After some last minute visa dramas, we made it to India!
Dee and I had a very pleasant time in the new Qantas first club lounge in Sydney (the benefits of travelling with a platinum frequent flyer!). Moet for breakfast is definitely something I could get used to.
We bet a kingfisher beer on whether or not we'd be upgraded (ever the optimist, I was convinced) - and I'm pleased to say, this was a bet I won (and Dee was very happy to pay up on)! So, we travelled business class from Sydney to Mumbai, on what we later found out was Qantas' first ever direct flight on that route - and the maiden voyage (if you can say that for planes) of the aircraft - everything was pretty schmick, and yes, it's rather nice down there at the pointy end!
We arrived into Mumbai fairly late, yet it's peak hour all the time there. For any of you who've ever driven with Dee (who takes her inspiration from 'bat out of hell'), you won't be surprised to know she thinks her driving style fits perfectly in India - no regard for lanes, no indication, pedal to the metal as often as possible and constant beeping of the horn. Brisbane drivers should be on high alert when we get home!
Mumbai's a great city, you wander down the street and never quite know what you're going to find. On our first day, we stumbled across a backstreet beautician and thought, why not? And for $2.75 we had our hair washed - worth it for nothing more than the comedy value. Rosie threw buckets of cold water on our heads, lathered on a product (supposedly shampoo, but I'm not too sure!) and did a very special blow dry that made me look a little like Glenn Close in the 80s. She also offered to cut my hair, which I very politely declined! Turns out Rosie is a jehovahs witness, so as well as offering first class hair care, she also tries to convert her customers!
It was obviously the lovely locks that attracted a talent scout to us down in Colaba later that day - he offered us roles as extras in a Bollywood film. Alas, we had to decline, because we'd just found out the following day was the Indian Derby (Mumbai's equivalent of the Melbourne Cup). So off we toddled, paid a few rupees for access to the members stand, and had a great day at the races, Mumbai style. There were no fashions on the field, but if there were, it would have been a whole different ball game! Great day (although sadly, despite betting on almost anything that could canter, we didn't win a single thing!).
We also did a quick cruise of the harbour in Mumbai, which was all fairly standard - until we looked up and saw the Indian Navy doing a training exercise on one of their submarines - bizarre! The cruise was also packed with a big group of male Indian uni students - who seemed to think we were famous (or perhaps porn stars - or both!) - and spent the whole cruise trying to pretend to take photos on their mobile phones of the scenery - but pointing them directly at us - was quite entertaining.
We're now in Fort Cochin, which is a great old shabby chic town, which was originally the centre of the spice trade. Also where Vasco Da Gama died of malaria - not surprising, the mozzies here are hungry little buggers.
It's really tropical here, so the food is great - lots of bananas, watermelon, passionfruit, pineapple, cashews, coconuts. There's some weird liquour licencing, which means cafes can't serve alcohol - however the very canny locals get around that by serving it in teapots - so you ask for a 'special kingfisher tea' and proceed to drink your beer out of a teacup.
Yesterday we'd just finished discussing whether the men down here, who wear what looks like a tablecloth wrapped around their waist, wore anything underneath (the question that plagues Scots with their kilts). Didn't take us long to get an answer - we were wandering down a street and a very charming man on a bicycle decided to flash - I can confirm there's definitely nothing underneath!
Anyway, we're just about to head a bit further south and go cruising on the backwaters.
