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A swirling, jabbering crowd of some 20,000 greeted the marchers with shouts and cheers as they emerged in the dawn. Sentries paced around nearby salt pans fearing Nationalist attacks. An Indian woman presented the Mahatma with a horse, to be used if any of the marchers fell sick. Little, glinting clouds of rupees were flung over the heads of the swarthy group, and on every hand sounded the CRACK, CRACK of cocoanuts broken asunder by the Hindus to assure good fortune. A volunteer band raised their horns and blared a few bars of "God Save the King" before they realized their mistake and subsided in brassy confusion.
For four hours the Mahatma trudged along the dusty roads before he reached the village of Aslali, end of the first day's march. As he progressed, the host which had saluted his departure and followed him in orderly fashion for many miles gradually fell back, the cheering died away. At Aslali some 125 natives greeted him with garlands and song. The Mahatma addressed them, declared that his aide Vallabhai Patel had been arrested a week previously for intending to speak in public. Said Saint Gandhi: "Let the Government arrest me for actually doing so."
Next morning, as the 80 Disobedients again took the path, the village was asleep; not a single cheer resounded. In a nearby hamlet Saint Gandhi called his lonely procession to a halt, gazed up and down the silent, empty street, addressed the blank windows of slumbering houses. "If you do not awake you will be looted by other people, if not by Englishmen."
Under a scorching sun the trek continued. Mr. Gandhi's head and legs began to ache. At Nawagon, haggard and drooping, he stayed another night, urged the villagers to make and wear homespun clothes, to join the Disobedients. There he profoundly congratulated the eight "head men" who had cheerfully resigned as a protest against Vallabhai Patel's imprisonment. Next day, at Boriavi, he declared: "Money alone will not win self-government. If money could win, I should have obtained it long ago. What is required, therefore, is your blood." When he arrived at Nadiad, Mr. Gandhi sank to the ground, had to have cold compresses applied to his head, his legs swabbed with ointment, before he could proceed. At Anand he announced he would rest for a day and, following his one-day-a-week-silent rule, would say no word to anyone. Newsgatherers reported they did not believe the emaciated saint would be physically able to go much farther, waited to see how he felt after his day of rest and silence.
Meanwhile in Poona, southeast of Bombay, 100 volunteers planned to emulate Saint Gandhi, make a 100-mile march-to-the-sea. In Calcutta, Mayor J. M. Sen Gupta, garlanded, his forehead daubed with vermilion in, honor of a Hindu festival, embarked for Rangoon to answer British charges that he had encouraged Civil Disobedience.