Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad (July 10 & 11)

I actually didn’t intend to go to Ahmedabad after Udaipur, but the wedding was over on Sunday and Vaibhav was leaving in the afternoon. I was planning to spend a day touring Udaipur, but it was kinda hard to arrange because I was staying with the family and wasn’t in a hotel and didn’t know where to start booking a tour. So I told Vaibhav that I was also planning to leave for Ahmedabad and catch my flight back home the next day.

saying our last goodbyes.

Unlike going to Udaipur on a local bus, this time around I was in one of the family’s SUV. We got to Ahmedabad probably about 6:45 pm, the driver dropped off Vaibhav and a couple at the airport and I booked into a hotel close to the airport.

Ahmedabad is the capital of Gujarat and it worked out quite well for me because I was able to visit the other important Gandhi ashram (the Sabarmati ashram where Gandhi stayed for over 17 years). This is the same ashram where he set out for the Dandi Salt march (240 miles journey which he finished in 24 days at the age of 60) and vowed to never return back to the ashram until India was free. After this ashram he settled in Sevagram, the one that I visited earlier.

Some historical pictures of Gandhi are blown up into posters. It looks really good considering the fact that many historical pictures in other Gandhi museums across India aren't so in good condition. 

A view of Gandhi throughout the decades.

A photograph-painting

 Sabarmati ashram, in my opinion, is probably the best ashram. There are a lot of historical pictures of Gandhi that I’ve never seen before and a handful of paintings of him that were done in the ‘60s. The strange thing about this ashram is that it’s in a city. Well, 80 years ago, the ashram was a perfectly secluded place but ever since Ahmedabad began to expand, it completely engulf the ashram as well so I saw traffic on bridges.

views from the ashram.

I hired a rickshaw to take me around some of the places that I thought were important in Ahmedabad and really there weren’t a whole lot of places that I knew of and I didn’t really read the guide book. But I read that in the guidebook that I shouldn’t leave Ahmedabad without seeing the Calico Textile Museum so I went there at about 11 am and they told me to come back at 2:30 when it’s re-opened. It opens twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I read that in the morning they show you some incredible clothing of Shah Jahan, the guy who built the Taj Mahal. Too bad I missed it.

In front of the ashram are 9 trees: faith, joy, unity, peace, truth, kindness, love, ekavaa, aananda (bliss)

Madame Slade's hut, an ardent follower of Gandhi.

 The rickshaw guy dropped me back to the Calico textile at 2:30 where I must have waited for another half an hour for them to let us in. I was the only one waiting until it was almost 2:55 when two girls came in. They turned out to be a lot of fun. They were friends, both graduated from Pune University in architecture which takes 5 years to finish and are now spending a month traveling before they go back to their home and find work. Their names were Avanti and Surbhi...Avanti a very cute girl was from Chennai and I was quite surprised when she said she was from there because most of Tamil ppl are quite dark. She, on the other hand, was quite fair. I don’t remember where Surbhi was from but both were staying in Ahmedabad with Surbhi’s aunt before they do this crazy tour all over the western and northern parts of India.

 I hung out with them for like 3-4 hours. We enjoyed the Calico textile museum for an hour which turned out really to be one of the best museum that I’ve ever been to. It’s probably a lot better than the one that I saw in Mumbai. Unfortunately they did not allow any cameras inside and so I couldn’t share with you some of the beautiful tapestries that I saw there and there were hundreds of them. I learned that most of them were from the state of Rajasthan where I was for the wedding. For some reason we weren’t charged any entrance fees and the tour-guide was completely free. The guide said that because this was a private museum, the condition was well-kept.

After the museum, both girls wanted to go to the Sabarmati ashram and I thought it was a good idea just to hang out with them since the ashram is so important and I hardly spent more than two hours. So we hung out again and by this time it rained quite a bit. By 5:00, I wanted all of us to get some dinner but both girls said that it was way too early for Indians to have dinner. They usually have a snack at about this time and dinner should be around 8:30-9. So they ordered Gujarati snacks which were quite good. Afterwards, we exchanged contact information, and I dropped the girls at the bus stop and I went back to my hotel to get ready for my 9:45 pm flight back to Pune.