Over time we had collected numerous horror stories about India's pollution, abilities to cause dysentery, and it's poverty. However, just as often world travelers identified this country as their favorite. So with some anxiety and anticipation we landed in Mumbai, a city of 14-15 million people, at 12:30am.

Taking a prepaid taxi for the hour and a half ride towards downtown and our hotel here are some of our first observations;

• It is 70 degrees at night (which was great since we just left 20-30 F weather)
• Sidewalks are scattered with sleeping individuals curled up on a blankets spread out over the cement
• Rats! One ran across the road in-front of the taxi while Mike saw another in the jaws of a cats mouth
• Hundreds of parked taxis (it being night most weren't working)
• For a city of 14-15 million, it was surprisingly quite (compared to Cairo) at the early hour

Usually not liking huge cities, we limited our time in Mumbai to only 1 full day. The city did NOT live up to our elevated dread of its limitless ways to insult the senses and the body. In general it compares to the major cities of other countries whose inhabitants range from the extremely wealth to the devastatingly poor (i.e. Cairo, Lima, La Paz). With the city being more manageable than we had hoped we set out on foot to explore.

What we instantly loved are the photocopied book stands selling best selling titles for only $1.25, samosas (deep fried pastries filled with vegetables), the wash of color everywhere but most spectacularly on the women, and the head wobble (in the USA we nod our head during conversation, here people waggle their head vertically from side to side in varying degrees of tilt and speed).

Sticking with our theme of taking disorganized, self guided, walking tours of cities we don't know, here are the things we ran across; the Gate of India, a cobra charmer, cricket fields, city hall, a lovely gated garden, past Prince of Wales museum, a coffee at Leopolds (a must for us after reading the book Shantaram), and past numerous other architecturally interesting and colonial English inspired buildings.

And being in the city famous for Bollywood we ventured into a Hindi film. For Westerners these are probably more appealing to the female gender since the films are full of dancing, singing, and over dramatic acting with happy endings. The whole 3 hour affair (plus a short intermission) was utterly pleasurable for me, while Mike couldn't hide his cynical laughter during the over dramatic sad parts. Thankfully the acting was over dramatic as the film was only in Hindi with no English subtitles. After the movie we joined some college students who had sat behind us.

Overall we really enjoyed our short visit to this famous city and could recommend a visit to others considering (if one sticks in the tourist neighborhoods).

December 1st - 2nd
Mumbai

December 10th - 11th
Udaipur / The White City

December 12th
A Side trip to Kumbalgarh fort and Ranakpur Jain Temple

December 13th
Jodhpur / The Blue City

December 14th - 15th
Jaisalmer / The Golden City

December 16th
Random Stop : Bikaner and the close by Karni Mata Temple

December 17th - 20th
Pushkar / Important Hindu Pilgrimage Center

December 20th - 22nd
Bundi

December 23rdth - 24th
Agra

December 25th - 28th
New Delhi

Nuances of India

Volunteering in Mizoram