the hips don't lie

it was an uncanny coincidence that alex and i were in mumbai at the same time as shakira.

ramsey and i managed to make remarkable recoveries from our illnesses. we consulted a doctor with regard to ramsey's stomach functions, while i preferred the self-medication approach (no prescriptions required here) which cut out the unnecessary middle man and the associated expenses. both of these methods worked excellently, and we were apparently well enough to make the somewhat uncharacteristic decision that we should go to the shakira concert...mainly because it was on, and according to peter, when in rome...

so, much to our surprise, we found ourselves at a shakira concert in mumbai. peter's enthusiasm (see below) did rub off on me (assisted by shakira's nice dancing), and ramsey even knew 3 songs (one more than initially speculated). however, we were skeptical of the live aspect of her singing...but you can't dance like that AND sing, so i concluded it was all good.

the conservation of mass

consider the well known conservation equation

in - out = accumulation - generation

let us call alex reactor A (see above picture) and jess reactor B. reactor A is behaving as a batch reactor, where out and generation are equal to zero, leaving in = accumulation. increased mass in is rejected countercurrently. reactor B is behaving as a continous plug flow reactor (in - out = 0) with a very very low residence time.

in conclusion, it is fortunate that peter has more than one toilet at his house.

delhi

apparently we had miscalculated a day in our trip planning and therefore spent only 10 hours overnight in delhi before flying* back to mumbai.
maybe next time.

*we caught a discount airline. it disturbed us a little that there were no life jackets on board. however the flight attendant reassuringly showed us in the safety briefing that we were to use our seat cushions in the case of a watery landing.

jess' birthday (and the taj mahal)

on my birthday we got up at 5 am so we could watch sunrise at the taj mahal. it was very very amazing. see photos.

we then walked to the agra fort to have a look around. on the way we were hassled to buy souvenirs, one of which was a taj mahal snowdome (apparently made of real marble). after walking 200 m with us, the seller had gone from asking US $20 to 20 Rupees ( 80 c) for the high quality marble snowdome.

we held my birthday luncheon at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the taj. it was tasty at the time. alex thought it was only tasty for 15 minutes, before it was promptly removed from her system.

this is my well prepared birthday card from alex.

overcome by the heat and harrasment from rickshaw drivers and vendors, we escaped to the refreshing airconditioning of a five star hotel for a celebratory afternoon cocktail. i had a pleasant time sipping my caprioska and watching the afternoon sun hitting the taj and some shoulders while ramsey enjoyed the luxurious toilets.

that night we caught an express train to dehli. alex was not so well, and we were looking very much to getting back to mumbai.

jaipur

we arrived in the pink city very early in the morning. much to her disappointment, alex had caught fleas on the bus. we spent the morning sightseeing around the city palace - the maharajah of rahjastan still lives there. our favourite place was jantar mantar, a ye olde astronomy/astrology centre. below you can see a giant sundial which is accurate to 2 seconds. stylish, but slightly larger than the average seiko.the shadow in this picture shows what astrology sign we are in from the markings on the marble (pisces, my birthday is only two days away!)

we enjoyed a delicious giant rajahstani thali for lunch, and then went home and ramsey quite wastefully threw it up. the next day we walked up to naheranga fort and then took a rickshaw out to the old city and amber fort. it was very beautiful. it seems our guide enjoyed using ramsey's camera and insisted that he take many photos for us. back in the day, the maharajah's wife wore an excesive amount of heavy jewellery and had to be carried around by four eunuchs.

later in the day we caught a bus to agra (home of the taj mahal).

jaisalmer

at jaisalmer we stayed inside the fort (constructed in 1156 AD), which rises out of the desert. from this town you can do camel rides into the desert. we decided that the desert was best seen from our balcony. see ramsey pointing to our room:

and a picture of the fort from some distance:
and the sunrise view from our room.

we decided that in the spirit of indian culture we should try a bhang lassi. we spent the afternoon in a reflective mood, melting into our chairs and contructing tree digrams to expain why a beer may be bubbly. the venn diagram didn't work.

in the desert museum we met mr. sharma. he was a lovely man who explained to us a bit about desert culture and hindu lifestyle and the caste system. he taught us the importance of marriage, and explained that the karma sutra is about education and not pornography. however he did share with us that sometimes people have 'secret relations', between a man and a man, a woman and a woman, and sometimes in isolated desert villages, man and animal. we reacted with a suprised 'ooo'. we bought a traditional desert folk music cd. peter reacted with a suprised 'ooo'.

here are some interesting slogans used to sell blankets and clothes in jaislamer:

on the road to jodhpur

note to fellow india travellers: don't take public transport. apparently goats ride for free on wednesdays. although the trip was arduous, we met some new friends who were also canadian sisters. carolyn and jen were also suprised about the goats on the bus. all of us stayed at a very nice place in jodphur - ramsey and i in the penthouse which had 12 windows. see us all having a beer with meherangarh fort in the background. and the view from where we are sitting in the above picture (outside our room).

ramsey and i both got headbutted by cows. a guy who ran the internet cafe (who knew the lineup of every cricket team, and who talked very very loudly in an attempt to make sure we understood him) asked ramsey out on a date after telling her she looked like steffi graf. i've never used that strategy before. although the effort was commendable, it unfortunately didn't work well in his favour. the following picture is the view from our room.

and jess at the fort.

pushkar

on the same day as monsoon palace we caught a bus (outfitted with hindu idols and elaborate glass light fittings) to ajmer, and then a somewhat overcrowded taxi to pushkar (population 15 000) in the rain. in pushkar (a holy brahman city), there is no meat, alcohol or public kissy kissy. or eggs. we quickly realised these were some of our favourite things, but still decided to stay two nights for a bit of a rest. unfortunately our rest was hindered by erratic cacophonic very very fast (perhaps in quadruple time) organ playing in the evenings.

in spite of this the city was beautiful and serene. the following picture is the view from the rooftop of our hotel. the next day we climbed the hill to the right, which puffed us out slightly - 230 m high, over an 800 m track length.

there is a temple on the top of the hill, where we reflected upon why we had purchased flowers at the bottom of the hill.

apparently they were for the monkeys.

in pushkar we also got ripped off by some 'priests' who sold us happiness and good life.

octopussy

in udaipur (the home of octopussy) we watched cows frolick in the sand piles (we are unsure why there were sand piles in the street). above you can see us on the rooftop of our hotel; inbetween our heads is the lake palace hotel (of bond fame) on lake pichola.we also went on a lovely sunset cruise on the lake, where we met a new friend carrie (an adelaide pom) who we took out on a romantic candlelit dinner overlooking the lake. there were fireworks. literally.

the next day we went on an early morning excursion to monsoon palace (home of the bad guy in bond). it was nice. and quiet after the craziness of the very touristy city.

on the way to the monsoon palace we saw some public transport in action (while our rickshaw driver stopped to pick up some breakfast at a roadside samosa spot).

sleeper to udaipur

on march 10 we commenced our whirlwind tour of rahjahstan (north-west state of india), agra (taj mahal) and dehli (capital). the day before we had been to see a lovely indian travel agent who informed us that our planned itinerary was ridiculous and we should do it his way. we said ok.

after a significant amount of confusion on the night of our scheduled departure, we ended up at a random metro bustop somewhere in bandra. we made a new friend who rang the bus for us and he said that everything was all good and the bus was coming. we were slightly sceptical. suprisingly, it did eventually arrive, and the (at least) four bus drivers kindly allowed us at least 10 seconds to embark the bus. our relief was brief; see photos below of first impressions of our sleeper. the extremely loud bollywood music started promptly. this was coupled with erratic indian driving, which involves honking the horn when overtaking/turning/reversing/when tailgating/stopping/starting. it is also not sufficient to have a normal horn in india. the bus' horn seemed to be an indian version of la cocharacha (we have also have observed reversing music such as 'santa claus is coming to town').

after 16 hours of travel on the bus (which had no toilet) we arrived in udaipur, where the james bond film 'octopussy' was shot.

dhobi ghats (mumbai)

this is where the washing gets done. our washing gets done at peter's where the washing machine* is in the kitchen and the fridge is in the laundry. wacky.


*the washing machine has a habit of jumping across the room in an attempt to get to it's natural habitat.

mumbai in one day

we've been in mumbai since sunday evening, and have been taking it pretty easy and relaxing around bandra (home to the rich and famous bollywood stars.. and peter), except for tuesday when we decided to be extremely efficient and do the 'downtown mumbai in three days' section of the lonely planet in one day.


we woke up at 3.30 am (we noticed after getting ready that alex set the alarm an hour earlier than required; we constructively used this extra time by getting lost a number of times), and headed down to sassoon docks to watch the unloading of the fish at dawn. this was an amazing chaotic cramming of boats with colourful flags into the harbour, trying to get closest to the dock, with fresh fish being tossed up to the docks, sprawled out on the dock, sellers yelling prices, women and men rushing with baskets on their head. we were definitely the only westerners there. unfortunately under the orders of the police guards, we weren't allowed to take pictures, so this (see left) may or may not be a photo of the boats at the docks. i did take 5 minutes of 'secret' video footage, which later turned out to be of my leg (NB: i'm not implying that my leg isn't interesting).


we headed up to the gateway of india in bombay harbour for sunrise (see below), and saw a group of people doing laughing as exercise. strangely enough, there were also people doing running as an exercise.













we then headed to colaba markets where we observed an abundance of roaming wildlife (rats, goats, cows, chickens), as well as fresh produce, nick nacks, and children on their way to school (see below). at this time of the day (7.30 am) it wasn't very busy.











after some tasty omlettes at cafe mondegar, it was time to catch the first ferry to elephanta island, which is 6 miles from bombay harbour. here a hindu temple was carved out the stone hillface sometime between 450-750 AD.














after a walking tour of some historic buildings back on the mainland and a tasty prawn gassi lunch, it was getting towards peak hour in downtown mumbai. we headed to the crawford markets and checked out the spices.

we then had the fabulous idea of crossing peak hour downtown mumbai through the crowded backstreets. due to lack of signposting, and gross abundance of people, vendors, cycles, motor cycles, vans, animals, holes/poo in road/footpath and winding non-straight roads we quickly realised we had no idea where we were. at this stage my experience as a cub scout leaderat age 11 came in handy when i recalled that the sun sets in the west in most places in the world. we followed the sun through the chaos to chowpatty beach, where we were just in time for sunset.

slightly puffed out, with dirty dirty dirty thong feet, and with the lonely planet eating locations unlocatable, we managed after much forgettable back and forthing/ to and froing, to collapse into a random cafe for a delicious masala dosa. this improved our spirits enough to tackle the train system (ladies carriage of course) and head home, where we purchased some spirits and celebrated our return after an 18 hour sightseeing extravaganza.

first kingfisher in mumbai

after 18 hours of travelling, we enjoyed our first beer with peter. then we went to sleep.

heavy night

here are a few happy snaps from the party - thanks to everyone who took photos on the night! we're off to mumbai tomorrow!!