Bollywood babes

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Well, it's been a few days since internet contact, and since then we have encountered an unhealthy amount of Indian public transport.

The train journey turned out ok & we met an English couple who shared our train cabin. We were in a 2nd class air-con sleeper carriage which turns out to be reasonably civilised. Also, the trains seem to go at a pretty slow pace here which makes sleeping a bit easier. The funniest thing about the trains is all the food and drink wallahs, who leap on, run down the train yelling chai, chicken lollipop (?!! - no, we don't know either), frooti, or whatever else they might have to sell you in their bucket. Having done so many hours of swaying (all through the night and then all through the day until 5ish), I was feeling pretty nauseous, and the result was my first Indian illness. Put it this way, the food I had eaten was a bit of a waste of time & effort...

We arrived in Mumbai to be greeted with 36 C heat - pretty hot when you consider my first Indian purchase up north had been a blanket!! We tried to check into our hotel, only to be taken to Hotel Volga, rather than Hotel Volga II where we had booked. We went to our actual hotel which turned out to be quite a bit scabbier, so we went back to Hotel Volga, which should really be in the LP guide instead of Volga II from what we saw. Anyway, it was like sleeping in a wardrobe, but at least it was quite cheap and clean!

We have been asked a ridiculous number of times if we could come and be extras for some (no doubt) non-existent Bollywood film or another. No doubt word has got around that this is a good way to chat up dumb Westerners... Somehow, we managed to resist the temptation of fame and fortune.

We enjoyed exploring Mumbai, a more instantly likeable, cleaner, less hassley place than many of the others we have encountered. It has a real character and lots of fun palm trees and attractive buildings. Also, we are much less fascinating here and men seem to be capable of peeing in designated areas rather than right in front of your face. While there, we went to Gandhi's Mumbai residence, interesting but in the middle of serious refurbishment, so half the stuff was missing. We also went down to chowpatty beach and saw the sunset. Our boat trip to Elephanta Island was seriously hot and probably not the best plan before a sleeper train journey, but it was fun to see the cave carvings.

The train journey from Mumbai to Goa was made extra exciting by the fact that the seats and carriage on our ticket no longer existed! They have this interesting system of sticking up passenger names on the side of the train and you have to check it to find out where your seat is. Sarah and I had been moved to different ends of the same carriage - genius. Some girl was already in my seat sitting with her family, and not wanting to take on a 10-strong Indian family, we just sat in Sarah's carriage and hoped for the best. This train journey was fine and we went on to Colva beach. We had booked a really sweet basic room there, but a few hours of shielding our eyes from fat burnt Brits in their mid-40s soon told us all we needed to know about Colva, and we left the next morning for Palolem. Despite being crushed on the local bus there, we managed to uncrumple ourselves and got ourselves a rather dashing pink beach hut on stilts - quite nice and cheap. Palolem is lovely, but neither of us are great on the beach, with boredom / burning issues!!

A very relaxing place to be for a few days though and a beautiful beach.

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Comments

[ML]

Maybe not.
Most of the time, those guys are real scouts looking for extras. Mumbai churns out over 800 movies a year, many of them calling for palefaces in the background, some of whom do it as professionally as use allows.