Mumbai, short and sweet

A beautiful mix of chaos, history, culture, and proverty is the only way I can think to explain India. Eric and I arrived early in the morning to Mumbai. We were both very skeptical about the next week we were going to be spending in a country that rarely sees Americans and that seems to have more starving and homeless people roaming the streets than either of us have ever seen.
Upon walking out of the airport doors we began being hussled and had cab drivers swarming us. After hopping into a taxi that was prepaid (so we knew they couldn't scam us) we arrive at our hotel, Chateau Windsor. The hotel was very nice for the price, although I became a little bit worried about the shower situation when I saw the dreaded bucket near the shower. Was this the infamous shower I had heard about that is freezing cold and only includes a bucket of water? To my relief the bucket was only for rinsing the floor.

A street view of Mumbai

After our long nap we arranged a driver through the hotel who was going to drive us around the city and show us all of the highlights of Mumbai. The first stop, the Gate of India and the Taj Hotel (the hotel that was bombed last year) were both impressive. We took a miserably hot boat ride around the bay. The temperature had to have been over 100 with 100% humidity. We found the people in India to be very curious about the out of place Americans that had hopped on their boat. We got lots of questions and lots of strange looks. One guy, who was overly friendly, followed us around for a good half hour asking us where we were going next and basically inviting himself along on our tour. We nicely had to wave him off and jump into our cab and zoom off.

A boat ride around the bay. This is at 2 pm and temoeratures neared 100 F.

From the boat ride we continued our tour (mostly site seeing from the car because the heat was unbearable). The Gahndi museum was one of our favorite stops along with a garden that had locals frolicing through the grass. We continued our day with a nice view of the sunset over the Indian Ocean.

Indian kids love two things: saying "hello" and having their pictures taken

Inside a ghandi Museum. He spent a significant amount of time in this guesthouse before his assassination.


After a long day of site seeing we went to eat at the "famous" restaurant Leopold which we still can't really figure out why is so popular. The food was nothing special and the crowd wasnt particularly exciting. A little dissapointed with our meal we wondered the streets for a bit before deciding to retire to our room.

Tuesday, October 13th we woke up to a knock at our door bringing us breakfast (a nice little suprise consisting of toast and eggs). We had knocked out most site seeing the day before so we wondered towards the gate of India while checking out a few cricket games on the way. We sat down at lunch and as we began eating we noticed "swastikas" painted on the coolers and cabinets. There was a strange group of people in the corner of the restaurant that offered us some brucetta which we found even more odd (later to find out that this guy is a model and has posters all over Delhi). We sped up our meal and bolted quickly from the restaurant. Later in the week we found out that this "swastika" is actully the Hindu symbol for peace (a nice contrast from the Nazi symbol). After reading further about this, there is a constant battle about the symbol and lots of countries in Europe want the symbol banned from the religion.

One of atleast 25 games of cricket going on in the oval park centered in Mumbai

Another cricket game. Eric wanted to take too many pictures here.

Our flight to Dehli was later that afternoon so we gathered our things and took off for our next adventure. Dehli, Agra, and Japiur, also known as the golden triangle of India, were our next three stops to see the famous Tajmahal and other historic sites. Our friend, Eric Rymraz (that we stayed with in Dubai), was meeting us the next morning to join us on our journey through India.