so, day 1. our holiday begins. Sooo excited!!3:00 wake up call.3:42, tacxi pick up. So far everything is ok. 4:15 we reach the airport...excitement is building up. 4:16 Dee realises tat se leaft a small bag in te taxi. Smalli saize, but... It contained Both passports, Visas, er traveller cheques, he Visa card etc... Panic!! 5:35 the taxi brings the bag back, after a long wait and agitation.5:45 we check in, getting closer to it. 6:05 finally reach our gate C43. We are happy again. the stress has gone. Dee, a cofirmed atheist and edonist paryed to god. I prayed to Dana (private joke). Transfer in london went fine, no issues at all. Slght dlay in take off. We couldn't believe it when we were actually in the air, on our way to Mumbai..Drank a few, watched 3 movies and fell asleep, full of indian dreams.Landed in Mumbai at 1:06 on Monday Oct 2nd. Question: are we gonna get our bags?All of them? YES, we did, no hassle there.. Then customs. Dee got te look from the custom agent who was playing bad cop. Soooo funny. changed some money, organised a prepaid taxi. Now all of these seem like simple taks, eh? well, those wo have been to indian will know otherwise :-). Now, wat they call a taxi here is some kind of a black bumper car in the western world, with a hard top andsome kitsch decorations and lights all over. No side mirror, no wiper. it was knda raining, so you can imagine the state of the windscreen. well, while driving on the "motorway", the driver just got off his seat to threw a bottle of water on the windscreen. Soooo much better after that (NOT).On tese taxis, brace yourselves, you areon for a roller coaster ride!!We made it safe to the hotel,still dont know how!No lights, no indicators, traffic ligts? who cares?Rigt of way at a junction, forget about it... Really don't understand why the Irish gave Ramazan such a hard time with his theory test!!!Anyway, got to the hotel at 3:00am, greated at the door by 2 rats. This area is , according to Aine (our friend living here) teh ballsbridge of mumbai. Is this because of its prime location or the wealth of the people around??? I tink we really need to adapt to the idian way and forget about the way WE think :-) The room was clean (i think) and we got rid of the flying ants and cockroaches, we went to sleep for a couple of hours. At 5:00 a.m. the strongest thumder storm of my life woke me up. It was gorgeous, Lightning, the rumbles in the sky: Wow, Exciting! Dee slept all the way through! Bless, she was so tired. Up with the birds at 12:30 p.m., by birds, I mean the bloody cock, as in cock-a-doole-bloody-do! Drove Dee completely mad. Now, ther's something funny about showers here, there are 5 taps for the 1 shower and none of them work. we still have to figure this one out, but hey, its only day ! :-)
Now, we're in crosswords, a bookstore with "normal" people. we have to ease ourselves in this trip and this place is perfect for this... It started lashing rain and we went looking for a brolly for Dee. Didn't find one. Coming back to the hotel as I wasn't feeling too good, probably the Malaria tablets. We ventureds to the hotel next door to acclimatise our tummies to indian food and had a "plain" indian diner. This place is a "posh" hotel. as we ordered the food, I ordered 2 well deserved beers. only to be told that today is Mahatma Gandhi's birthday and therefore a dry day. Good day to India, bad day for a beer! Finished diner and went for a stroll in the dark and busy satreets of Kemps Corner where I got my 1st light panic attack. I think I don't like dark and busy streets when I don't know where I'm going!! on our way back to the hotel, we stopped and watched people, truying to understand how they function, why we might be freacked by the crowds... I can tell you, on European standard, this world is MAD!!!
Ok, gotta go for now but i'll tell you more about our adventures in the coming days...
love to all,
cathy & dee
