Bombay

So the dividers between the rooms in this hotel don't reach the ceiling. Flaky. I feel like I'm living in a cubicle farm. In the morning I went to see the kids I came over with. They were planning to go to some cave temples to the north. I wanted to visit, but I didn't have time (the bus ride takes ten hours). So I said goodbye and went off to do email.

I also decided to indulge and have a western style breakfast. The food in India is good, but generally only if you get Indian food. Mumbai apparently has good and authentic international fare. It also has the advantage that the food is safe, you can have ice cream and not stress that it spoiled during a recent power outage. I had a banana chocolate toffee pie thing that was scrum-diddily-umptious.

I went to Chowpatty beach, which according to LP used to be rather seedy. I'm not sure in what way. Now it's benign. I guess visitors are obligated to eat bhelpuri while in the area. This is a puffed wheat snack that my sister likes a lot. The ones here quite a lot of ingredients. It was good, but I lost interest before I ate the whole thing.

I went to Sanjay Gandhi National Park. This is a huge nature preserve at the edge of the city. I guess one indication that Mumbai is a large city is that it took one hour by train to reach the edge. It's good that this place exists because otherwise people would have to throw their trash somewhere else. I was going to go on a tiger safari, which consists of a quick bus ride through the tiger habitat. But, they moved the booking office and I was tired of wading through discarded plastic so I left.

The trip to Sanjay Gandhi wasn't a complete waste. It gave me some practice riding the suburban trains. I am planning on taking one to the airport since a taxi is so expensive.

The streets of Mumbai are nothing like the other places in India that I have visited. They don't allow autorickshaws in the city, but there are countless car taxis. Lots of things are sponsored by companies. The bus stands, the train stations, the garbage cans, are plastered with advertisements. There are flowers and other plants in islands along the roads that are sponsored by various companies.

The food in Mumbai is very good. The place I ate reminded me of the good restaurant in Delhi. It's a good sign when you can order something as basic and get a dish with complex flavors. It is a little difficult to find breakfast, because many places are open only for lunch and dinner. But things are open quite late and it's not difficult to find food late at night, although getting a table might be a challenge.