More Mumbai

At Crawford Market
On top of the Intercontinental
Along the seafront
Dharavi

Morning All =)

Sorry for not updating for so long. We've been having a lovely time with the Elliots exploring the delights of Mumbai.

On Thursday we attempted to send our parcel of birthday presents home, which turned out to be a rather difficult task. Despite taking the lovely Annand along for translation purposes we were unable to decipher exactly what the man at the post office wanted us to do. We think that the process involves first getting the parcel contents checked and signed off at the post office (difficult when you've already wrapped them!), then taking them to a tailor to buy material to cover them. Finally you have to get a special person to sew them up and seal them with wax before returning to the post office to send them on their 2-3 month journey (that was the quickest they did). In the end we decided it would be safer to just DHL them from Grants office.. just too much of a nightmare!

In the evening we went to join Geraldine at the rooftop bar on the top of the Intercontinental hotel which she was reviewing. The views of the sunset were amazing and we could definitely get used to free cocktails and nibbles!

On Friday we all met up at Crawford Market which seemed to be full of dirt, straw and hundreds upon hundreds of mangoes. We crossed into the only slightly less frantic fabric market which was pretty mind blowing - far too much choice! Afterwards we went to lunch in Nicki's favourite cafe which was very nice indeed. We took a stroll around the beautiful Taj Hotel stopping at a jewelers who got the most amazing pile of cut gems out for us to look at - Billy managed to drop one but thankfully it was recovered unharmed!

Saturday was spent on Fashion street admiring the almost identical stalls of shorts and tshirts complete with almost identically enthusiastic owners. We took in a Indian McDonalds for lunch (who says we don't do culture?!), Billy enjoying a Maharajah Deluxe while I savoured a McVeggie burger. In the afternoon we went to look at a friends very shiny Royal Enfield bike to see if Grant wanted to buy one. Billy posed for a photo on it, but thankfully no one was brave enough to let him go for a spin.

We caught up with the latest Dr Who on Sunday, which was very exciting, and then went to see Pirates of the Caribbean (again!) with Grant and Felicity. The cinema was an interesting experience - no one seemed to understand the concept of keeping quiet, everyone stood while they played the national anthem at the beginning and in the interval (!!) you could order a variety of food which a torch totting attendant then brought to you during the next half.

Yesterday we went to Felicity's school to talk to students about the human rights project they'd been working on. It was rather like a science fair off the Simpsons - you could tell it was an American school! Afterwards we went back to the Mumbai Mobile Creche school where Nicki and a friend put on a very amusing version of Jack and the Beanstalk and we enjoyed teaching the kids the 'Hokey Cokey' -which unsurprisingly went down very well! I also purchased a very wonderful India Barbie from a local shopping mall - she's got a Sari and everything!

Better go, we're leaving in 15 minutes to catch the train to Udaipur. Rather sad to be leaving, but I'm sure we'll have a great few weeks!

See you soon,

Lots of love,

Rosie and Billy

xxx