We are alive in Mumbai

Let's get one thing out of the way: it took over 40 hours to get here, and that's a lot of airplane food. Fortunately, the Cathay Pacific staff are very friendly and they had lots of vegetarian food for us. But it's still a long a lot of flying none-the-less. The stop in Hong Kong did, however, provide a nice break in the trip, though it also wore us out for the final two flights.

By the time we got in our Mumbai taxi to the Sea Green hotel, we were so overstimulated and overtired that we could hardly absorb

1. the unbelievable driving style: the approach to driving in Mumbai seems to be to drive (with your lights off at night) as fast as possible and to keep honking as you go so that the hoards of people crossing in your way can know exactly which moment they need to jump to avoid injury. And you should not have side mirrors because the cars drive so close together ... seriously less than four inches at times.
2. the encampments alongside of the roads. We knew we would wittness extensive poverty here in India. It is all right out in the open.
3. the smog blowing into our eyes and jeez, what was that smell?

Now that we have slept a little, we have found Mumbai to be quite an overwhelming experience. This will not be possible to explain here. Partly it is the traffic, which comes at you from all directions and does not seem to pause even if you are not getting out of the way. Partly it is how everyone stares at you all the time. As a white man, I am not used to this. It is getting a bit more normal, though. Partly it is the constant sounding of horns. Everywhere. Nonstop. One gets the sense that you can not stop on any sidewalk anywhere or you will get run over and honked at and it will smell bad as you die slowly in the gutter and nobody is noticing.

Mumbai hardly has any white tourists in it, partly due to the great expense of staying here. Our hotel cost us almost 70 USD each night, which is more than I've paid for hotels in the US. Monica and I will leave tonight on the night train for Arungabad, which we will use as a base camp from which to explore the historic caves at Ellora and Ajanta. We'll come back through Mumbai to pick up some Tiawanese "gear cycle" bicycles from a shop here before taking off again for the souther coastal area of Goa.

We are happy and relieved to be here. We are looking forward to spending time at the beach.