Craziness and Capoeira

Most of these entries won't be this long, I swear... We're here, we're here! We arrived after a fantastic flight with Jet Airways (highly recommended, cheap, wonderful service, awesome food), and we were met by Maruti, our driver for the next two days. Maruti took us to an apartment in West Thane, right by Bombay, which was perfect and comfortable for us as we had been traveling for 24 hours (see first two pictures)... All of this was possible because of our kind and incredible host Ravi, who is a friend of Ritchie, a family friend of mine. The generosity and hospitality here is insane.. It's going to take some getting used to (and I don't mean that in a bad way).

So far we've seen Colaba, which is home to the Gateway of India, Hanging Gardens, the Taj Hotel (NOT Taj Mahal), and lots of tourists and craziness. We posed for pictures with about 4-5 Indian families, which I was told would happen, but was still surprised when it did. Jake got ambushed by a guy who wanted to clean his ears, which was a bit uncomfortable (moreso for him, of course), but kind of hysterical in retrospect. We also took in some calm by the water at Nariman point, and ate the finest lamb in a beautiful restaurant.

Yesterday we arrived in Bandra, a cosmopolitan suburb of Mumbai (new name for Bombay, which I find myself using interchangably), where we met up with our first couchsurfing host, Aparna. It's been fantastic! We went out for a lovely lunch with Aparna and a couchsurfer from Amsterdam. (Quick note: for those who don't know, couchsurfing is a networking site (couchsurfing.com or hospitalityclub.org) that allows people to open up their homes or find homes to stay in for short periods of time during their travels. It's an incredible way to meet people and to really get into a culture and the typical day to day activities of a place. Check it out, it's great!) Aparna is so energetic and happy and she lives with her husband Roy in a really sweet flat. She whisked us away to the Celebrate Bandra parade (festivities are happening all week, who knew?) where she was marching and performing with her capoeria group (the first in INdia!) We got to march, clap, and sing, which was kind of surreal, and then we got interviewed for what we were told was "the biggest television news network in the world!". We'll see.. There were children dressed as flowers, cheerleaders, men in drag, a few floats, and lots of sparkles! The colors here are so beautiful.. Even the trucks are beautifully painted. We sat in four hours of traffic on our first night and I didn't get bored once.

From there, we went out to a bar with the Capoeira group and I swear (we both swear) we could have been in New Jersey (only with a lot of Indian people). We drank pitchers of Kingfisher (yummy Indian beer) and listened and sang along to American 90s rock (when Bon Jovi came on we BELTED Livin' on a Prayer). It was so crowded! Then we all went back to Aparna's where Jake and I passed out in her living room. Woke up today to tea and amazing aloo paratha served to us by Aparna's cook that comes over every day. This place is strange because some things are so close to home but then there are these crazy differences that remind me I'm across the world. Bandra is really laid back and we can wear whatever we want, but then we had to remember not to take ice in our sangria, or people would talk about catching malaria like it's the chicken pox.

Today we're exploring Bandra, and we'll be heading over to a Free Hugs couchsurfing meet up later tonight. More news later! Check out Jake's haikus!