An Incredible Journey-New Year's in Mumbai

People have warned us that we'll need a vacation from our vacation once we've finished in India. But I've been dying to travel this diverse land for years, so I'm not sure if that will be the case. I'm so eager to explore and anxious to experience the culture and the people and most definitely the food!

We arrived in Mumbai after more than 72 hours of travel at 7 a.m. on New Year's Eve. We had no place to stay and no idea where we were going. (The usual MO for PCVs, I guess.) I was totally exhausted, and while Rachel was managing to keep it together in our quest for accommodation, I felt like I could shatter at any moment.

We had originally planned to Couch Surf in Mumbai. Couch Surfing is essentially exactly what it sounds like. People create profiles for themselves online and offer up a room, a bed, a couch or the floor, free of charge to weary travelers. We'd talked to so many people who'd had really incredible experiences that we were excited to give it a try, but at the last minute, our host fell through and we were stuck scrambling to find a place to stay in one of the world's largest cities on one of the biggest nights of the year.


Streets of Mumbai

A woman at the airport helped us book a room at a place that was definitely more expensive than we'd hoped ($24/night, which in India, and on our budget, is unheard of). But we were desperate for sleep and ready to actually lay down. The woman got us into our rickshaw, too. It sounds like no serious feat, but when you're essentially walking like the dead and going from a country of two million people to a city with more than 20 million, it can be a recipe for disaster! Leaving the airport was entirely too overwhelming. There were hundreds of people crowded outside of the exit waiting for friends and family. We were the only white faces around and people were yelling and screaming and snapping photos and trying to get our attention. I felt like I was Michael Jackson in the 1980s.


Streets of Mumbai

Our rickshaw driver was nice, and while we had our guard up after hearing so many stories about travelers getting cheated, he dropped us directly where we needed to be and we paid exactly what we'd agreed upon. It was the easiest transaction yet, and exactly what we needed after so many hours in the air. Our hotel was nicer than expected, with a private bathroom. It smelled like serious cleaning products (which is better than what it could have been, I guess), but we were mostly just happy to have beds to rest in. I immediately showered (well, bucket bathed), and by the time I got out, Rachel was fast asleep. We must have slept for five or six hours, because around 5 o'clock, we woke up and headed out for a bite to eat.



We'd already agreed to tag this leg of our journey "Palak and Roll!" after the famous Indian dish, Palak Paneer. So it was easy to agree upon our first meal in the country and our final meal of 2009. We ended up at Leopold's. A famous stop for backpackers and the site of a 2008 terrorist attack in the city. It was on our list of places to seek out, only because we'd read so much about it in Shantaram. The food was good, but we were unable to rally for any sort of New Year's wonder. We were back in bed by 8 o'clock!