Everything can’t be amazing
Having been to Palitana and made my attempt to get into Alang, I’d done everything I had wanted to do around Bhavnagar, and it was time to move on as I had a night train booked from Ahmedabad out to Bhuj. However, rather than going straight to Ahmedabad, I’d planned on stopping in at Lothal on the way, as it was pretty much on the way. As usual, I hadn’t worried about details, and so I got up early, checked out of the hotel, and walked across the street to the bus stand arriving just before 7:30 which from my observations was the start of the bus rush-hour when most morning busses left. It took a couple of tries, but eventually I got the information guy to understand what I wanted, and he told me there was no direct bus (not a surprise) and pointed at one and said to take that one, and from it’s destination, I could get a bus to Lothal. So though it did all work out in the end, my trip to Lothal ended up taking about 3 hours on ratty Gujarat government busses, and every time I changed busses, everyone asked where I was going and was quite puzzled when I replied “Lothal”, though each time they eventually came up with a suggestion as to where I had to go next.
Finally around noon I got dropped off at the stop for Lothal, a insignificant stretch of road where a little dirt side road branched off the main route. There was one little shack on the corner, but otherwise it was only farmer’s fields as far as the eye could see. If it hadn’t been for the small sign pointing down the side road that said “Lothal, 10km”, I would have suspected that the bus driver was pulling my leg, and I wouldn’t have gotten off the bus. However, the sign was there, and there was a motorcycle rickshaw (local public transportation) waiting at the corner, so I hopped off the bus and joined the 4 exisiting passengers on the rickshaw – a motorbike front stuck onto a two wheeled rear cargo area with enough space for 8 (15 Indians). Being a foreigner in this part of the country, it was pretty obvious where I was going, but the friendly rickshaw driver asked anyway before happily setting off down the old, bumpy, dusty dirt road.
For a world class heritage site containing the ruins of a 4000 year old metropolis, Lothal was quite a disappointment. As we approached the site, I saw a small dusty hill with some people wandering around on it, and my immediate thought was, “That better not be it”. Unfortunately it was… There was a museum on the site (which was supposed to be good), but it was closed on Fridays (which happened to be the day I was there), so the only thing to do was go out and wander around the site. The ruins at Lothal basically consist of some foundations poking up out of a small hill, marked only by small, uninformative Archeological Survey of India signs (they never said much you couldn’t find out yourself, mostly it was just the dimensions of the various ruins). Plus, the sign at the gate stated that some of what’s now visible had actually been reconstructed using new bricks/mortar, and though the new bricks were supposed to be labeled, I never saw any. Though there wasn’t a whole lot there, what was remaining looked remarkably intact for something 4000 years old, so I was suspicious about the authenticity of the whole place. In my opinion it seemed more likely that the whole thing was built back in the 70′s to make it look like there was something there. I didn’t doubt that Lothal was an important archeological site that had once been an amazing old Harrapan city, I just thought that contrary to what the signs said, none of what was currently visible was original.
I walked around the whole site looking at all the different ruins, trying to figure out if any of it was real, and if so, trying to imagine what it might have looked like 4000 years ago. It was really hard to do, mayb I’m just a big sceptic, but I think it’s also partly due to the fact that I’m not used to seeing such ancient history – in Canada, if something is even 150 years old it’s ancient, so trying to figure out what something 4000 years old would look like was nearly impossible. However, I told myself that it was a very different style of building back then, and if Greek, Egyptian and Chinese structures of similar ages could survive (which I knew they had), then why not Harrapan ruins. Although I had many questions in my head an had become curious to learn more, it was pretty clear that I wasn’t going to be able to learn much from the site itself, and you can only spend so much time looking at poorly labeled, dubious foundations, so after about 20 minutes I’d had my fill. I went back to the parking lot and told the rickshaw driver I was ready to go (he’d offered to wait for me and watch my big backpack which had with me, but didn’t really want to carry around). While wandering around the ruins, I’d met another traveler/backpacker, a young guy (NRI – Non-Resident Indian) from Oregon, and when I told him I was leaving, he asked if he could catch a ride to the main road (he’d hitched a ride in on a local truck, and hadn’t worried about how he’d get back out), and I said sure. We stopped to pick up some locals along the way, but eventually we found ourselves back at the main road, and the rickshaw driver was asking for money. I (stupidly) hadn’t confirmed a price when I started (figuring that it was just local, public transportation and so would be a matter of Rs. 20-30 return maximum) but the rickshaw driver wanted Rs. 100, saying I’d hired him and told him to wait for me (he’d volunteered). My NRI friend got away with paying Rs. 10 for his one-way trip, and in the end I managed to bargin the indignent driver down to Rs. 50 for my portion. Afterwards he said that from the start, he had only been asking for a Rs. 100 bill and was going to give me change, but I wasn’t going to believe that. However, once he’d gotten his money, the driver instantly warmed up to me, and so we spent an hour just sitting on the side of the road talking like best of friends, waiting for a bus to come. Just goes to show, you never know what will happen here in India.
The first bus that stopped for me at Lothal was not the government bus I had expected, but a private sleeper bus, another first for me, and after some initial negotiation, they agreed to take me to Ahmedabad for Rs. 50. Though the chairs on the bottom were a little small for me, and the ceiling too low, the bunks on the upper half were quite nice, and as bus travel goes, quite luxurious. The other surprise was that the driver’s son (who was sitting up front) spoke fluent English – with a thick Texan accent, greeting me with a “How’s it goin’?”. He claimed to have lived in the States for a few years (didn’t catch where) and was just back visiting family, but for some reason I was suspicious. My guess was that he was some call centre employee for an American company working here in India, because I’ve heard that those kinds of places give special training to their employees so that not only do they speak perfect English, but they speak with an American accent. Even if the guy had lived in Texas for 3 years, I don’t think that he would have learned to speak like that, but I may be wrong. Either way, it was extremely bizarre talking with him, seeing an Indian but hearing a Texan.
Eventually we got to Ahmedabad, and just as I went up to ask where I could be dropped off, the driver pulled over and said this was the stop for the main bus stand, and that I should take a rickshaw from here. So I quickly grabbed my things and piled into a waiting rickshaw, thankful I didn’t have to haggle about prices because all the rickshaws in Ahmedabad run on meters. However, the trip from my drop-off to the train station (which by my map was only 1.5 km from the bus stand) took quite awhile, and when we finally arrived, the meter said Rs. 169. After paying only Rs. 50 for the bus from Lothal (1.5 hrs), the fare really stung, I would gave guessed about Rs. 100 based on the distance – but that’s what the meter said. Maybe I was just being suspicious and grumpy that day, but I realized that I hadn’t checked the meter when we started, and I started to wonder if the guy had reset it when I got in. I couldn’t argue though, so eventually I paid up and went and checked my bag at the railway cloak room. My train to Bhuj didn’t leave until 11:59PM (one minute later and I would have had another expired ticket, just like in Surendranagar) so I decided to go explore Ahmedabad.
I had tons of time, and my first experience had made me wary of the rickshaws, so I walked down the main bazar from the train station to the river. There didn’t really seem to be anything special about the place, mostly it was just a typical Indian bazar with millions of little shops all selling everything imaginable, and grouped together according to what they sold (makes you wonder how they survive if you have 10 shops in a row selling only spices, and the exact same ones…). There were lots of people and a few bikes and scooters, but all in all it was fairly orderly, and surprisingly clean. Though I had passed a few of the attractions listed in the book, I hadn’t seen anything that looked particularly interesting, so I walked out to the main road and up onto the bridge over the river. The river was pretty gross, a sickly green colour with a fair bit of flotsam moving very slowly. One bank was lined with huts built of all kinds of scrap imaginable, a true slum, but the other side had all been cleared and there was some big construction process going on. There were a couple of cranes sinking pilings into the river bank which had been graded and looked to be the beginnings of a major highway. I watched the proceedings until it got too dark (I hadn’t seen heavy machinery for a long time, in India most everything is done by manual labour) and then wandered back along the bazar to the train station. All in all, Ahmedabad hadn’t really excited me, there didn’t seem to be anything special about the place, it is just another (above average) Indian city, and I can get that anywhere. So it was back to the waiting room, and eventually onto the train and off to Bhuj.
This is the online home of one Shane Warner, my place to attempt to tell some of my stories, as well as just spout off whatever comes to mind.
