Wednesday February 23

Wednesday Feb 23

This morning started off with Heather dropping her ipod into the toilet at the hotel. Being the veteran India traveller that she is, she immediately plunged her left hand into the toilet and retreived the ipod. Amazingly it still worked. We're staying at the Marriott Courtyard near the airport so the toilets here are well maintained and very clean.

We left the hotel and headed to central Mumbai to check out a few hotels when we return to here the first of April. The three wheeled rickshaws are only allowed to go as far as Bandra, so we were dropped off on the side of the road and caught an awaiting cab which dropped us off at the Regal Cinema. The trip was about an hour of traffic jams, blowing horns, fascinating, beautiful and not so beautiful roadside scenery. We visited four prospective hotels and decided to head for the train station before the afternoon rush hour. Heather bought us second class tickets but as we walked to get on the train we were directed to proceed forward to the first class section. I'll assume we didn't look like we belonged in second class. We ended up in last of the first class sections so we could see the first of the second class sections. The second class packed but we had room to move. Heather later said she was glad to be in the first class as she would have certainly been groped in second class.

We walked from the train station to the the hotel and again enjoyed the roadside sights and sounds. We had to cross one very large intersection and upon arriving the other side Heather said it was a bit like playing frogger to get from one side to the other.

Safely back at the Marriott for the evening which feels like we're not in India anymore. We're OK with that.