Night Heritage Walk from Mangaldas ni Haveli - my experiences

Night Heritage Walk in Ahmadabad is a unique way to experience and explore the city, and is vastly different from most other walks that I've done in different cities across the world. What makes it so unique? Well, for one...we were chased by dogs, but also got to explore a haunted house in the dead of the night. But there is more...read on to know!

It was the New Year's eve, but it certainly didn't feel like one. I worked till late in office and could reach home only around 8:15 pm, and so the planned dinner outside with friends was canceled and we ended up eating in our dear old mess (mess eating was fairly common for us in those days)!

However, it was followed by a very interesting excursion in the old parts of Ahmedabad - the Pols to be specific. It was all done as a part of 'Night Heritage Walk' organised from the Mangaldas ni Haveli.

It was dark and that's just one of the things that made the walk so interesting...in fact I think it should be done even later in the night so that when you take the walk, there is no one around, and the place can belong to you completely and vice versa. The guide was missing that night and so the Manager himself took us for the walk, which was both good and bad in a way. I wasn't really looking forward to lot of information thrown in as we walked around and that's exactly what our rather friendly Bengali Manager cum guide-for-the-night did. He knew little and only occasionally offered any tit-bits about the places we visited. In fact all three of us were pretty much on our own which was amazing.

Especially interesting was the now-uninhabited Haveli which used to be a school in the past at one point of time. The broken furniture, the crumbling walls and the hint of splendor of the past, just fits into perfect harmony (I wonder how though!). The place looks stuck somewhere between the past and the present, unwelcoming to intruders, unwilling to move on. The rest of the things we did, including getting chased by dogs in a narrow old alley, passed in a blur till we reached Manek Chowk.

Moharram is coming up and so we also got to see Tazias-in-the-making at the Badshah no Hajiro. Reminded me of Nanpara (a small town I lived in years ago), we used to see so many there. Now I really intend to visit the old city during Moharram (something I missed this year as well). DJM had recommended it about two years back, will not miss it this time. Life gives us few chances, we should grab them whenever we can...and never actually wait for the next time.

The walk ends with the sound of a 600 years old tradition of drum beating, just outside Badshah ni Hajiro at 11 pm for about half an hour. Its not something that anyone living in Ahmedabad should miss!

Night Heritage Walk in Ahmedabad

For more information, visit the House of MG link here.