Charming Cholamandal

Arrived here yesterday after many hours in the Foreigners registration office in Ahmedabad, where as my friend Sharmila noted, you wait for hours not knowing why you are waiting, what the "system" is and being helpless to do anything about it. The "foreigners" were eventually lined up and take to a room to sit around a desk with the head police commissioner who never looked up at any of us but signed our papers. Then we were hearded back upstairs to wait a bit more to get the papers signed by someone else and handed to us. Then I was told that before leaving for Sri Lanka, Nepal and the US, I would need to come back to Ahmedabad 5 days before to fill out a permission to leave form! This I was told would take 5 minuites, but as anyone who has been to India knows all too well, nothing in India takes 5 minuites, I'll likely need to spend at least 2 days plus then the 5 days between. If the Fulbright people can't do anything about this and likely they can't it will take time off of my time in Sri Lanka and Nepal.

But enough complaining, I'm in paradise now. I'm staying in a breezy house in Cholamandal artist village, with a nice shady front porch belonging to my friend and host Shaiesh Bo and his wife Jyoti. They are living in another place nearby where I have dinner, breakfast and can use the kitchen when I need to to make coffee. I need the coffee as I'd forgotten that temples in South India tend to blare music over the loud speakers starting about 4am. Once I get used to it I don't mind, its makes me go in and out of an interesting dream like place. I've included some photos. There is a door in the back wall that surrounds the artist village that goes through some very small lanes with a combination of thatched huts, brightly painted concrete buildings, a combination of both and then some large compounds that look like some serious money. Kids play cricket on the streets and women sell fish in front of their huts and the road then leads to a very wide beach with a lot of fishing boats. I gets pretty hot by 10am so when the sun sets I'll take long walks, I'm eating way to well in Ahmedabad with Sharmla and Rajesh and now with Shailesh and Jyoti.

This is the narrowest and hardest bed I've ever slept on.