There was still some time before the bus arrived, so we went looking for food and found some appetizing sweets. We bought them, and I came up with the idea that this would be a birthday cake — the sweets were beautifully packed in a little box.
Then we drove for a long time to Bhavnagar, arriving in the evening, when the sun had almost disappeared, and we didn’t have a booked hotel. There is something helpless about arriving in the evening in an unfamiliar city where no one is expecting you, not even the most run-down little hotel… For some reason, I always feel very uneasy in such moments, although many travelers write that they are used to looking for hotels on the spot.
We had a couple of hotels in our navigator — we went to the first one, the closest to the bus stop, Sun ‘n’ Shine. It turned out to be expensive by our standards (2,300 rupees for a room). We saw a sign for the Vijay Palace hotel, and Volchiy suggested we go take a look. The hotel was on the 2nd floor of some gloomy building. At the reception sat an Indian woman, who told us there was one free room, costing 800 rupees. The room was fine, with new renovations and new furniture. Only the hotel felt like a transient place — some strange people were constantly coming and going down the corridor, and it was very noisy. We decided to go look at more hotels. We got to the BlueHill hotel — there the room cost 1,500 rupees, and Volchiy said that was expensive. Near BlueHill there was another hotel — I don’t remember the name — from the outside it looked like an abandoned, neglected building, but the doors were open and two young men were sitting at reception. When they saw us, they called their boss — a pleasant-looking man who knew where Ukraine was and that there was a war going on there now. He said the room would cost 600 rupees, warning us that everything inside was very old — but we decided to take a look. The room, of course, looked depressing. Light barely came through the large windows — they were covered with an even layer of dust; in the bathroom, a rusty toilet paper holder was hanging by a thread, and the paint on the walls had bubbled and flaked off — that’s just a little of what I managed to take in at a glance in a couple of seconds. The second room was even worse, and we decided to run away from this Godforsaken place. We decided to go back to the Indian woman at Vijay Palace. And when we arrived, she spread her hands and said the room had just been taken — and indeed, in front of us she was scanning the passports of some Indian guys who had gathered around the reception desk.
Yeah, that’s why I don’t like looking for hotels on the spot, especially when you arrive in a city in the evening — and by then it was completely dark outside. However, just when it seemed it was time to despair, the woman said she could give us her room for the same price. The room itself was the same, except there was less furniture. We agreed. They brought us bedding, a blanket, and a towel. Someone knocked on the room a few more times and tried to find something, but soon everything calmed down and we could relax. We were hungry, so we went out into the street in search of at least some food, but found nothing except Indian women frying flatbreads right there sitting on the road. We bought bananas, several packs of cookies, and water. For dinner, we also had the festive sweets that had made the long journey with us. The sweets turned out to be delicious, as the man explained — they are made from milk — and indeed they vaguely resemble cottage cheese with various additions.
And that’s how we celebrated Volchiy’s birthday — sitting in a strange hotel, watching a film about Mecca, eating Indian sweets, and drinking tea….
And tomorrow morning, Palitana is on our plan.