Continued as promised...

...though I still don't have much to say.

I'm back at the Salvation Army Hostel, where we've been leading a very school-camp-like existance for the last couple of days. Mumbai is much more expensive than Delhi, oddly enough, so the Rs 150 we're paying for a bunk bed, a breakfast consisting of white bread, jam and a banana, and all the cold showers we can handle is a comparative bargain. Also, there's the free entertainment provided by the Indian women staying there hacking up their phlegm in the early hours of the morn. Hacking up one's phlgem is a national passtime in India. Sometimes I feel as though I'm on holiday in a TB colony.

We got into Mumbai late last night, although it seems much longer ago than that. It's such a vibrant place - though when people tell you that it's filthy, they aren't kidding. We taxi'd it out to the Hanging Gardens today and could hardly see across the bay to the other side of the city for all the smog. It's a city of tar-filled lungs, of slums, and of colour - so much colour. The air smells alternately like roses and sulphur gas.

It's funny how precisely the mood of a place changes with its climate. Jaipur was beautiful, dusty-pink, with pigs snuffling in the streets, and kites for some reason lodged in every tree. The people moved slowly there, being technically in the desert, though the tourist-hassling aspect was at full bore. Mumbai has the peculiar affability I always associate with places on large bodies of water - Can Tho had it, as did Hoi An - as though every day is a holiday.

We met Shae, Dave's friend, at the hostel, after a gruelling two-hour taxi trip - the traffic here is incredible. We got in tired, and were immediately taken to the local pub by Shae, her friend Anna, and a career counsellor from Melbourne Uni named Julie - five Melbourne girls sharing a beer on the other side of the world. It was pretty surreal. We took the circuitous route back to the hostel, via the India Gate, and took in some of the night-lit sights. This area has such a funny British Raj feel to it; colonial architecture and red double-decker buses, taxis instead of rickshaws, and an incredibly elaborate train station built like some Duke or Earl's place in the country somewhere.

Shae had, with great forsight, organised a taxi to drive us around for the morning on a photography excursion, to places like the Hajiali and the Hanging Gardens, finishing off with a jaunt at the Ghandi Museum. The museum was really cool, the highlights being a recreation of the room where Ghandi slept, and a series of three dozen one-and-a-half by one metre dioramas, each depicting a key scene in Ghandi's life, using very elaborately handcrafted dolls. It sounds odd, and could have been really condescending, but instead it was a good way to follow his biography without the usual drily-captioned photos and heavy tomes printed onto the walls. Yes, dolls. You had to be there, alright?

The Shanteram reading turned out to be for Saturday (if in fact it's happening at all); we just had dinner and a beer instead. Right now, Helen, Anna and Shae are out at an Indian hip-hop night - I'm bloody exhausted, so as soon as I finish this, I'm off to bed. The bug I wrote about wasn't too bad but the hangover from being sick is a bitch - I'm just tired all the time. Of course, I've been getting up at four to catch trains and whatnot and haven't really slept for the last few days, so it could just be that. I'll let you know in the morning.


Helen says:

What, weren't you listening? Helen is off dancing to Indian hip-hop and is having far too good a time to sit around this hostel thinking of witty comments to write on her friend's blog. Jeeze.