Mumbai

We've been in Mumbai for five days now, catching a train to Goa tomorrow night, and it's been very nice. Mumbai is a good city. They have sidewalks here. I never realized how much I loved sidewalks. The people are much more relaxed and less scammy then they were in the first few weeks of our trip. We have since discovered that the northern part we were in , Rajasthan, is known for being hard to travel and full of jerks. WHO KNEW. I DO. NOW. Jesus. I doubt I will ever go back to Rajasthan (motto: We don't like you, but we love your money!). I'm not really sure what the thought process is with people who really want tourists to come, but then treat them like crap. There's been a drought there for the last decade or so, I imagine that a lot of the suckiness of the place is from people being desperate. With the climate turning into what it is, things are probably going to get worse.

I've read several travel blogs written by people traveling from south to north that talk of how much nicer the south was, which I was very relieved to hear, as well as running into other tourists that echo the same. An old man from South Africa today told us his son had been traveling around India for two months and had told him to stick to the south. I wish I'd known all this before, we could have halved our time in Rajasthan, as well as feeling less I HATE THIS PLACE knowing it would get better.

Goa, being the beach resort it is, is probably going to be more scammy then other areas, but at least there won't be the lack of humidity destroying my delicate nasal passages.

SCIENCE

This is from one of the Hindi books Derek bought. He's being learning himself the Sanskrit alphabet and is getting quite good at it, was able to spell out our waiter's name in Udaipur. Yesterday was his birthday (Derek, not the waiter) and I bought him NOTHING. I feel bad. He bought himself a pocket knife and a shirt. I could have bought him a pocket knife and a shirt, but I am far too dense to pick up obvious signals. Happy birthday Derek!

Monkey Temple

MONKEYS!

We got to go to the Monkey temple outside of Jaipur on a festival day (two weeks ago), so the locals were all there celebrating and handing nuts, dried chickpeas, carrots, and bananas to the monkeys. We didn't hand out any food. For one, we are afraid of rabies, but also there was so much food the monkeys were just sitting around looking bloated.

They have this crazy belief here that holy water is always clean and it's good to bathe in. This water was putrid. Beyond disgusting. I can only imagine the wealth of the local dermatologists.

Apparently when it's really hot in the summer the monkeys will climb up the walls of the temple and cannonball into the small pools near the top. We always come to these attractions at the wrong times.

That is a fully grown cow with tiny little legs. I've seen a couple of these. There was also a cow with a third ear growing out of his neck, but there was a guy trying to make money off of it and I'm tired of trying to bargain with people who think I am made from solid gold.

Our driver gave us bhindi dots when we got in, and then little old ladies chased us around trying to add to it. I'm so used to people trying to scam me that I just bolt whenever someone tries to make eye contact, but one of them caught Derek and was apparently just wanting to give us a little more colour.

Back in Toronto

I keep having people ask me when we'll be back in TO, so I'm putting plans here for reference. We have to be back for a wedding at the end of March, but I'm leaving again right after that, possibly for South America. Plans are sketchy. I'll be spending some time in Calgary after that. Derek doesn't know what he's doing, might come with me, might go off somewhere else, might stay in TO. But I won't be back in TO until at the earliest mid-May, maybe later.

You'll know when I'm back because I'll be very broke and sleeping on your couch.

Amber fort and Jaipur

This was a few weeks ago (I'm a bit behind), but we took an elephant up the path to the Amber Fort (just outside Jaipur). It was included with our tour, otherwise I'm not sure we would have done it. We're cheap. Also I doubt India's ability to take care of animals in a manner that does not cause me to flinch, which is what we did every time our elephant driver smacked the poor old slow elephant in front of us trying to get him to move faster. The poor guy has a sore on his backside from all the beatings. He was a 70 year old elephant! STOP BEATING HIM. When we got off the driver tried to talk us into giving him a tip, but we just jumped down the stairs and ran away. Later we had to hide a behind a wall going back down so he wouldn't see us. We're very Canadian...

The fort was alright, very full of little passage ways and stairs. It's been very heavily renovated, I doubt it originally has light switches in every room. They aren't really into "authentic" here. I would have enjoyed it a lot more, but I was grumpy. I am usually grumpy. Poor Derek.

There's an awesome old theater in Jaipur that is apparently well known, so we caught a Bollywood movie there. It wasn't in English, but Bollywood movies tend to be very simple with formulaic plots and lot of music, so it didn't matter. They're also very long, three hours, but they do give you an intermission.


It was gorgeous inside, like a really fancy cruise boat. The ceiling in the theatre was heavily decorated with long flowing scalloped ceiling carving things (I have a BFA! woo). Everyone chats, cheers, whistles, answers cellphones, does whatever throughout the movie. It's a much better movie experience. If I want to sit in a dark room and not move or make any noise, I don't need to pay 20 bucks. It's a large part about why I never want to watch movies back home, I'm just too ADD for that.

Our driver came with us, and I have to say, he is the worst translator ever. For the most part the movie was really obvious about what was going on, but whenever we were confused and asked him what just happened he'd be like "they are mad". Yes... I can see that, but WHY. We saw Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (A Match Made by God), thankfully the wiki article cleared things up. It was good, I would recommend it is you are interested in Bollywood movies. I've seen a few others and they were unwatchable with shockingly bad music. Like cheap Saturday morning cartoon level of quality.

I'll have one of each, please.

Not sure what's going on here, but pretty certain it's illegal.

Bikaner - Rat Temple

We stopped at the Jain Rat Temple outside of Bikaner, as was mentioned. I was really looking forward to this. Love the ratties. It was, as Derek said, both a dissapointment and totally awesome.

To be honest, I was expecting more rats. A carpet of writhing animals. I guess they're nocturnal or something. I did have one run across my foot when we stepped inside, which is supposed to be good luck, but probably isn't when you are startled and accidently kick it a few feet. Whoops.

They had laid out food (mainly sweets) and bowls of milk. We had to leave any leather items in the car, Jainism is very pro-animal. If you accidently kill a rat you have to buy a small gold statue of one to appease the temple. Also, ka-ching.

Apparently if you see a white rat it's good luck. We saw no white rats. If we ever come back I'll bring a box of them and set them loose. People can always use more luck.