Monsoonal Mumbai

We arrived in Mumbai in a furious mood - we had somehow agreed to pay our taxi driver from the station to our hotel five times what the trip should really have cost, plus he didn't even drop us at our hotel, plus at the start of the trip he had put his hand on my knee when Tom wasn't looking. Disgusting. But after looking around Mumbai our mood turned for the better. Beautiful old buildings and tree lined streets, and we have probably been hassled less here than anywhere else.

Alas I haven't seen any Bollywood stars, despite best efforts yesterday - I took a cab out to the suburbs which the cool kids are meant to frequent. I managed to spot a nice dress, but no Aishwarya or SRK. This photo is on the way, taken out my taxi window:

In the evening we went to a flash restaurant, which I think cost about twice our next most expensive meal from the last few weeks, (but was still only what one person might pay in Oz). There were lots of nice looking people there that may have been stars, but we weren't to know.

Doesn't matter, because today we are heading south to Kerala. On the train for 24 hours, and then we are hoping to hire a houseboat on the Kerala backwaters.

On the set of Octopussy in Udaipur

We spent our final day in Delhi traipsing about the Red Fort and massive mosque (below). It was a bit of a mistake really; we were out in the middle of the day, and found that we had to sit down for a rest every ten minutes or so because of the heat. I think Tom came off particularly the worse for wear - lets jut say he didn't have a terribly pleasant train ride to Udaipur.

Udaipur, our next stop, has a reputation as the most romantic city in India, mainly because of the number of palaces it contains. It certainly was romantic, but I was more excited by the fact that they filmed much of Octopussy in Udaipur. Fortunately our hotel, along with every other hotel in town, offered moonlight showings of the film, so we saw the palaces by day, and on-screen by night.

On our last day we chanced across a festival for something or other which brought the people out onto the streets in their brightly coloured turbans and saris.

Music was supplied by massive speakers on the back of a truck connected up to a generator which had to be pushed around in front of the truck!

An overnight train ride later, and we are in Mumbai! I'm off to find some Bollywood stars!