Illin'

I have not been well since we arrived in India. Technically, the feeling bad part began before we left Bangkok, but I'd really rather not get into the details in a public forum. We'll all be better off in the end if we just leave it at "Joey was sick when he got to India".

We landed in Mumbai (aka Bombay) and chose to stay in a touristy part of town, which is good in ways but also difficult in ways. The good is that there are many conveniences which are welcome to foreigners, like restaurants with chairs and clean glasses. The bad is that there are many hawkers and stall vendors trying to vie for the attention and dollars of any westerner who wanders by.

Being ill does not make me a happy shopper, but we did well wandering the streets and checking out shops. There were a few sights close by like the India Gate, which is where the British set sail to leave India after independance. There was also a museum and a couple of cool book shops. Our favorite place was the Barista coffee shop which served some excellent ice-cold watermelon fizzy drinks. Erin mentioned in the last post that it was hot. These drinks from Barista saved the day and our sanity more than once.
We also wandered over to the train station to buy tickets to Arangabad, so that we could go and see the Ellora and Ajunta caves (more on that later). The train station was one of the most beautiful that we've seen on our trip. Typical train stations are pretty much function over form. However, you can see from the photo below that this train station had some attention paid to the details.