Ahmedabad!

Ahmedabad is noisy, polluted, and totally mad. It's like all 4.5 million of its inhabitants are out there driving rickshaws all at once. (A rickshaw is a cross between a motorcycle and a car- I'll send photos for Paul to post soon.) Somehow in that hectic mess of traffic, people manage to get from A to B, in a loopy stream of honking mayhem. While I am here I will be visiting a weaving facility, a conventional chemical dyeing facility (to see the other side) and some natural dyeing folks I'll tell you more about soon...

It's funny that the one place I've been in India that I really want to have a beer is the only place I'm not allowed. Gujarat is a dry state in more ways that one- no booze! No card games either, apparently, as a sign says in my hotel room. And they said that Vancouver was no-fun city! (They did say that didn't they?)

It's actually not a bad way to wake up- to devotional songs at 6am- blaring, miked, and very, very live from a nearby temple with some minor technical difficulties in the speaker department. Maybe I will stick with the earplugs. I'm kind of getting used to them anyway. By the way, I flew here from Goa. I tried to take the train but it was booked from Goa to Mumbai, and it only cost a little more to fly than it did to travel first class on the train, not to mention that it took about 18 hours less travel time. I do worry about the cheap and abundant availability of flights these days though, for the ecological footprint. Unfortunately it is so easy, affordable, and convenient to be part of the problem. Two steps forward, one step back...

More tomorrow...which is India's 58th anniversary of Independence. It should be quite a birthday celebration!