Ahmedabad pictures

Hi all,

I went on a trip to Ahmedabad this weekend to help out with a citizen-journalist training program. That itself was pretty much all whiteboards and conference rooms, so not terribly interesting visually, but I did get out to some gardens nearby and thought I would share.

Ahmedabad is the biggest city in (but not capital of) the Indian state of Gujarat. It's traditionally a business town -- if Mumbai is roughly LA, and Dehli is roughly DC, and Kolkata is roughly Boston, Ahmedabad might be compared to Chicago. It's also where Gandhi started his first Ashram when he came back to India from South Africa.

On my first break I went to Parimal Garden, which is sort of in the center of town.



Here's a cow blithely ignoring the traffic light outside the garden. Also, on the wastebasket to the right you can see examples of the Gujarati alphabet. (Gujarati is the primary language of Gujarat.) The alphabet is like Hindi, but lacks the horizontal line at the top of the letters.



Here's a statue at its main gate. A dude was trying to charge me to enter, but it is in fact free. Apparently the rude words I've learned in Hindi translate well into Gujarati because he backed off.

The main element inside is a large lily pond









On hot days like yesterday, the pond is probably best viewed from the shade of the arbor.





The fauna include something like a chipmunk, and apparently parrots.

On the second break, I went to what's called the Law Gardens (I can't seem to find the origin of that name)



Outside is a large fireworks stand; it's only a few days until Diwali, and fireworks are popular this time of year (oy, are they ever... ask me how I slept last night...).

The Law Gardens also have a lily pond theme, but they are several small ones connected by little straits crossed by footbridges:







There are also a lot of footpaths in this one, as opposed to Parimal which is more of a field-and-bramble model:





And, there's a children's park area, which reminds me of the good old days when playground manufacturers weren't terrified of lawsuits:



A climbing wall, a metal Darwin Sphere, and a sand-covered asphalt surface. To be young again!