India

The gate of Mumbai. Mumbai is a big city. To survive here you really have to have a back bone of steel. A visitor must put on their blinders to the provety and the garbage about and only look at the good things. We walked many miles around the city and saw all we could. They had an amazing place where hundreds of people are washing clothes like its a huge human washing machine. Its amazing how they keep track of all the clothes. Its well worth the visit. They have a tour of the Slum which the money you pay to a guide is used for various education etc. in the slum. Its given to chairty. Unfortunately we did not go on that tour. I assumed we may have passed thru it on our way from airport to our hotel. What I saw at 3 AM was enough for me of the slum. We stayed four days in Mumbai. Then we went couch surfing in the suburbs of Mumbai. What a treat we were in for. It was our first couch surfing family of the many couch surfers we met.. I will speak more about our couch surfing experiences in person if you care to hear!! To take a train in or out of Mumbai is a challege. Never travel in AM or PM commute. Its maddnes. Its packed and people are hanging out the doors. They have several ladies coaches. At first we thought," hey look a coach just for ladies", I wonder why and how come the men and women can not ride the same wagon. Boy were we glad they have ladies coaches only. Now that we experienced riding the sububan trains during rush hour. The Taj Mahal Hotel has very thight sercurity to go in and out and we manage to roam around the hotel very freely. We saw a room that was being decorated for a wedding. It was amazing decorations and there was a name of each type of food. They must had cusine from every country in the world. The flowers were amazing. They had statues made out of chocolate. This was just the engagment party. They had wonderfull paintings of queen and king like people hanging on the walls and I commented on the paintings and the man over seeing the decorations said,"". they were the family members of the wedding party. "I wonder if these people ever took the Slum Tour?". After indulging in all this and dreaming about the what the bride must look like we found ourselves in a dog show on the beach side of the seaside. That was very amusing to see how much they loved their animals. There are hundreds of dogs and cats and cows and goats just wondering every where. Every where i looked there was a dog I would have loved to bring home.The reallity is its impossible. I had to put on my blinders. After the dog show we saw a very nice garden all lite up and I was curious to see if it was some kind of beer garden. So we wandered back there and soon was invited to take off our shoes and sit down with the others. it looked like they were in some kind of prayor chanting. There was a huge arm chair with a portrait of someone in a gold frame. So we sat down and watched. Soon some peole with tv cameras started filming us and the people. I think we got alot of close up shots on us. It was funny. After awhile we decided it was time to leave. We got our shoes on and proceeded to leave and we were given a gift in a beautifull golden bag. Inside was a inceanse burner and some kind of syrup and a packet of powder and candy. From mumbai at the gate you can get a boat that takes you too elephant Island. No there are no elephants on the Island. There are some monkeys. But they have a some caves there with amazing sculptures and carving in the rock