Bhatgam - Delad - 16 km /10 miles

I wake at 5am, the sound of chanting, bells and drums coming through a loudspeaker from a nearby temple. It soothes me and centres me and prepares me for a new day. I find the recorder on my phone and capture a bite of the sound. We are served a morning tea and a bowl of cereal. Erico is cheerful but Tahir is tired. The brothers are not evident this morning and only one of the wives but the children are sweet, waving peace signs at us from the front verandah as we prepare to depart. I’m grateful for their hospitality. I wish them well.

Off we go walking passing one of the least attractive busts of Gandhi yet. Someone has draped a fresh hank of cotton around his neck but another has painted his teeth and eyes white giving him a freakish expression behind his gold painted glasses. We pass the milestone marking 300km distance from Ahmedabad, a mere 100km yet to walk to reach the sea! We arrive in an attractive village called Gola with a large neem tree in the public square. Paved with interlocking bricks there is no litter to be seen anywhere and it feels more like Italy than India. We sit to enjoy a little shade and find ourselves being treated to yet another tea, sipping it while the villagers stand a little apart from us watching shyly and politely, informing us this was where Gandhi had spoken. We don’t tarry however, continuing our way past fields of sugarcane under harvest. I make a casual observation to Erico about seeing an infant attended by a toddler in the field while the mother and co-workers cut cane. Erico decides to enter the field for photos and asks me to come along but something feels fraught in this scenario. We climb over the ditch and work our way through the thick cane stalks. Our approach alarms the toddler and sets the baby crying. Their mother rushes to check on them but balks at seeing foreigners. Soon father is dashing out from another field having heard of the disturbance. Erico suddenly realizes the situation from their perspective and apologizes and everyone calms down and no harm is done. As we straggle back to the road I can see how much the episode has upset him as well. “I don’t usually photograph the children,” he tells me and I feel bad for all of us. It’s a lesson to remember; we are guests but we have boundaries to respect.

The walking today is on a highway heavy with vehicular traffic with no shoulder for walking. I have to be careful I don’t lose my balance on rubble underfoot because there isn’t much room for error. The rural sights are beautiful however with plentiful water buffalo. One water buffalo farm- or perhaps a migrant camp of some kind –is particularly picturesque as the women are dressed in tribal costume wearing heavy silver bangles around their ankles and wide bone bangles and rings on their wrists and in their ears and nose. Erico stops to photograph them and they welcome us, enjoying the pleasure of being seen, allowing them some brief glamour away from sweeping out soiled straw in the buffalo and goat pens.

We walk and the scene continues with the highway on our left and sugarcane fields on the right only now the day’s harvested cane is being loaded onto the bull carts. The driver stands straddled on the piled up cane holding the reins in his hands and it is quite a balancing act, bringing to my mind The Log Drivers Waltz! The field is below road level and the bulls have to be coaxed by the workers into hauling the load up the steep bank without losing the load – or the driver. As I stand and watch mesmerized one of the men hands me a stick of sugarcane. I’m like a kid at the rodeo now eating cotton candy. The parade passes by thunderously. One after another they enter the highway and head off beneath the gateway announcing Delad.

When the drive's nearly over I like to go down
And watch all the lads as they work on the river
I know that come evening they'll be in the town
And we all like to waltz with the log driver*

*verse 2, The Log Drivers Waltz