Damaging the Doulton

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Hi, folks... well I've managed to drag myself from the toilet long enough to update the blog but much thought is being diverted to sphincter control I can assure you.
Well Bombay (as I shall call it as the locals seem to hate the title Mumbai) is a hectic place to be sure. We landed late in the evening and spent the best part of two hours in one of the cramped, anchient cabs they have here getting to our flop house of a hotel in Colaba. The drive was possibly the scariest experience of the trip so far. There seem to be 2 road rules:
1.) You drive generally on the left hand side of the road
2.) You must honk your horn every five seconds.
Aside from that everything is fair game and it is a testament to the cat-like reflexes of all involved that we have yet to hit anything. Cars (and auto-rickshaws / bicycles / pedestrians) seem to be kept apart by some sort of magnetic repulsion.
Anywho, the hotel was not the best but comfortable and clean enough, although the shared bathrooms were weird cold shower rooms with a random toilet (and extra bucket shower) installed.
We spent two days in Bombay and visited the Gateway to India, Elephanta Island (home to some Hindu cave shrines to Shiva) and met up with Vaibhav, one of Linz's work aquaintances, who treated us to dinner at Cream Centre (quite swanky for India). He was, as all Indian account managers seem to be, very charming, polite and articulate and our thanks go out for the free tucker and pleasant evening.
That day we'd headed out to Sanjay Gandhi national park and were thoroughly underwhelmed. In fact we were stared at as if we were aliens throughout the day and even had stones thrown at us at one stage! We did see some (caged) tigers and lions and then got the hell out of there before dark.
Deciding that Bombay was a bit of a dive we decided to fly down to Goa. The flight (with Jet airways) was pretty nice (curry for lunch once again though!) although the after dinner mint was a little surprising for Bri (those who have been to India will understand).
We arrived in Dabolim and then spent the next 2 and a bit hours travelling down to the beaches of Palolim (the taxi driver picking his mate up on the way). The taxis are no less scary in the sticks than they are in the big city by the way.
On arrival at Palolem we are instructed to hike with our bags another 15 minutes or so to get to the beach front accommodation (in the dark). This, we eventually found to be a fairly ramshackle hut with a large tent in it.....nice!
Palolem was hot and fairly picturesque but a little dull so, after a dolphin cruise and a trip to the remote, but not without the obligatory random cow, beach butterfly beach we headed north to the state capital Panaji.
There we had a little luxury with our first taste of an hot water en-suite air-conditioned room (with telly!!!!). We stayed for 2 days, went on a baffling night time river cruise (sort of a floating Indian wedding disco....we were the only white people there too, and hence got stared at a lot...again), had some really nice dinner at A Fedurra (AKA the Horseshoe) and flew back to Bombay yesterday for a connecting sleeper bus to Aurangabad. Here we've been further harrassed by taxi drivers but did get a nice auto-rickshaw tour of the local caves and some of the other local sites (Bri also got his hair cut!).
Ajanta tomorrow for some more cave spotting before a sleeper bus back to Bombay and our fight north to Jaipur.
Both well, Delhi belly aside, but a little un-impressed by India so far. Maybe we're missing some magic somewhere but, thus far, we've been harrassed and victimised because of our skin colour beyond belief (also getting a little bored of being stared at constantly).....also its even more smelly and dirty than we thought possible and the welcome that was felt in Africa is seriously missing.....also I wish they would stop trying to rip us off (I swear Linz is going to spark someone soon!!!).
Aside from the above having a lovely time (just 21 days until our flight out....and counting!)

Hugs and kisses where appropriate (stern handshakes where not)
Linz and Bri.

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