{"id":897,"date":"2009-03-25T20:25:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-25T18:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onmytodd.org\/?p=897"},"modified":"2015-11-17T15:16:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-17T14:16:33","slug":"surat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/?p=897","title":{"rendered":"Visiting Surat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I&#8217;m still staying in Kamrej. I&#8217;ve been working on a project for a customer during the past month, which is why it was pretty silent on the travel front.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to go to Surat today to get some supplies &#8211; most importantly, cleaning stuff for my contact lenses. As you may know, my glasses rest in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between New Caledonia and Ile Surprise. Ironically, the hotel I&#8217;m staying at is called Pacific Inn. Anyway, I asked at reception how much I should expect to pay for an auto rickshaw to Surat, and they offered to organize one for me for a reasonable price.<\/p>\n<p>The driver, Mahesh, is a brother of one of the waiters and a nice guy. He showed me around Surat and helped with the shopping. Unfortunately, cleaning fluids for hard contact lenses were nowhere to be found. I&#8217;m kinda back to square one in that regard.<\/p>\n<p>On the road to Surat I saw camels dozing in the shade of trees and camel carts. The city itself is full of textile factories. For some reason I find it amazing to look into open doors and windows and see (big, industrial) looms <em>en masse<\/em>. We also tried to find some of the local sights. Surat has a mini Eiffel tower and we found it. However, the Old Fort, widely advertised on the web, was unknown even to the locals. I couldn&#8217;t suppress a big smile when Mahesh suggested I should use my phone to look for the Fort&#8217;s address online (did that, but to no avail, by the way).<\/p>\n<p>More than once now have I thought that it would be uber-cool to travel (India or elsewhere) with an auto rickshaw. I thought about hiring Mahesh for a longer period, a few days maybe, but there wouldn&#8217;t be enough space in the vehicle for two people and luggage. And my bike wouldn&#8217;t want to be left behind, either. Well, one day I&#8217;ll do that!<\/p>\n<div class=\"rl-gallery-container \" id=\"rl-gallery-container-1\" data-gallery_id=\"0\"> <div class=\"rl-gallery rl-basicmasonry-gallery \" id=\"rl-gallery-1\" data-gallery_no=\"1\"> <div class=\"rl-gutter-sizer\"><\/div><div class=\"rl-grid-sizer\"><\/div> <div class=\"rl-gallery-item rl-gallery-item-width-4\" > <div class=\"rl-gallery-item-content\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1082.jpg\" title=\"\" data-rl_title=\"\" class=\"rl-gallery-link\" data-rl_caption=\"\" data-rel=\"lightbox-gallery-1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1082-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <div class=\"rl-gallery-item\" > <div class=\"rl-gallery-item-content\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1083.jpg\" title=\"\" data-rl_title=\"\" class=\"rl-gallery-link\" data-rl_caption=\"\" data-rel=\"lightbox-gallery-1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1083-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <div class=\"rl-gallery-item\" > <div class=\"rl-gallery-item-content\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1084.jpg\" title=\"\" data-rl_title=\"\" class=\"rl-gallery-link\" data-rl_caption=\"\" data-rel=\"lightbox-gallery-1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1084-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <div class=\"rl-gallery-item\" > <div class=\"rl-gallery-item-content\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1099.jpg\" title=\"\" data-rl_title=\"\" class=\"rl-gallery-link\" data-rl_caption=\"\" data-rel=\"lightbox-gallery-1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1099-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <div class=\"rl-gallery-item\" > <div class=\"rl-gallery-item-content\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1093.jpg\" title=\"\" data-rl_title=\"\" class=\"rl-gallery-link\" data-rl_caption=\"\" data-rel=\"lightbox-gallery-1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1093-225x300.jpg\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <div class=\"rl-gallery-item\" > <div class=\"rl-gallery-item-content\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1109.jpg\" title=\"\" data-rl_title=\"\" class=\"rl-gallery-link\" data-rl_caption=\"\" data-rel=\"lightbox-gallery-1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1109-225x300.jpg\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <div class=\"rl-gallery-item\" > <div class=\"rl-gallery-item-content\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1091.jpg\" title=\"\" data-rl_title=\"\" class=\"rl-gallery-link\" data-rl_caption=\"\" data-rel=\"lightbox-gallery-1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/wp-uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_1091-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I&#8217;m still staying in Kamrej. I&#8217;ve been working on a project for a customer during the past month, which is why it was pretty silent on the travel front. I wanted to go to Surat today to get some &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/?p=897\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-around-the-indian-ocean","tag-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=897"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6953,"href":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions\/6953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}