Saturday 10 March 2018

First pass at Ahmedabad

Finally got to Gujarat, after decades of somehow passing it by.  Not a lot of tripping around, just a stop in Ahmedabad on the way to Mount Abu in Rajasthan.  A'bad is a pretty good sized city - 6-7 million.  So, is it polluted?  Duh, could hardly see a star at night and breathing the pollution in was noticeable.  Crazy busy streets in the modern part, but the old city, with windy little roads and alleys, actually seemed to me to a better experience than the area I stayed in, near the Gandhi ashram.  Only spent a few days in A'bad.

Anyway, here are a few pics just showing the Ashram and one other spot of notice.

Please click on the pics to embiggen, of course!

 The grounds of the Gandhi ashram are pretty peacefull.  It's not just a museum, where you get a static sterilized view of the activities since Gandhi's time, but it is an active centre of social movements and assistance, with different agencies working through it to improve people's plights.

The house where he lived and worked
Another view


The courtyard inside the house.
These are former street kids working at the ashram.

This woman is the third generation of her family in a sweeper position at the ashram.

Now for a place right near the ashram, a toilet museum!  Actually, it's a very active centre for getting Indians - especially in villages - to use formal sanitation, in the form of different kinds of toilets.   They teach classes on principles of sanitation and building and maintaining toilets, have demo materials,  have a restaurant, and even give visitors a chance to create bio-gas from using their facilities!


A garden of toilets of many types.


Reuse of old facilities.

Ah, yes, sitting around a squatter for a cup of tea!

If you'd like to make some gas, they've got the setup for creating and burning it off!
Just some kind of artwork.





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