Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the columns before meandering out again. No one even thought twice, or cared, if the cow
pooped in this 450-year old house since a "Holy Cow" brings good luck to the family.
There is amazing architecture in the different pols, all in different styles, decorated with
incredible teak sculptures and carvings. The 400-500 year-old teakwood is worth a small
fortune to decorators who are happy to buy the remnants from razed houses. Traditional
houses were built: narrow in depth, shared a structural wall, entered on a ground-level floor
with one or two floors built above. We spent hours simultaneously looking up while trying
to avoid stepping in cow, sheep, goat and dog shit all over the streets.
That
, was not easy.
A few courtyards had houses and doors around the perimeter. Just looking at the
facades, invaders, or tourists, would find it impossible to distinguish which door led into
a house, and which door led to a toilet, or escape route. Each little
pol
had its own
escape
route
! Ingenious...
A few of these huge, and vacant, single-family homes have 40-60 rooms. I strongly
suggest you do not leave Ahmedabad without taking a Heritage Walk through the
pols
.
Whether architecture is of interest, this remnant in the walled city will keep your head swiv-
eling for hours.
Ahmedabad Kite Festival
Have you read the extremely, depressing book, or watched the movie, "The Kite Runner?"
The story revolved around a Kite Festival in Afghanistan. At the beginning of our
Ahmedabad Heritage Walk, we came across men sitting in the street preparing for the an-
nual Ahmedabad Kite Festival. One man was mixing a colored paste to which he then ad-
ded
ground glass
; another street had two workers who had strung spools of
kite strings
,
and were busily
spreading
the glass-impregnated paste on the kite strings.
The Kite Festival objective is to cut your opponent's kite out of the sky - that's why
the kite strings contain glass, and the last kite flying is the winner. How fascinating to see
a festival preparation that I'd only read about. Read/or see "The Kite Runner" to under-
stand its importance to both the Afghan and Indian communities. Later in the walk around
Ahmedabad, we saw stands selling brightly colored kites together with individual spools of
strings; assorted spools had powdered glass while others were ordinary kite strings.
