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Published: February 10th 2007
The last few days have been alot of travelling and staying in useless cities. India is such a big country so all the travel is long, hot and uncomfortable. From Udaiper we took a 7 hour bus ride to reach Ahmedabad. The only reason we were stopping in Ahmedabad was to catch a train the next day because every other city was completly booked up. We were lucky we even made it on a train in the first place.
Ahmedabad itself was basically just another overcrowded and polluted Indian city with nothing to offer. We only saw maybe 2 other toursits while we were there, therefore I recieved alot of stares. The people will continue to stare at me constantly. Even when i look back at them and glare they will not stop!! I have experienced this in almost every city so far but this one was the worst. I would find it very creepy traveling in India without Dave. It is not really unsafe just creepy. The only thing we went to see in Ahmedabad is Gandhi's Ashram. That was a nice peaceful place to see and learn a bit about Gandhi and his ways of life.
The
next day we had to catch a 12 hour day train to Jalgaon. Usually we catch the trains at night but this time we were stuck on a daytime train. Luckily the time went by really quickly. We met a guy on the train that was from Jalgaon. It is really funny to talk to the locals about different things. We showed this guy some of our videos from different countries. He was suprised to see how different it was from India. Many Indians also believe that the ocean is salty in some places and sweet in the others. They believe that when it is sweet it is holy. But they dont understand that it is the taste of chemicals that make it sweet. It is amazing how many people in this country are so unknowledable about the simplest things. But it is still interesting to hear their ways of life and teach them about ours but sometimes they dont accept the fact that there are places different that India.
Once we arrived in Jalgaon it was another unpleasant city with not many tourists. We luckily made reservations and had a decent spot to stay. There were not any
clean restaurants in Jalgaon so we settled for advice from our hotel. We went to the restaurant and it had great service and the food looked really good. When we were about half way through eating our meal there were a few cockroaches that decided to join us at our table. Not just at our table but on our food! It was sooo disgusting! Suprisingly there wasnt a huge pest problem at all throughout India so this was rather disturbing.
The only reason we even decided to go to Jalgaon was because it was close to the Ajanta caves. The Ajanta caves are really amazing and were well worth the extra long travels to get there. There was about 35 caves that were all amazingly carved and painted. They are 2000 years old so they are really starting to deteriorate. Unfortunatly we could not get too many good pictures because flash photography was prohibited. It was amazing to see how well these caves were done becuase they didnt have any machines or anything just did it by hand. The detail that was put into all of them was amazing.
After exploring the Ajanta caves we caught a night
bus to Mumbai. We again really wanted to take a train but they were all completly full. Night buses and long bus trips our definatly our least favorite thing about travelling. Luckily we had a nice bus this time with super reclining seats. We thought it was going to be a good ride until the bus started moving and it was sooo bouncy. Two times the bus was going so fast over huge potholes and everyone in the bus went flying out of their seats. Some people even hit the roof. It was horrible. There is no easy way around the travelling in India. I am suprised we have even survived all these trips there have been so many close calls. Thankfully this was our last bus ride in India.
We arrived in Mumbai at around 8am and thankfully we thought to make reservations. It is a really expensive city compared to the rest of India so we got almost one of the only budget hotels in the city...if we didnt make reservations we probably would have been paying about 10 times more. Mumbai is probably the most modern place we have seen in the last 4 months. It
felt nice and comfortable and more like home. There were tourists, good restaurants, coffee shops, shopping malls and movie theatres! It was just what we needed at the end of a tough month of travellng through India. Also all throughout the city there was some of the most amazing British architecture. The streets were amazingly clean and there were no rickshaws in the streets. We had to constantly remind ourselves that we were still in India.
During our time in Mumbai we went and explored the city a little bit on our own and we hired a taxi to see the rest. South Mumbai where we were staying is a peninsula. On one side there is a nice walk along the promenade to a place called Chowpatty Beach. The beach itself had a really cool carnival type atmosphere to it. We went to see a crazy place where everyone gets there laundry done. There are something crazy like 25000 people who get their laundry done here everyday. It is located right in the slums of Mumbai. Laundry is quite the process the people seem to be pretty rough on the clothes as they smash them as hard as they
can on rocks. Very different from our lovely fast and effiecent washers and dryers at home! We didnt really do to much in Mumbai but enjoyed remembering what a modern and westernized city is like. Women and men holding hands and women wearing jeans. Neither of these are seen anywhere else in India.
Our hotel manager also got us to do a role in a Bollywood movie. Im going to use Daves explanation of it because I dont feel like writing everything...
"The following day we were asked to become Bollywood extra's! Bollywood, is India's answer to Hollywood and is in fact the largest movie industry on earth! We had 4 wishes in India and they have all come true. To be attend an Indian Wedding, An Indian Festival, To see a traditional dance, and to star in a Bollywood Movie. White people are in high demand in these movies, so it's not that unsual that we were asked to join them. The pay for the day is 500 rupees ($11.00) So just over $1.00 an hour. Not something you'd do for the money. Also promised was food, water and transportaion.
To get to the studios, the
7 of us took the local train. Mumbia is the only place in the world that I know of that it makes sense to take an actual train from one end of the city to the other. Of course in typical Indian Fashion it was intense! At each stop 100's of people would rush on the train, fighting and throwing elbows all rushing to find any available seat. Even to sit on someone elses lap. Normally all the pushing and shoving would be scary but they do this with smiles, as they are used to it. This is everyday life in a country of 1.1 billion people! It's amazing to see so many people packed on the trains all squished against eachother, not being able to move, yet they're all still smiling. There's even people hanging on the outside of the doors! After 2 hours, we fought our way off the train, got onto an equally crowded bus and headed to the studio.
From here on it was a disspointment. The glitz and the glamour of Hollywood, doesn't match Bollywood. At least not in this studio. The place was filthy and our segragated dressing rooms we the size of
closets. But hey, we were their to experience an Indian movie production so we were there to make the best of it. We obviously knew we weren't going to be treated as luxury, especially as extras!
On set, the scene was very interesting. The spoiled Bollywood stars didn't have the have the time of day for us. I wanted to let them know that they are nothing compared to real actors haha. But I didn't. The set was so incredibly hot, well over 100 degrees that made the long hours of sitting there doing nothing unbearable. The promised water came in a jug, they said its filtered but I was suspicious. Knowing that if it's tap water we'd all get really sick, I drank very little. The food was disgusting and unsanitary. This wasn't as interesting and fun as we all hoped. And there was really nothing holding us there, not even the $1.00 per hour theyb were paying us.
We decided to leave at 5pm. We made an agreement with the assistant director, that is when we were to leave. When the time came around everyone rudely said no you're staying til 6pm. We laughed it off,
knowing that there's no way they'd be able to stop us. What could they do, not pay us our $1.00 an hour? Or send the dogs and after us. They actually guilted us into staying 1 more hour. 6pm I stated, and we shook on it. He replied "yeah yeah 6 or 630" As he walked away I said 6pm in a firm voice. He pretended he didn't hear us.
6pm came and we all got up, got dressed back in our normal clothes and stated we were leaving. They kept saying "oh please 1 more hour, 1 more hour!" They corned the girls in the dressing room, trying to guilt them. Stating that nobody would get paid til our job is done, and there's no way we could get home. I rescued the girls and we walked out. They followed us down the long roadway to the highway. Pleading how they need us, offering to pay us double ($2.00 an hour) I was starving and not even willing to listen. They claimed we were hours away from the city, it's dangerous and there's no way we could get home by ourselves. A bus roared by, we jumped on
Chowpatty Beach
Unfortunatly there is no swimming or suntanning here because it is soo polluted! Luckily the beach is clean though!the moving bus and headed for the train station. They followed in a Rickshaw.
The offered us triple when they caught up to us. Not taking no for an answer!This was getting really annoying! We hopped in a cab, offering him double his normal asking price (500 rupees) to get us back to Colaba. The desperate movie industry people, speaking in hindi, in a final attempt offered the cabbie 1000 rupees to bring us back to the movie studio. Luckily the cabbie was honest, this pissed him off and almost got in a fist fight with them. He then drove us, leaving us all relieved to get out of Bollywood Hell! I feel bad, I heard they lost 100 000 rupees, because they need to do the whole days work over again. But maybe this is an expensive lesson on how to manage people properly! "
That was all written by Dave and now what I have to say...the dresses and clothes they made us where tried to make us look like westerners but we looked like nothing but old ladies!! The good thing about the movie shoot was that we will now have a copy of us
in a Bollywood film. We also met a really good group of people to go out with that night.
We went out with them for dinner and to another Bar called Leopolds it has apparently been open since 1871. It was a cool environement. We also met a bunch of people from Africa and learned that Mumbai has somewhat of an African community. They definatly made the night alot more lively.
The next day was our day to leave India and go back to thailand. The drive to the airport was some of the craziest traffic I had yet to see. It took us about 2 hours to get there and only one small accident in our cab on the way. There was also probably some of the most shocking scenary I have seen in all of India. It was about 20 kms of straight slums and poverty. It was soo shocking to see that. Over this trip made me realize how lucky we are to live in Canada and how much we take for granted. Anyways I was definatly sad we had to leave India 2 weeks earlier than expected because of overbooked travel. It is the
most rewarding place ever if you put up with the hassle and the dirtyness. I did not feel unsafe once the whole time in India which was a suprise to me. When we were on our way to India i almost wanted to back out of going I was soo scared. Im so glad I didnt..I have met some of the greatest people and have some amazing memories.
Anyways we arrived back in Bangkok yesteray and have spent the last day or so relaxing and shopping. We went to a huge weekend market today that had about 25000 different shops selling whatever you can imagine..of course i bought some clothes and some random other stuff. Last night we went for some drinks because it was basically our first time drinking since we left thailand last time. Tomorrow morning we fly to singapore and make our way back up the coast through Malaysia and South Thailand. we then fly to Burma and back to Canada! Only one more month..so sad it is coming to an end.
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Morgan
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Hey hun I'm glad you're having a good time. Can't believe how much you have seen in the last 4 months it's insane...I can't wait to see you when you get back home. Love ya Morgan