Mumbai, roaming the streets

First morning: We set out in search of nothing in particular. I think, however, we stopped at a dozen or so jewelry stores... Woman's gotta have her sparkly things.

No sooner than we'd set out did a strange little "religious" man stop me and give me a "blessing" from lord krishna. Turned out to be rather a curse than a blessing. In any case, he asked me where I'm from, I told him Lebanon. That threw him off for a moment, but undeterred he proceeded to give me a little digestive candy and flowers and tie a piece of string around my wrist and dab some colored powder on my already sweaty forehead. OF COURSE, he wanted money. I didn't have any small bills with me. No tens or twenties. I would've just given him rs 20 and been done with it, but I had only a 500 with me. No way he was getting that! So I asked him if he takes credit cards? He said no. I told him, "This is the 21st century, you should get with the program." He told me he takes real money. This means, he takes, Euros, US dollars, and Indian Rupees. I promptly pulled out a Lebanese 5000 note and handed it to him. I told him it was worth much more than it actually is (actual value $3.33, I told him $5 = Rs 225). He looked at me confused. I told him that's more money than he'd get the rest of the day. It probably was. I immediately wiped the dot off my forehead, cut the string off, and tossed the flowers into a compost heap. Maybe that was where I went wrong. I think, however, where I went wrong was allowing myself to get swindled by some "religious" man. Later that day, at India Gate, another nearly identical man came to me, and attempted the same shit. I put a hand in his face and gave him a vociferous, "NOPE." He understood and sort of laughed knowing that I'd been taken once already. Bastards! I'm an idiot.

After my religious experiences in Mumbai, Yvonne decided to take me on a walking tour. Here's an unsolicited plug for lonely planet... They know who to write a damn good travel guide. I'm constantly impressed at the accuracy of information and the depth thereof. Just using their one page, walking tour guide of Mumbai, we made it around the center of the city up through several neighborhoods. We saw a "nice" park, a few "nice" churches, some administrative building, and surprise, surprise, hundreds upon hundreds of kids playing cricket. Most of whom I'm guessing should have been in school at that time.

Mumbai is completely weird. It's so polluted and muggy that you can barely breathe (especially after the arid Jaipur). It is distinctly Indian. It's crowded, the traffic is completely nuts, there are more slums than you can possibly fathom. There are lots of colonial buildings left by the british. It's east meets west, except that the only western things in mumbai are the old buildings and the new office buildings/hotels. After one night and one day I certainly did not have the hang of it. A couple more nights/days to catch on...