Eesh, up until the last day, India was full of sound and fury.

We arrived from Goa, suntanned and relaxed. Our night train took us to the outskirts of Mumbai at about 7:30 AM. We thought it would be fun to catch a commuter train to Mumbai Central Station. It would be cheaper than a cab and fun to see all the people going to work!

HA! Commuter trains in Mumbai are crazy cattle cars! People jumping on them, hanging on for life as the train takes off, people hanging out of windows and doors. Matt and I met up with Kelsey and Christian, travellers from Seattle on the night train. The four of us decided to try these commuter trains anyway. We bought our ticket--8 rupees each to go about 15 stops. On the platform, we just shook our heads as the cars rumbled past full of people!

We waited for three trains to go by us and then, split up, men in one car and Kelsey and I in the "ladies only" car. We thought that being in the women only car would minimize the groping and general pushing. It did. Kelsey and I had a fine ride with all the well-mannered ladies. Matt and Christian were a bit more cramped and had to elbow their way into the car. As the train left the station, I looked behind me to see Matt hanging out of the doorway of the open car. Matt eventually pushed inward and they both stood the whole way, while we had seats in the women's car.

After heading to our respective hostels, Matt and I had a few errands to run in Mumbai. Namely, getting some US dollars to take to Africa for visas at the border. Everyone loves the old greenbacks, except for India, who has a regulation that you can't take out dollars without converting to rupees first. That's just so expensive and good old American Express (HISS) made it even worse by charging two different rates, one for buying and one for selling for the same transaction. After three hours, we learned that we could get an OK deal by taking out rupees on the debit card, and changing them into dollars--as long as we could prove that we were leaving the country within 7 days, which we could. We also had to give our passports, and were limited to the amount of money which we could convert. Finally, with a small stack o' 20 dollar bills we headed back to our hotel for a nap.

After a great meal with Kelsey and Christian at a local restaurant, we settled in for some sleep before our 5AM wake up call. We had a 9AM flight to Nairobi and we needed extra time to get to the airport. Sleepy and distracted, Robin failed to notice that the shower was flooding the bathroom and the hotel room with a clogged drainpipe. Robin ended up bailing out our room with towels at 5:30 AM! before we rushed downstairs to get our taxi to the airport.

We had 1,800 rupees left or about 35$. After saving our money and scraping by to stay on budget for the last three weeks, we ended up having a bit more extra than we planned. We thought we could spend it easily at the duty free section of the airport. NOPE. There were two shops open, one didn't take rupees and the other had empty shelves. ARGH India was agravating till the very end. We did spend it on some overpriced tea...

We cheered when the plane took off.