Todd and Lisa's RTW trip

Well, we arrived in India after a nine hour plane ride from Frankfurt at 1 am. Lucky for us, we had already thought ahead and booked a hostel for the evening. What a culture shock to walk out of the airport in India. After the shock and mob scene, we found our name Mr. William Johnson, we have never been so happy to see our name before now. Our driver took us to our hostel, through the crowded streets. There was a festival going om. The festival of Ganish, that elephant headed goddess. Babies, kids, mother, fathers, brothers, sisters…. all in the middle of the street chanting and playing drums, and it’s 2:30 am!
The hostel was quite clean and Lisa said, “If all our hostels look like this, then India will be OK.” Let’s just keep this statement in the back of our heads, we have another 7 weeks here! The bathroom was really funny. It was a toilet with a showerhead next to it. You could literally shit and shower at the same time. Ahhh how much India has to offer. Though it was 3 am it was very difficult to go to sleep with all of our anxiety and excitement of what this country has to offer. After a little vitamin A, we went right to sleep, and slept until 1 pm the next day. Lisa was actually scared to get out of bed and face the world of Mumbai…..
Out to see Mumbai! We quickly saw the bad things India had to offer, poverty, pot holes, beggers, homes built out of tarps on the road. We thought to ourselves, “Why are we here?” Autorickshaws, small taxis that look like a covered Flintstone’s car, crowded the streets with taxis, buses and Hondas driving in any lane possible. Horns honking like you wouldn’t believe. even at old ladies and children. We arrived at Colaba, a hip and on the rise city on the ocean. Looked more like Chinatown on Sunday with water and Inidans. We cruised around, taking it all in. lisa was actually scoping all the beautiful things to buy. But overall, it was an assualt on the senses and we were in a true daze. So we sat down to have some delicious 1 dollar lunch. Don’t ask what it was, but it was good.
We have been getting ripped off a little bit by taxi drivers etc. but its so cheap, we kinda figure 1-2 $$ is worth not worth the hassle of the fight. (they probaby know we’ll think that!). Besides the people trying to rip us off, the indian people are very nice and helpful. We have been stopped in the street by people just to ask where we are from and have a little conversation… and at the trainstation there is a tourist ticket window so that you dont have to deal with all the chaos!!
As per Carolines instruction (and probably to ceces liking) we have been washing our Malaria meds down every morning with a 1/2 shot of scotch whisky. Apparently, it will kill anything hanging out in your stomach. After seeing the Mumbai hospital… we’ll take any advice not to get sick.
This evening we are off, out the the city, on a 15 hour no a/c train ride to an area called Bhopal. we’ll keep you all posted!! so far so good!! Todd is no longer Moses… He is now Ghandi
oh yeah… the food is delicious. we would tell you about it but we have no idea what it is… except spicy!!!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 at 7:38 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.