I feel like we’ve been in India many more than 4 days, so some of the details are a bit fuzzy…

Eli posted about or trip to the hotel, which we woke up in at a reasonable hour the next morning, when they very nicely buzzed us to tell us our paper had been delivered.  We got packed up, and went shopping within the gated, enclosed commercial district that our hotel was within.

It was a very positive experience.  I’d been worried after our trip to the hotel, but all the people were very friendly and willing to help.  We went into a wholesale sari shop, and the men who ran it (all the shops were run by men with no female employees) spent about an hour pulling out sari after sari and laying them on the table for me to examine.   After the first hundred or so saris, I was getting overwhelmed.  I picked up a few to use as home decorating fabric, and one to potentially wear to Hiren’s wedding.  I also picked up two premade shirts, since my hiking clothes didn’t exactly blend with the native culture.

My general observation of the dress here is that almost all of the men in the cities we’ve visited wear western clothing, while nearly all of the women wear saris or native ‘pantsuits’, which are comprised of a loose colorful top and long scarf worn over solid colored pants.

Our next shopping stop in this market was a mens clothing store.  Eli was much quicker than I was, and found his formal wedding outfit quite quickly, and a linen top to potentially wear around.

We then just wandered around, taking in the atmosphere of the marketplace (and trying unsuccessfully to find an ATM). I really wanted to purchase one of the pantsuits I kept seeing the women in, but they are usually custom tailored, and no one could make me one in the time we had in any one place.  Then while we were on our way back to the hotel, we stopped by one last shop that had some ready-made in the window.

Here’s me with the proprietors.  Behind us, you can see how the shops here have their merchandise; they have a few items out as examples, then tons and tons of different fabrics to choose from, all expertly folded and packaged in plastic.  They let me lean over the counter and point out the ones I liked, then pulled out more that they could suggest based on that.  They were quite helpful, and worked with us for a while.  I ended up with a pre-made suit for the wedding, so I wouldn’t have to bother wrapping a sari (and it was quite affordable), and I also got a premade pantsuit in green that’s very nice (I wore it today, on Day 4, and got complimented by two Indian ladies).  Unfortunately, the pants wouldn’t fit over my feet and calves, so I wore my new black long underwear instead (which was pretty close to the style of the pants).  Pictures over the rest of the trip are me in the clothes I bought.

After shopping, we had lunch at the hotel.  Tandoori chicken, chicken masala, and naan; it was quite tasty.  Then we got a ride to the airport from the hotel, and found out our flight had been delayed.  So we read in the airport for a few hours (Indian airport bathrooms are not my favorite experience), and hopped on our jet to Ahmedebad.

After a short and not un-pleasant flight, we made it there.  The Ahmedebad airport was much more pleasant than the international Mumbai airport; we found a driver easily and traveled about 30 minutes to our hotel on the other side of the city.  This hotel was much nicer than our first Mumbai hotel; the room was larger, with a seating area, and plenty of clean storage.  We met up with Hiren’s friend Tracey from Exxon, and got room service and made a sight-seeing plan for the next day.  It’s good we met up with her; she’d been backpacking around the country for the past three weeks, and had a much better idea of what to do than we did.  As usual, it was then quite late, and we passed out in our nice, clean hotel bed.  zzzzzzzzz.