seen. If you wipe the sweat off of your forehead you will notice that it too is mostly the brownish black color... and too add to the constant belting of fumes of the rickshaws, buses, burning trash and feces...people also use a lot of gas powered generators here due to the power cuts that happen so often and come with out warning...

All of this has become really irritating to my lungs and I'm experiencing asthma symptoms I haven't had in over 10 years.. I can't go outside for more then an hr with out needing my inhaler and I wake up every couple of hours with a coughing fit at night... between the not being able to breathe and the heat I've been a little bit more irritable lately...

Luckily we switched hotels yesterday and scored a nice room with a mini fridge and a/c and a TV so I can retreat there when the heat outside is just too much. I actually slept almost the whole night through last night and felt much more energized today...

Today was supposed to be a big shopping spree day but we awoke to find all the shops and restaurants closed for some sort of a "strike".. It's kind of like being back in Nepal all over again. We managed to find a restaurant that was open and while we were eating the staff started running around and closing the metal doors to the outside as did any other shop that was open on the street.. Turns out the party which was imposing the strike was marching down the road and they have been known to beat anyone who is found to be out or conducting business during a strike..

Despite the fact that it seems every shop around is closed we can't really find any news anywhere about why the strike is being imposed or who is imposing it... just a crowd of people who come marching down the road every once and a while chanting some sort of slogan or something in Hindi...

So we may just end up spending the rest of the day in the Hotel room watching Hindi films or some old movies from the states... Depending on how things pan out...

Only 4 more days left on the other side of the world and then we are headed home!