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So... it turned out that the "Bollywood Agent" didn't actually want us for a "wedding scene", but an actual wedding! Umm... okay! She picked us up, along with another girl, explained that at some weddings, people like to have "Europeans" there to look like people have flown a very long way just to see their marriage... Righty-o! Well, it ended up being reallly, really cool... We always wanted to experience a crazy Indian wedding. This one was insane! Apparently, it was the wedding of some really rich industrialist, so, as you can probably imagine, it was absurdly extravagant, beautiful, huge... Apparently they spent 10 000 dollars on food (and food is cheap here!), and there were over 800 well-dressed guests, wearing the most sparkly sarees we've ever seen, and a heck of a lot of Armani accesories. And cell phones... funny. Indians loooove their food... and there were about 10 buffet tables, featuring food from all over India and the world. We defenitely ate a ton that night! Basically, me (Sarah) and the Australian girl were dressed up in orange sarees, and we were to greet the guests, and hand them plates. Evan got to hang out with the band the
whole night, listening to awesome traditional music... gotta love the sitarrs.. Rad! One funny part of the night was the argument the caterers and dresser-uppers were having about the Australian girls hair... she had dreads, which totally mystified them. They asked if she was a Sadu (religious person who doesnt have any posessions, wash hair, etc.), and were completely baffled at the fact that it couldn't be brushed. haha... It was a fun night though... the guests just ate the whole time, while the wedding party took pictures. We got to sample all the amazing food... and beverages, which all had frogs eggs in them! Rad...
The next day, we got a call in our hotel room, wanting us to be in a Bollywood "party scene". Then on the street, Evan got scouted. I got another call that day... but alas, we refused... we may have passed up our chance at stardom.. haha... but the Bollywood life is probably just too intense for us...
So, we spent out last few days in Bombay just hanging out, walking around, dodging the reallly annoying street vendors. We ate dinner with a really cool guy from Nigeria, and had lunch with
The illustrious Victoria Terminus train station...
the indian name is about 12 to many syllables to say...the American architects, who, at that time, were incredibly frusterated by Mumbai... sick of all the annoying touts... you can't walk down the street without trying to be sold like 300 items! But, it's a very cool city. We liked it. Full of extremes... It's home to some of the most rich and famous indians, with nice clubs and hotels, beautiful apartment buildings, but is also home to Asia's largest slums. There is a rediculous amount of poor people... like rediculously poor people there. And as a white person, you kinda get mobbed by all of them. I mean, there are 61,000 millionaires in India. We're not quite sure why they think dirty backpackers like us are so wealthy!
We also went to the Crawford Market, just to look around, and the "Theives Market" - packed with antiques! We loved it... it was extremelky crowded, crazy, smelly... you couldn't move without literally pushing other people out of the way, but the antiques were so rad. Got a cool saffron box. And samosas. Yummm... And we met a nice indian guy who showed us around there, which was especially nice. He didn't even pull the old trick of showing us
"my friend's store...very cheap, very nice things, just look for a few minutes, very cheap, looking is free...". Cool.
Booking our ticket out of Mumbai was an... adventure. Crooooowded train stations! Not to mention overbooked trains - it's vacation time in India, someone told us. Eventually we booked our train... 17 hours to Jaiiiiiipur, the capital of Rajasthan.
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jurk
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