BootsnAll Travel Network



May 23rd – Mumbai, India

At around 230AM I awoke itching my pointer finger and my inner thigh.  I first thought that I had contracted bed bugs for the third time in as many months, but quickly counted and did not have three dots in a row.  If you are itchy and have patches of bites in groups of three, chances are you have bed bugs or something like it.  I was itching like crazy so I decided, being half asleep and all to take two benedryl to make the itching stop.  This is why I brought a small pharmacy with me, to prevent and treat random things like this from happening.  I took the two pills with some water I had left over from the day before, and tried to go back to sleep.  It was so hot, but I crawled in to my silk sleep sac, to try and prevent further bites from occuring.  Eventually I felt the bumps subside and I dozed off to sleep.

I awoke every few hours but I finally got up at like 11am and had to get my day going.  At this point V and Rageev were still in the apartment, and Rahul had already departed for work.  I thought it would be a good time to take a shower, using the buckets of course, so I did and it was really refreshing.  The water is not too hot or too cold but just right.  I put my linen beige pants on, and a polo top and then got on the laptop to check some things.  Of course I checked my grades and got another one back, which I was very, very pleased about and then I was off to start my day.  I originally wanted to get some of that Indian bread I had on my first night in Mumbai, but I reached in to my pocket and only found about 40 rupees which was really enough for a two bottle of water costing 20 rupees.  I certainly did not want to give the vendor a 500 dollar note or larger.  So after getting water I started to walk.  I must have appeared lost because a local gentlemen came up to me asking where I wanted to go.  I told him the main road and he pointed me in the direction.  It was quite close but unfortunately not the road I was looking for.  It was on the other side of where Globus mall is and where I am accustomed to being.  No worries I thought I’ll just walk around Bandra and see how it is.  Bandra west really is a posh area of Mumbai.  After seeing several areas of Mumbai I would have to say it is the nicest.  There are actual apartments and houses, cars and it is enclosed with trees and parks, really nice.  Boy was it hot though.  I was sweating like crazy, but I pushed on.  After walking probably 3 miles I decided to get an autorickshaw and head to bandra banstan.  This was where Rahul took me with Tony on my first night.  I wanted to see how it looked during the day.  This is when I got ripped off for the first time today.  When you get in to an auto, the driver is supposed to reset the meter to 10 rupees.  Well when I got in the meter read 16.  Also when you start at ten you usually get your first few meters at ten and then it goes up after that quite fast.  Well I ended up paying 21 rupees so today I got ripped off for about 8 rupees.  The ride should have cost no more than 13-14 rupees.  But hey 8 rupees is only about 20 cents, no big deal and my motto is that I am going to get ripped off at least once a day, lets try and keep it under a dollar!

So the driver dropped me off at the end of banstan and I was like this is fine so I got out and started walking.  I got to the end of the road and I saw a sign that read “Bandra Fort.”  I thought to myself, thats pretty cool.  So I went inside and there was the remains of the old bandra fort built like 150 years ago by the british.  Not much was left but enough to walk around and get great views of the Indian Ocean and South Mumbai.  Also in front of me was this giant bridge that the Indians are constructing to connect Bandra to South Mumbai.  It easily looks several miles long and definitely a big project for them to construct and complete.

I walked around took some photos, enjoyed the scenary but in the end it was just too damn hot.  I left Bandra fort and picked up some soda, which I will not be drinking again unless its cold.  I can’t stand non-diet hot soda.  Everyone knows I love ice.  Well ice is definitely something I miss about not being back home.  That is sad but true.  Anyway I remember Rahul telling me that there was a nice coffee shop around this area and after walking a few hundred meters I found it.  There were two small coffee shops connected and I walked in to the first one.  It was air conditioned, thank the good, sweet lord.  I sat down, got a menu and ordered a sandwich and some cold ice tea with ice!  Both were nice and then I topped it off with some vanilla ice cream.  I could have done without the ice cream considering I should have remembered that in this part of the world vanilla ice cream is probably some form of coolwip.  Well I ate it anyway but realized that in this heat, eating milk products like vanilla ice cream would not be very smart.

After I enjoyed cooling down in the cafe I asked one of the people working in the shop if they could tell the autorickshaw to take me to globus mall.  He did and the guy agreed to take me.  I only had a 100 rupee note and knew this would be a problem.  When I got to the mall the fare was only 14 rupees.  I gave him the hundred and he handed me back 80 rupees.  I said thats fine so this time I got ripped off by 6 rupees or about 18 cents or less.  Not bad and again under the dollar.  But when I say I want to get ripped off by less than a dollar that’s total per day!

When I got to globus I walked up and down the main drag near where I was staying in hopes of buying some cheap local clothing.  I found one shop, but they didn’t have normal human sized shorts.  Only indian sizes which I could have worn when I was 6.  Then I decided to go to Globus mall itself, it had air conditioning and I figured I could cool down, so I did.  After only ten minutes I was on my way and called Rahul to ask him where the closest internet cafe was.  He asked me why I wasn’t checking the internet at his place to which I responded I usually would but I tried this morning and the site was blocked for some reason.  He understood and told me to take an auto to Bandra station and ask someone around where an internet cafe was and someone would direct me.  I didn’t want to ask anyone so I just walked a few minutes down the road and found one!  He said it was near, so I figured it would be straight past the station near the other shops and it turned out I was right.

So now its 333PM, May 23rd, day 4 officially including my flight, and I am sweating my nuts off in an internet cafe with only fans, but only paying 15 rupees per hour!  Yesterday I paid 40 which is just about a dollar today I’m paying about 27 cents for the hour!  That is cheap!

I am not sure what I will be doing the rest of the day, but tune in tomorrow to see what happens next

Thanks

Josh



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