The "Gujju" festival and a "known stranger" family!

Day 3 - on the day of "Makar Sankrantri" ("Uttarayan" or the "Kite Festival"), walking in the lanes of raipur darwaaja at Ahmedabad, in the winter of Jan 2013,  my friend Shishir and myself, walking in these small lanes, with old architecture on both sides, shops selling the festival stuffs [kites, manja (thread)], enjoying the festivity and finding moments to capture, I heard a tap on my back.. says.."do you guys want to capture the festival from the terraces, it is a different experience up there". Yes certainly!, I said. The next moment he asked his wife to take us to their house terrace, while he parked his car that he had stopped in the middle of the road seeing us. 

Nainesh Pandya and his family it was, total stranger, turned into a known group of people in just couple of hours. The family treated us absolutely selflessly, allowed us to climb on their roofs, arranged for the ladders to go up, click on a couple of terraces, gave us access to all possible places on terrace, local festive food and what not! Talking about their experiences and festival a decade back and now, Naineshbhai turned out to be from the same professional fraternity which I belong to. Naineshbhai had travelled quite a few places across the world and seeing and experiencing the hospitality that people extended towards him, he wanted to extend it at his home and that's reason we were here he said. 

We walked these lanes the previous night around 11pm, thats when Naineshbhai had spotted us and thought of calling us on their terrace. There was a complete mad rush of the  gujju people of Ahmedabad to buy kites and manja for the next day. The scene was something similar to "Ganpati Visarjan" at  Chowpati in Mumbai. 

A very nice and warm gujarati family, thanks for treating us!

Day 1 - On the first day of the trip, we caught up with a new friend, Maulik, a local amdavadi,  MWS member and an enthusiastic bird photographer. Maulik and we visited a nearby bird sanctuary - “Thol”. Nice and quiet place, in the arms of the nature, we spent the whole afternoon here, walked around 5 to 6 kms in lookout for birds and headed back to the hotel. Thol we got to see some nice birds, some of them were a bit far and needed better lenses to capture.

Day 2 - we visited the Akshardham temple and the Gandhi Ashram in the morning. Afternoon, we spent with a mumbaikar, Sneha Trivedi, a pleasing personality. Sneha guided us for a local “Kathiawadi lunch” near the highway, and post lunch we headed to the heart of the city, where the festivity was overflowing, a place called “Raipur Darwaja” in the hunt to watch the busy kite streets of Ahmedabad - you just read about in the beginning.

Thanks Maulik & Sneha for spending some time with us. 

Very much sums up the trip. A great "Travel" start to 2013.

A set on Flickr