Ahmedebad to the Bone

Disclaimer: Below is an account of my recent trip to Ahmedebad.  It is only an expression of my opinions, and I don't wish to offend anyone who has either been to Ahmedebad, or plans to go one day.  Also, if anyone from the Lonely Planet staff, particularly Mr. Lindsay Brown, should happen upon this blog post, please disregard all the mean stuff I said about you.

 

I love these birds, and apparently they love India, so maybe I love India too?  

Before I begin, let me start by saying that blog title was Matt's idea.  His knack for puns is unlike anything I've ever seen.

Now that that's taken care of, let's get down to business.  This past weekend we took a trip to Ahmedebad (Ahmdevad to locals), which is only about 100 kms away.  In theory, this trip should have taken an hour, so of course it took us three.  We used Matt's driver from the refinery, who theoretically could have taken us for free, but because he asked the refinery's permission, we had to pay.  (In case you haven't figured it out yet, the refinery says no to everything.  Except to Matt working overtime.  This they love.) The round trip cost about $80, but there were four of us, so it was relatively cheap.  Anyway, so even though Matt had printed out instructions and a map on how to get to the hotel, AND wrote down all the hotel's contact info, good old Vinod (the driver) still couldn't figure it out.  We stopped no less than six times to ask for directions, and when we weren't stopped, we had the windows rolled down with Vinod yelling questions at every passerby on a motorcycle.

 

The random Italian Bakery we found on one of our many stops for directions.

To Vinod's credit, we never had to turn around and backtrack, but that doesn't mean we didn't take the most random way possible to get there.

 

View of the city from our hotel room. Ain't she fine?

After finally arriving at the hotel, Katie (Jones, UOP) realized she had forgotten her passport.  Not needing to travel internationally, we didn't think this was a big deal, but this is India, after all, so of course it was a monstrosity.  Long story short, she ended up getting a copy emailed to her, which she then had to fax to the police station.  Dumb.  Other than that mishap, the hotel (a brand spanking new Courtyard Marriott) was blissfully clean and bright and all-around wonderful.  Because we were all Platinum members, we got access to their "Executive Lounge" where they had free snacks and drinks (and non-alcoholic beer, of course).  I'm pretty sure we took them for everything they had in that lounge. I drank a lot of their super fancy water.

 

View of the street in front of the hotel.  I wouldn't call this the "nice" part of town.

Anyway, Saturday we set out in the afternoon to see the glorious city.  Ahmedebad is basically just a big Baroda.  It has all the same stuff, but it's bigger, and a lot more crowded.  So it's basically just another dirty, run-down Indian city.  I'm sure there are lots of other way cooler things there, but we didn't stay long enough to find out.  They had an Ahmedebad Central, not to be confused with the Vadodara Central we have here.  We did go visit the Sabarmati Ashram that Gandhi built, which was pretty interesting.

 

The man himself.  

 Founded in 1915, Gandhi used it as sort of a headquarters for the struggle for Indian Independence.  The ashram is now a museum, with Gandhi's room as the main feature.

 

Gandhiji's room. Making fabric was a main duty of the Ashram members, and they have a lot of antique spinning wheels on display there.   

  They have tons of Gandhi info - more than I could ever want or need to know.  I learned a lot (and promptly forgot most of it), but mostly the museum served to point out to me how uninformed I am about Indian history.  Don't worry, I've got lots of time to learn.  Anyway, if you are a Gandhi fan (and who isn't), and you're in the area, the Sabarmati is the place to go.

After that we tried to do some shopping but were thwarted in our efforts by several factors, the most important being that This Is India, and everything is difficult here.  Also, I'm pretty sure that the guy who wrote the Ahmedebad section of the Lonely Planet has never actually been to India, much less Ahmedebad.  The whole section appears to be riddled with errors.  Thanks, Lindsay Brown (yes, that is a guy.  I looked it up).  Anyway, long story short, after an hour and a half of walking in the 90+ degree heat (with 110% humidity), we still had not located the "fabulous" evening market.  We finally gave it up and hopped in a couple of tuk-tuks, only to drive around the corner and pass right by the market!  It was literally about 30 feet away from where we had been.

 

Evening market.  It's very shiny.  

 We stopped the tuk-tuks and had them wait for us while we quickly rummaged around the stalls.  It took us all of ten minutes to realize that not only were all the stalls selling the same things, but also, none of it was stuff we were interested in.

 

I was actually interested in these wall hangings, but ol' Mr. Moneybags wasn't, so we didn't partake.

So we hopped back in the tuks and back to the hotel to drink more fancy water (for free!) and shower.  Later we headed out to a restaurant the hotel staff had recommended to us, in a tuk-tuk (yes, one tuk-tuk... there were four of us...) that the hotel arranged.  The hotel staff told the driver where we were going and how to get there, but apparently the driver wasn't listening, for he proceeded to drive randomly for 15 minutes, and then dropped us of in the middle of nowhere.  We didn't understand that we were at the wrong place until he had already left.  So we grabbed another tuk-tuk and headed back to the hotel... only to pass by our destination restaurant a few minutes later!  (To our credit, it was on a completely different road and we couldn't have seen it from where we were.) So we finally made it to dinner, where the food was less than stellar, but at least it was different from our usual Baroda WelcomHotel fare.

Sunday we awoke early with bright eyes and fresh faces, eager to get to the Calico Textile Museum before it closed (our trusted Mr. Brown from the Lonely Planet said the last entry was 11 a.m., so we needed to make it by then).  It was a 30 minute haul in the tuk-tuks (two this time), but we made it right at 11.  We rushed in, only to be told by the rude (and lazy, and condescending, and a lot of uglier descriptors I won't use here) guard that the last entry was actually at 10:30.  So we missed it by half an hour.  The guy would not let us in no matter how we begged and pleaded, so we eventually left.  We had been planning to spend a lot of money there on random textiles, too.  His loss, I guess.  Anyway, after that debacle, we went to a step well in the middle of nowhere called Dada Hari Wav.

 

Dada Hari Wav from the top step.  

This well is so randomly placed amid shacks and mud huts that we thought surely we were in the wrong place.  But no, all the people standing on the street (or laying on their bed frames in the middle of the road - they do that a lot here, and it's weird) assured us it was the right place.  For those of you who don't know, a step well is basically an ornately-carved series of platforms, each separated by a series of steps, that is used to hold water (thus the "well" part).

 

On the second level.  It's kind of hard to look at these pictures because they're dizzying.  Feel free to skip the rest.  

I guess ancient Hindu texts say it's good to build communal wells, so these were once very common in (and unique to) northwestern India.  Lucky me, I got a couple so close to Baroda.  To give you a little more info, I'll turn you over to Mr. Brown (though we all know by now just how reliable he is).  The guidebook says "Often attached to temples so that devotees could bathe, the wells were also meeting places, with verandas where people could take refuge from the summer heat, and stopping places on caravan routes.  ... The wells have been long neglected and are often used as toilets, and so are no longer the cleanest sources of water."  Yum.

 

First two levels.

 

View from the bottom to the top.  Matt had to hold my waist while I leaned over an open hole filled with bat guano for this picture.  Anything to get a good shot.  

 Anyway, this one is super cool and way more impressive than that stupid Calico Textile Museum would have been.

We wandered around there for a while before discovering the mosque (yeah, it was a mosque... I thought that was kind of weird too, it being a Hindi step well and all, but as I've said before, I really know nothing about Indian history) behind it.

 

Front of the mosque.  I think there used to be minarets but they're long gone now.

Actually, I guess the old man at the mosque found us, as he was waving us over and hissing at us for a while before we noticed him.  He was kind enough to show us alllll around the mosque, and then he showed us his collection of monies from different countries, and asked if we had any dollars.  We didn't, but we gave him some rupees, because we're so kind.

 

View from the roof.  The man in white is our new friend.

After this adventure, we were in much better spirits having finally seen something interesting, so we made our way to the Hatheesingh Temple, a Jain temple built in 1848.

 

Hatheesingh Temple. 

I learned nothing about it, except that although they are really serious about you not taking pictures, it is relatively easy to do so, and so we did.  A lot.

 

A forbidden picture inside the temple walls. 

Eventually I think the guard heard our camera shutters, because he came running over to point at us and shake his head.  He did this maybe ten times, and then he went back to his post, and we went back to taking pictures.  We're awful.  As Danielle recently told me, I'm pretty sure in my next life I'm coming back as a cockroach.

 

Details on the columns outside.  

I guess that about does it for our Ahmedebadian adventure.  I can't say for sure that I'll go back, but possibly, just to stay in that Courtyard again and look at some other temples and wells.  I know this is an inexcusably long post, and for that I apologize.  I finally saw some of the "Incredible India" I've been waiting for, and I thought it worthwhile to write about it.  In immense detail.

Hey Hey

I am loving the fact that they say "hei hei" (pronounced like 'hey') in greeting here.  It reminds me of some ridiculously flamboyant gay man from the '90s.  It can be confusing though, because sometimes they say "hei" and I think they're yelling at me.

One of the aforementioned gay men from the '90s.  Only kidding.  It's Matt.

On a related note, I still love Finland.  The weather isn't too cold most days, although yesterday it was and it rained all day.  Matt still hasn't started work and won't until Monday, so that's been nice hanging out so much together... although we're both getting a little bored, I think.  We came to the conclusion today that it's okay to get bored even in nice places because we don't have any of those "normal" hobbies that people with more stable lives have, like a house (to clean) or a dog (to walk) or a baby (to play with... and raise into the perfect human, of course).  We get bored in Chicago, too, especially in winter, so I think it's okay we're bored here.  We'll get over it.

That said, we have actually been doing lots of sightseeing the past few days.  We took a ferry over to Tallinn, which is the capital of Estonia (like you didn't know that).  It only took about an hour and a half, and the water wasn't very choppy, so I did not get seasick at all.  I know you were all worried about it.  Anyway, Tallinn was really cool... the new part of the city had a sort of Eastern European feel (like I would even know what that was...) but it has a really amazing old medieval city within the old city walls.

Archery practice in front of the old city wall, in front of the old cathedral.

It wasn't quite as amazing as Rothenburg (in Germany... see my archives for all the details on that place... as you'll recall I got a mean case of food poisoning there a couple years ago), but it was still really nice.  

Us in front of the old wall and tower.

The best part by far was the medieval restaurant we stumbled upon as soon as we got there.  The weather was beautiful, and we wanted to sit outside, so we stopped at the first place with outdoor tables... never mind that it had flags and banners fluttering everywhere and the servers all wore the most ridiculous outfits, complete with pointy shoes.  

Matt at the "Old Hansa" restaurant.

We ordered from menus where the food was listed by who would eat it, ie, the high food was for the nobels, and low for the commoners.  I had the meat soup (an unlikely choice for me, I know) which came with fresh homemade bread and soft cheese, and I washed it all down with a mug of mead.  It was all pretty incredible.  I know it doesn't sound like it could get any better than that, but wait, it does!  The best part were the bathrooms... yup.  They are virtually pitch black with only one candle in each stall, and one by the sink.  The toilets are part of a wooden bench, with a wooden toilet seat and wooden button to flush it.  The sink had a pot of water hanging over it that you tilted to pour the water over your hands.  I'm not explaining it well enough, but just use your imaginations, because I didn't take my camera in there.  That restaurant was pretty much the highlight of our Estonia trip, and maybe the highlight of our Finnish vacation so far.

 

Town Hall in Tallinn

A couple days ago we went for a drive to Porvoo, which is the city near the refinery where we're supposed to stay.  We would have stayed there, but all the hotels are full... poor us, having to stay in Helsinki instead.  Actually, we really enjoyed Porvoo!  It's super cute with rows of painted wooden houses, and adorable little shops selling adorably quaint things that no one needs but everyone wants.  It's much bigger than the Bad Goegging (the "city" we stayed in during our Germany days), with lots more shops and a nice river running through it.  I'm a fan.  I might go back one day after Matt starts work... if I can get some manual driving lessons in first.  I know, I'm supposed to know how already.  Well, I don't.  Get over it.

Porvoo

Photo of Matt for the H&M catalogue. Again, only kidding.

Yesterday we went shopping at the brand new H&M, which is right down the street from the "old" one... which isn't closing; I guess they just wanted a new one.  Anyway, yesterday was opening day, and we had to go because we got a 20% discount on top of any opening sales they had.  We're not usually the type of people that rush out to a store on opening day, and let me tell you, this experience has not changed my mind in the slightest.  First off, they had music blaring and a countdown going for when the store's doors would actually open.  And then, as we walked in the door, ALL the staff stood on either side of a red carpet clapping and cheering for us as we came in.  And there was a photographer there who just happened to be right in front of Matt for most of the time... I wouldn't be surprised to see Matt in some Finnish papers and magazines.  I'll be on the lookout.  Anyway, of course we bought some stuff, but mostly because we needed it.  Really!  I bought another long-sleeved shirt, which now brings my total to 2.  I think those will last me until we leave.  Maybe.  Unless they have another sale.

Today is the start of the big spring holiday here... apparently it's HUGE in Finland.  I'm not exactly sure what it is, so I'll have to check it out for myself and then fill you in later.  So far we've seen lots of people drinking outside and tons of people selling helium balloons.  I have no idea how this represents the festival, but they are ridiculously expensive at 10 euro a pop.  Who are they kidding?  While I'm on the subject, it is crazy expensive here.  We literally cannot find a meal for dinner (at an actual restaurant, not fast food or mall food court) for under 30 euro for two people.  And that's with one of us getting an appetizer and one getting a main dish.  Apparently Finns only eat out on special occasions or weekends, so the restaurant prices reflect that.  20 euro is about standard for a main dish.  That's more than $25!  Call me cheap (and you can, because I am) but that's too much.  We went to a supermarket yesterday and bought stuff for sandwiches, which I suppose we'll be eating for dinner from now on.

Ruined

I guess I've kept you in suspense about our trip to Petra long enough.  We were really worried about how to get there because it's about 4 hours away, and we didn't want to spend ridiculous amounts of money.  Luckily, Matt was able to sweet talk some engineers at the refinery into getting us fixed up with a driver... for freeee!  I'm not sure how that worked, actually, but it was awesome.  Probably saved us $100 or so.  Thanks, buddy.

So, some history (courtesy of Wikipedia... to be taken with a grain of salt, of course): Petra is an ancient city established around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataean people, but evidence shows that the area has been inhabited for more than 10,000 years. Ooold.  It was a major city with people coming from all over to trade in frankincense, myrrh and spices - just like the wise men!  The buildings and tombs left standing are all cut into the huge red rocks, which helped to preserve them.   It was eventually taken over by the Romans  sometime in the 2nd century, and started to decline pretty swiftly from there.  The world outside the Middle East knew nothing of Petra until 1812 when a Swiss explorer bribed some guides to disguise him as an Arab and take him in.  His notes and sketches caused it to blow up as a tourist destination.  Now known as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, it's also Jordan's most famous attraction.  And it's ridiculously expensive to get in.  It costs 33 JD ($46) per person for non-Jordanian visitors.  And that's only if you are staying in Amman.  If you come from Israel or a cruise ship for the day to visit, it's 55 JD.   Oh, but don't worry... included in your ticket price is a "free" horse ride to the start point, which is 2 km from the ticket booth.  I say free, but of course you have to tip.

Me on the horse.  This is the best picture Matt got.  No one said he was a good photographer. 

As amazing as this place is, no historical site is worth $50 for one day.  That's just gouging.  They're raising the prices in a couple months though, so I guess we were lucky to go when we did. 

  

Walk through the Siq

Anyway, after the horse ride, you start out walking through the Siq, (a long gorge) sometimes on the original stone road. Along the way are lots of carvings of deities and such in the red sandstone cliffs, and two rock-carved irrigation channels run on both sides.  There's even a camel caravan carving meant to represent all the people coming from afar to visit... although you have to use your imagination and get pretty creative to see it.  

The lead camel herder's feet are still visible. 

     Deity wearing a cape flanked by lions.

The walk through the Siq culminates in a view of the Treasury, probably the most impressive sight in the whole place.  It's topped with a funerary urn, the legendary hiding place of a pharaoh's treasure.  The Treasury's original function is a mystery, but it's believed to be the mausoleum of the Nabataean king Aretas IV.  Or so says my brochure.  

  

First view of the Treasury through the rock walls.  

       

The Treasury.  It's surrounded by rock cliffs, which must be why it looks so good.

From the Treasury, you walk out in the open to see tons of ancient tombs, from the ones for royalty to ones for regular folks like you and me.  They are all pretty impressive.  There is also a "shopping street" that would have been lined with columns, but most were destroyed in an earthquake in the 4th century.  

 

                                     Tombs 

  

Me in front of the Queen's tomb.

 

The Palace Monument and the Corinthian tomb.  Two of the Royal tombs.

 

Camels and the Royal tombs in the background.  You could pay for camels or donkeys to take you around, or even horse drawn carriages.  We decided not to spend any more money as we were still in sticker shock over the price of the tickets.  

There were a bunch of other things to see as well, but I feel I should leave some things for you all to discover when you visit Petra.  I don't want to spoil everything.  All in all, it took us about 5 hours to see it, and we even skipped some of the farther sights.  Combined with our 8 hour round trip from Amman, it made for a pretty long day.  It was pretty amazing, though.  

Anyway, I think I spoke too soon when I posted that we weren't going to Finland.  Let me clear this up: we ARE in fact, going to Finland.  We'll be leaving from here... sometime... and getting to Helsinki for Matt to start the startup... sometime.  One of his co-workers already did the loading, so it shouldn't take too long. Mary, (another roadwife... surely you've heard of her.  Who hasn't?) has been to Helsinki before when her husband did a job there almost exactly 2 years ago.  Funny how these jobs keep popping back up.  Anyway, she said it's a nice city and there is plenty of shopping and lots of sights to keep me busy.  So now I'm excited, which probably means they'll cancel it and we won't go.  See, I'm learning to play the game.  

I Love Amman

This is the view from just one direction... the city is huge.  

I ventured outside the hotel today and
had a pretty great time!  I went to the Citadel, or Jabal al-Qal'a, which is one of the seven hills that originally made up Amman.  (I didn't have a guide or guidebook, so I'm getting all my info from Wikipedia after the fact... that's why this post is strangely informative.)  Along with having the most incredible views of the city (which is massive, by the way) it's one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited places with settlements going back 7,000 years (thanks wiki).

The Temple of Hercules at the top of the hill.  And yeah, some sort of hand statue in front of those other columns.  

  

A scroll written on leather.  

There have been loads of excavations uncovering artifacts from the Neolithic period and beyond.  Pretty impressive, no?  There are also lots of ruins from different inhabitants that are amazing to see standing in the middle of the city.  The first national Archaeological Museum is up there as well, housing many of the artifacts from the various excavations, as well as stuff from all over the country and surrounding areas.  It's small, but has enough cool stuff that I wandered around for about an hour.  My favorite things in the museum were the Dead Sea Scrolls... of course it took me a while to realize which were the scrolls and which the  reproductions, but I got there eventually.   

The reproduction is the one on the wall, the actual scroll is made up of all the green pieces.  

So that was my adventure for the day.  Everyone here has been unbelievably nice to me, and I only had a few groups of locals come talk to me and take pictures... and they didn't follow me when I said goodbye!  That never happens!  The taxi driver from the hotel told me Jordan is a very safe country and Amman a very clean and safe city.  He said "Thanks be to God" when I told him I liked his city and country.  He was really kind of unnaturally excited about it.  I think maybe they want to spread the word about how great it is.  Well, I'm doing my part!  My Internet is really slow at the moment, so I'll end here, but never fear, I have TONS more pictures that I'll add later.

The Umayyud governor's palace from around the 8th century.

Though to be one of the first sculptures in the world from around 6500 BC 

The girl who took my camera and starting shooting random pictures.