I’m in India.  I arrived after midnight local time, so I can’t say I’ve really seen much of it.   There are lots of “helpful” people here who want to carry your bags, your friend’s bags, your friends, wash your feet, or pretty much anything else you might give them some rupees for.  Speaking of rupees, I’m feeling rich.  I traded $20 U.S. for over 1750 rupees.  Okay, so it isn’t worth much, but it feels cool to be wandering around with $500 bills in your pocket.

 

The hotel is very nice.  Quite a step up from the Holiday Inn Express in Belfast.  You know, I waited all day for some crisis to come up which I could fix and claim it was because I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I got nuthin’.   Anyway, back to Mumbai.  We went down to the dining room (which was still open at 1am) and had some food.  (I’m reluctant to label the meals as keeping track of the time is increasingly difficult.)  Oddly, we weren’t alone.  There were quite a few people there.  To be in the lobby of the hotel, the activity level looks more like 9pm than the middle of the night.

 

Oh, and the weather.  I will never complain again about the humidity back home.   Okay, that’s probably not true, but this is a whole new level of wet air.  It’s thick, with palpable moisture.  Walking through the air is like walking through a light rain – without the refreshing coolness and the desire to sing and splash in the puddles.  I can hardly wait to walk outside tomorrow once the sun comes up.