Mumbay, Bombai.

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To Mumbai.

After the attacks, although I wanted to be careful about not becoming a bit of a terror-site voyeur, It was not all complete coincidence that my first stop offs were CST (aka Victoria terminus the badly terrorised train station), Leopold's Cafe (which was a must anyway after reading Shantaram- upstairs in particular just how I imagined it) and the police barricaded Western-side of The Taj Mahal (where the severe effects of the fire could be seen through the extensive restoration works).

My first night found me in The India Guest House as I mentioned before, and I got a cheeky photo of my hovel next to the oh-so-famous Lin's room talked about in the book. The rooms themselves were particularly budget in character, if not tariff, as the walls stopped a few feet before the ceiling and I could touch all four walls without even having to stretch. However, come 12 noon the next day and I saunter into the lobby of the Ascot Hotel amid the marble floors and mahogany desk and check myself into the pre-booked luxuries of their deluxe room. It was nice. Very nice.

That night, I got to the airport untypically early to meet Amy's flight in from Boston. Typically though, I managed to wait for two hours (with sign and everything) at the wrong exit. It wasn't alllll my fault as since the Mumbai attacks the authorities have deemed it unsafe for people to wait for their friends and relatives in an enclosed building, so instead hundreds of people stand around in a specifically partitioned off section of the car park, underneath a temporary roof. I finally found her after answering my phone to an American voice saying "Hey, Jack Where are you? I am under a giant white undulating thing" and so began Amy's three weeks as partner in crime to my jaunt along the southern India.


I was amazed at how cosmopolitan Mumbai is- after the filth of Kolkata and Delhi, Mumbai is almost pleasant. Although there was always an undertone of the full Indian experience which with Amy new and fresh to the country, I realized that watching a glowing sunset over the Arabian sea and behind the sky scrapers viewed from Marine Drive, it really is not normal (although it is in India) to review the snaps of the digital camera only to find a distinct outline of a man taking a dump on the beach right in front of you. We have since come up with a theory that defecating is a social affair, as when it came to our train pulling out of Mumbai for Goa (where we are now), the sheer amount of "business" going on by the tracks made me convinced that someone is handing out flyers saying "Seven AM is Shit'o-clock down by the tracks- be there or be square- you don't wan to miss the express train full of fresh package-holiday foreigners!"

Before heading down on the aforementioned train we brought in a great New Year in Leopold's Cafe. Quite an experience as after the bodies that had laden the floor barely a month earlier after the tezza attacks, there was a real feeling of unity and patriotism. Maybe getting a little bit carried away with some very hard-hitting, if not catchy Anti-Pakistani chants. A tour around the city was also a must, and we got the delights of an AC car (which is REAL luxury for me) which showed us all the Southern Mumbai sights, with particular interest being where the Parsis hang bodies to be eaten by vultures in the strictly no entry "Tower of Silence", as well as the largest open-air laundry site in Asia at Dhobi Ghats where thousands upon thousands of clothes come in to be washed dried and ironed from all over the city every day- where white actually exists, which is much more than can be said about my solitary greyish-browny-off-white T-shirt that has been hit hard by Indian travel and the inadequacies of Millet's Travel Wash.


And the last little luxury was from the delights of travelling in 1st Class AC down to Goa where the toilets were perfumed, the food not toxic and the ogling minimised as there were only two other people in our compartment, who were also Westerners. The last couple of nights have been spent in glorious Anjuna- Northern Goa that provides a fiar amount of relaxing and also a cheeky amount of trance partying if one is so inclined.

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