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Published: December 31st 2007
Leaving Melbourne and staying overnight in Sydney gave us a chance to go on a tour through the Opera House. It was a bit of a struggle for me (Jarrad), still feeling the full effects of a flu I was trying to shake in time for India. Kate had it previously and had mostly recovered. Starting early the following morning we boarded out flight to Mumbai or at least to Darwin where we got to spend an hour in their grand International Airport (a shed). Finally arriving in India in the evening I was particularly exhausted and sore in the head after a days flying. As with our past trip through Asia we realized that it would take a while Acclimatize and Culturize. This became very apparent when we took the long taxi ride through seemingly endless city. That first ride always seems one of the most memorable parts of travel and riding in the back of one of Mumbai's famous black and yellow 50's fiat style taxis.
Staying in a mid-range hotel in Mumbai (India's most expensive city) cost about the same as Sydney, but we weren't ready for anything too simple to start with. Fort, a 'quieter' area
of the old city was where we spent the first few nights before moving to the action of Colaba. Generally the city doesn't draw many tourist visitors, so we thought would be a good place to start. Allowing ourselves to ease into India before getting to places like touristic Agra. However, this didn't really pan out as we thought. As there were hardly any western looking people around, we really stood out and got stared at a lot. Leaving us feeling a little uncomfortable. I (Kate) probably felt it a bit more than Jarrad did, and despite the heat put on layers of clothing to cover up.
Just walking around the city was entertaining, so many things to see and so much chaos. Street vendors, bicycles and cows oh my! Things as simple as eating a meal became a new education. Learning to eat with only our right hands and to enjoy new foods. And even though when we ordered meals we were quite prepared for some spicy-ness, it was to our disappointment it never came. They must have thought we couldn't handle it. Having so much vegetarian food was wonderful, although made decision making quite tough.
Spending
One of the finest meals
...and what a feast. We ordered the small one too!most of our days seeing as much as we could we decided we were ready to begin a bit of journey-ing and took an overnight train to Ahmedabad. Ahmedabad definitely off the typical tourist trail, as I can't recall seeing another non Indian tourist. But we had heard had some wonderful things to see.
We arrived early at the train station and were taken to our hotel by a sleazy auto-rickshaw driver. We caught up on some sleep and when we woke up the city was flooded. We tried to go for a bit of a walk around but it was a hopeless task with roads gridlocked and knee deep puddles. We retreated instead for the indoors for food and to relax.
We woke up the next day feeling a bit brighter, and ready to give seeing the town another go. We got in an auto-rickshaw (they should be called risk-sure!) and headed to see some of the attractions like a museum designed by Corbusier and an apparently beautiful textile museum. All to find out that it was a public holiday and everything was closed. One consolation was we enjoyed one of the best meals we ate through india
above a very posh hotel that had once hosted many important people (including Ghandi). After these two days we were very ready to move on, another overnight trip.
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