Tuesday 8/3: Our time in Kathmandu was AWESOME!!!!!!!!! The temples we visited, our mountain flight, the bungy adventure, seeing random animals in the street, eating food (lots of food!), and lounging around the hotel are all great memories 🙂 Leaving Hotel Ganesh Himal was really sad! The staff was so friendly and always helpful. One of the front desk girls gave each of us a scarf and wished us luck before heading for the airport 😀 The Kathmandu airport had the most security checks of any airport I’ve ever been through…we literally went through at least a dozen bags searches/metal detectors before boarding the plane for Mumbai. The 2.5 hour flight went smoothly and quickly (especially for Sara, who managed to snag a first class seat…not fair!). We got a pre-paid taxi at the airport…an OLD (like really really really OLD and RICKETY) taxi…pretty sure it was a 50-year old black and yellow Ford Ambassador that rumbled and bounced along the street….we looked super classy pulling into the JW Marriott (a VERY nice 5-star hotel)! After some “issues”, it was decided that Steve and I would stay at the JW for our two nights and Mumbai and Sara and Valerie were going to find a hotel downtown. Steve spent the night relaxing in the sauna and I pretty much just fell asleep watching Indian tv 🙂 We also had some very expensive sandwiches at the hotel….
Wednesday, 8/4: Steve and I woke up feeling refreshed (those beds were SO COMFY!!!) and headed out to find a cab. Our cab driver totally ripped us off and charged us double what it should have cost to get from our hotel to the Gateway of India. En route to downtown, we saw the 20-some story Tata house!!! We found Sara and Valerie’s hotel, but they had already left to do some sight-seeing, so Steve and I enjoyed lunch at McDonald’s (Maharaja Mac!) then walked to the Gateway of India/Taj Mahal Hotel. The inside of the Taj is GORGEOUS!!!! We spent a few minutes sitting in the lobby, then walked around the shopping area inside. A jewelry store owner saw us looking in his store windows and came over to talk to us (well, mostly Steve…grr)…he said that people never come in his store to look anymore because they’re afraid of getting conned into buying something and he just wants to talk to people! So we spent a good 30 minutes in their learning about India and how to avoid getting ripped off by cab drivers 🙂 After that, we found a ferry to take us to the Elephanta Island!!!! It wasn’t raining or anything, but the water was pretty choppy…we managed to keep our Mickey D’s down though 🙂 Steve and I spent a few hours exploring the caves, taking pictures of monkeys/puppies/caterpillars, and buying junk from vendors. It was a very relaxing afternoon and will definitely be remembered 🙂 The ride back was much much worse….I won’t go into detail, but I was SO happy to get off of that ferry!!!! Shortly after returning, we ran into Sara and Valerie on the street and showed each other our pictures and videos from the day. They had met a travel agent of some sort who was going to take them around the city and show them the not-so-touristy areas (aka the slums). Steve and I were starving and in dire need of a restroom, so we parted ways and agreed to meet up in the morning. We went into several stores trying to find a restroom, but didn’t have any luck (we did find a LeBron jersey in an Adidas store…nobody knew who he was though), so we resorted back to McDonald’s….that was by far the nastiest bathroom I have ever been in!!! We were too tired/lazy to search for food, so we just ate dinner at McDonald’s (eating fast food twice in one day was an awful idea) and then found a Western Union where we called home for the first time in 10 days 🙂 The cab ride back to the hotel was much better than the ride in (and it cost us less than half the price we paid in the morning!). Our driver was really really nice and told us how he learned English from driving tourists around for the last 30 or so years. Back at the JW, we found a complimentary lemon tart that had been left in our room (we thought it was pretty awesome and took a lot of pictures of it…yes, we’re weird). We spent the night watching more Indian tv (there was one show where a guy and girl were just staring into each others eyes, not saying anything and the background kept changing….that went on for at least 30 minutes!).
Thursday, 8/5: Again, we woke up feeling great and decided to swim in the hotel’s awesome pools and walk on the beach. I was kind of surprised by how dirty the beach was…people just throw their garbage wherever they feel like, so I had plastic bags and wrappers of all sorts floating around my feet. The water was way too rough (and gross-looking) for us to get in, but I’m happy to say I’ve been to the Arabian Sea! Not wanting to spend a fortune on lunch at the hotel, we walked a block or two down the street and found a SUBWAY!!!!!! It was so good! I thought it was interesting that they have two separate sandwich lines, one for vegetarian and the other for non-vegetarian. While we were eating, a group of cross-dressed tribal men walked up to the restaurant door and were motioning for me to come outside. Steve, nice guy that he is, thought the door was too heavy for the “women” to open, so he pulled it open for them and the Subway workers came running over to close it. I don’t know what those people were up to, but it was a very strange thing to see! I saw them walking into the slums on our way back to the hotel. Steve and I were chased by some beggar children when we walked down a street to the public beach…all of them do this motion where they point all of their fingers together and tap their lips, like they want us to give them money for food. It’s really sad to see so many children on the street, but at the same time, you almost become insensitive to them because there are so many. Before leaving the hotel, we talked to the concierge for a while and he gave us the names of places to check out in Goa. The flight we originally booked was supposed to leave at 1pm, but it then was pushed back to 2:40pm, and eventually 4:30pm. Valerie’s flight left Mumbai at 1pm, so she waited in the Goa airport for 4 or 5 hours before Sara, Steve, and I got there. We flew Kingfisher Airlines for only 45 minutes, but were still served an entire hot meal! You would never get that in the States! The van ride to the hotel in Goa (Victor Exotica) was pretty long, but gave us a chance to see the city (and the fact that Kingfisher pretty much owns Goa). We didn’t get to Victor Exotica until 7:30 or 8pm…we ate dinner there and pretty much just went to bed.
Overall, Mumbai was a great city to see–I just wish we had had more time there (and a hotel closer to all of the action)!