as esha stated below, we arrived on the overnight train from udaipur (southern rajasthan) at 4:20am and were quickly whisked to our hotel, while at the same time apprised of the fact that a city wide bandh, or strike, would be happening today as a result of the mysterious deaths of two boys at an ashram across town.
after having a few hours of sleep, we ate breakfast and assessed the situation, calling our local guide and deciding to visit the sabermati ashram, gandhi’s first of two ashrams in india.
it was here he started the famous salt march to dandi.
the ashram and museum offered a wonderful glimpse into his simplistic lifestyle and values and we were treated to a hands-on lesson in spinning cotton used for khadi, simple cotton clothes. there was a wonderful library and bookstore where many of us purchased books relating to gandhi. it was a great place!

from there, we ventured back to our bus and could see the closed shops and restaurants, all observing the bandh. we managed to find a restaurant that was still open and willing to feed us and have since returned to the hotel for the evening where we plan to watch a hindi movie entitled munna bhai, a bollywood production with gandhi references.

tomorrow everything should return to normal out on the streets and we are scheduled to visit sewa, a local women’s collective. rest assured that we are safe and sound in our hotel tonight, bandh or no bandh. (actually, it was quite an experience for the kids to learn about what motivated this community to strike and how pervasive the support for the strike was in the different neighborhoods we drove through this afternoon—-from this teacher, another valuable learning experience!)

c is for chalo, which in hindi means, “let’s go!”
we’ll be off and running starting tomorrow morning and we’ll be posting more….
we have many unique opportunities in the comings days here in ahmedabad so keep checking in for updates!