Teizeen:
In a little over 24 hours, we'll be back home to the fresh cold of early spring in the Pacific Northwest - a sharp contrast from India's summer season which just started and leaves us sweating after simply ascending a single flight of stairs.
We've been walking around Mumbai a lot, despite the heat, but have discovered that the street-side sugarcane vendors sell fresh juice (no water added) for about 15 cents a glass, and they can be found every few blocks ready to refresh sweaty pedestrians passing by.
Ryan and I went started watching our budget the last 3 weeks or so of our travels, trying to see if we could get by on fewer Rupees a day and stock up on a slight surplus with which to splurge a little during our last few days in Mumbai. Our careful budgeting earned us a night and dinner at one of Mumbai's premier music performance spaces, a comedy Bollywood movie, a fresh seafood dinner, and a day at Water Kingdom (which claims to be Asia's largest water theme park).
Water Kingdom was pretty big, but alas, not big enough for the number of Indian families who visit it on a Sunday. The water park not only featured big slides, but also, very very big queues for almost everything. There was one queue for a little tram that took you from the ticket counter to the entrance, another queue at the entrance to get in (they had to check that our bag's did not carry 'outside eatables'), another queue to get a locker in the changing room, another queue to rent lycra swimwear (T-shirts and long tights for women - no women were just wearing just a swimsuits out of modesty), and then a queue for each of the rides and slides. We did, eventually, get to be in the water.
So, we've had our fun and it's time to come home. We are both looking forward to being home now after 3 months of traveling, having to pack and re-pack our packs every 2-3 days, having to haggle for everything from taxi rides to souvenirs, dealing with touts, and not having any pedestrian rights. However, we will miss bargaining, the cheap and tasty food, and simply not having many day-to-day responsibilities or having a fixed daily schedule. I haven't cooked in 3 months!
We're both ready and excited to come home - but only after we've had a few more glasses of fresh sugarcane juice. See you all soon!
In a little over 24 hours, we'll be back home to the fresh cold of early spring in the Pacific Northwest - a sharp contrast from India's summer season which just started and leaves us sweating after simply ascending a single flight of stairs.
We've been walking around Mumbai a lot, despite the heat, but have discovered that the street-side sugarcane vendors sell fresh juice (no water added) for about 15 cents a glass, and they can be found every few blocks ready to refresh sweaty pedestrians passing by.
Ryan and I went started watching our budget the last 3 weeks or so of our travels, trying to see if we could get by on fewer Rupees a day and stock up on a slight surplus with which to splurge a little during our last few days in Mumbai. Our careful budgeting earned us a night and dinner at one of Mumbai's premier music performance spaces, a comedy Bollywood movie, a fresh seafood dinner, and a day at Water Kingdom (which claims to be Asia's largest water theme park).
Water Kingdom was pretty big, but alas, not big enough for the number of Indian families who visit it on a Sunday. The water park not only featured big slides, but also, very very big queues for almost everything. There was one queue for a little tram that took you from the ticket counter to the entrance, another queue at the entrance to get in (they had to check that our bag's did not carry 'outside eatables'), another queue to get a locker in the changing room, another queue to rent lycra swimwear (T-shirts and long tights for women - no women were just wearing just a swimsuits out of modesty), and then a queue for each of the rides and slides. We did, eventually, get to be in the water.
So, we've had our fun and it's time to come home. We are both looking forward to being home now after 3 months of traveling, having to pack and re-pack our packs every 2-3 days, having to haggle for everything from taxi rides to souvenirs, dealing with touts, and not having any pedestrian rights. However, we will miss bargaining, the cheap and tasty food, and simply not having many day-to-day responsibilities or having a fixed daily schedule. I haven't cooked in 3 months!
We're both ready and excited to come home - but only after we've had a few more glasses of fresh sugarcane juice. See you all soon!
Have really enjoyed reading your blog about your experiences and observations. The pics too, are lovely though, haven't finished looking at all of them, yet. Must be really good to get back to a more 'orderly' country?!
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