We're comin' home!

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!

Indian Cricket fervor

Teizeen:

Throughout India's ancient and more recent history around the time of independence, this large and diverse sub-continent has had a difficult time finding a unifying national identity.  The quest for independence was a unifying force, though even that led to certain divisions between Indians who spoke different languages, and those who followed different religions (e.g. Islam or Hinduism).

For the last 1.5 months, however, there has been a single and unifying force that has gripped the whole country's attention: the World Cup for cricket.  Cricket in India is the only major sport in India, and the World Cup happens only once every four years.  India last won the World Cup in 1983......and they won it again just 4 days ago on April 2nd 2011.

Cricket is not just a sport or a game in India.  It is an obsession that permeates across language, religion, and geographic lines.  During the World Cup games, small and large shops would always have their TV's inside tuned to the cricket channel - and crowds of people would gather outside the shop windows peering in to follow the game.  People on the streets had their mobile phones tuned to some cricket radio station that was updating them.  Security guards were listening to cricket on ther cell phones to entertain their evening hours.  Almost anyone you asked knew the current score for the game - even the small bhel puri (an Indian snack) beach vendor on Chowpatty Beach (in Mumbai). 

On the day of the final match, agaist Sri Lanka, the malls had giant screens showing the game and live drummers drumming after every good move made by the Indian team.  Cars on the streets were trailing large Indian flags out their windows, and people were getting their faces painted with the Indian flag.  Many shops closed once the game started.  And everyone had their fireworks ready in anticipation for the big win. 

In a country of over 1 billion people, most of whom seem to follow cricket, I felt like India deserved the World Cup simply because they all wanted it so bad, and there were so many people who wanted India to win it.  I just wanted to watch the whole country celebrate something they cared so much about - and they did. 

Ryan and I watched the last portions of the game from our hotel - and when India won, the hotel staff who were watching with us just couldn't wipe the smile of their faces.  There was genuine and intense satisfaction and happiness.  And within minutes, we heard fireworks outside on the streets coming from every direction.  And even though it has been four days now, the TV and newspapers simply cannot stop talking about it.  It has saturated the news completely.  And as the cricket captain said - this cup was won for the people of India.

Recent Photos

For those who have noticed a slightly extended absence of posts, we just wanted to let you know that we finally managed to post several albums with photos from Nepal, so check out the links to the left.