'Is there a Cricket World Cup soon?'

London Gatwick Airport, Sunday night. One of the two men sitting next to me on the plane wonders how I've found myself on an overnight Air India flight to Ahmedabad. They're from Dresden in Germany, and are flying out for a conference on land reform.

I tell them I'm a sports journalist heading out to cover the Cricket World Cup. "A World Cup? In Ahmedabad? This week?" I explain that the opening game is this Thursday. They have heard of cricket, but tell me that they're not too familiar with it. They chat to one another in German, and five minutes later one of them hands me the Wikipedia page for the Narendra Modi Stadium, looking confused: "It says it's the second-biggest stadium in the world?"

Less than 24 hours later, I'm wandering around the stadium itself. I'm desperately trying to find the Gujarat Cricket Association's offices to pick up the accreditation pass that I will need to guard tightly over the next six or seven weeks, which will let me into the eight different venues that England play in across the country. The stadium is just as big as anticipated, though eerily quiet on a non-match day.

It reminds me of the Santiago Bernabéu in Madrid, a vast concrete expanse where the staircases to the upper tiers of seats look perilously far away from ground level. The seats just keep going and going. And just like in Spain, the mid-afternoon heat is oppressive for a pasty Brit like me. There are several labourers putting the finishing touches on the ground, with ICC branding adorning just about every wall and stanchion.

Not that everyone is aware of the World Cup. When I jump in my Uber back to the hotel, the driver asks whether the game has finished already; I tell him it's in three days' time. In the same vein, the immigration officer at the airport looked quizzically at the reason for my visit stated in my visa, before turning to her colleague and asking: "Is there a Cricket World Cup soon?"

For dinner, I meet a couple of friends who are supporting the world feed broadcast throughout the tournament. My extensive research (read: five minutes on Google) has led us to a restaurant called Gordhan Thaal. Before we have time to sit down, we've been served three Gujarati thalis, and the waiters insist on serving us more of everything throughout our meal, including gulab jamun for dessert.

The bill comes to less than one main dish at my favourite Indian restaurant back home, and the food is even better than the value for money. Gujarat is a dry state, so it's a masala chai around the corner after dinner rather than a pub. The man behind the counter asks me where I'm from, then smiles knowingly and says: "Ben Stokes". I picked up just enough of the language earlier this year that I could reply with an overused joke: that Hindi speakers have to be careful saying that name.