Our 26 hour coach journey became a 28 hour coach journey, with a very long traffjc jam which resulted in lots of pointing and staring at me every time a new truck pulled up beside the coach. Other than that the journey was actually fine, I really recommend Paulo Buses, having been on other sleeper coaches since I now realise that Paulo is luxury by Indian coach standards. Sleeper coaches have seats and also double and single 'bunk beds.' The landscape changed incredible amounts on the journey, we went from lush, green Goa through chaotic, built up Mumbai at Sunrise to a very dry, arid Gujarat.
Arriving in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's state capital, at night time was not pleasant.We were immediately acosted by aggressive rickshaw drivers, as one was loading our luggage another jumped in and drove us off in someone else's rickshaw with the owner hanging off hitting him. He eventually let go and we had a terrifying drive to the hostel which ended with him trying to charge us double the agreed price. We stayed in Hotel Goodnight as this was recommended in Lonely Planet. It was pretty dirty, we had to ask them to change the sheets but it's a good option for accomodation, the staff were really helpful with booking buses for us. For dinner we wanted to try a Thali, the famous dish in Gujarat and Gopi Dining Hall has a really good quite cheap Gujarati Thali, I think that might be all they serve. Thali is a dish were you get a small amount of three or four different curries with rotis (breads) sometimes rice and a sweet, the Shrikhand for dessert is amazing.
We went for the Heritage Walk organised by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, I also found this in the Lonely Planet guide. It cost only100 rupees for a guided tour of the Old City, there were only 3 other people on our tour and we were able to just call on the morning, but apparently they can get up to 100 people a day. It seems that there aren't a huge amount of independent tourists in Gujarat but more group tours. I really enjoyed the walk, it started at the colourful Swaminarayan Temple with a short talk and we were then led through the narrow neighbourhoods (Pols) which would be almost impossible to navigate alone. The Old City has lots of secret passage ways which now act as shortcuts through the different neighbourhoods. These were originally built as protection from the 'Britishers' for the 'volunteers', the Freedom Fighters such as Ghandi's Followers. The passageways have doors, which look like the entrance to a house when they are closed and only the local people knew about them. We walked through one door way and the confusing maze of narrow lanes suddenly opened up to a wide peaceful space of the Jama Masjid Mosque. We visited a number of temples both Hindu and Jain, including a family temple shared by up to 60 cousins and extended family who all live in the courtyard centred house attached.
We also visited the Calico Museum of Textiles. We booked our place on the tour about 2 weeks in advance, you have to visit the museum as part of the tour, there are two a day with the morning tour focusing on Textiles and the afternoon on Religious Art. I really recommend visiting here, it is set in beautiful gardens and the wooden buildings that house the Textiles are intricately carved. Our guide was highly knowledgeable and very passionate about the historic textiles, she explained many of the different techniques for printing, weaving and embroidery. We saw huge wooden printing blocks on hinges, the ink would be applied to the carved blocks, the fabric would then be clipped inside and the two blocks pressed together. We were also shown large Kashmiri shawls which were made by two weavers who would start at opposite ends and work purely on verbal instructions, up to three months later they would meet in the middle and the pattern would perfectly join. There was also Kutch embroidery, Ikat and block printed Textiles.
Ahmedabad can probably be done in a couple of days as other than a few more sights, such as Ghandi's Ashram, there isn't a huge amount to do here and the busy city is not the type of place that you really want to spend time trying to relax in. Ahmedabad is the gateway for the rest of Gujarat and from here we went on to Kutch.