Wednesday 31^st october

Poor Nicky tried to put a comment on an earlier blogpost – the one about our ID photos in India.  She carefully wrote it all out, one-fingered, on her iPhone, and then…it equally carefully vanished, leaving her just a bit cross.  (Angry vomit feeling is what she actually wrote to me, in a textmessage.  Oh dear computer/phone stress…we all know what this is like!)  I did manage to persuade her to summarise her witty bit of prose and here it is:

When Gavin was at uni his second year ID card was amazing.  I can’t even begin to describe the facial contortion the camera captured.  We spent many belly laughing moments trying to make him actually pull the face in real life.  We never succeeded.

India #6

While Mary and I were examining the closely-packed street stalls around the Mondegar, where I bought 5 completely useless cards featuring elephants and peacocks and the like, and which got thoroughly crushed in my pack during the subsequent weeks (what was I thinking???), Pete and Vish were seriously and purposefully cruising the street, looking at hotels.  Opposite the Mondegar was a new hotel, the Apollo.  Hmmm…wonder how much that would be, compared to the Strand?  Well gollygosh, about one third the price, and SO much nicer!  We trotted back to the Strand, un-booked ourselves (just a teensy lie; staying with Dr Amed Sharma, the well-known Mumbai dentist – the manager knew Amed, it seems everybody in Mumbai does know him, and accepted this with no hurt feelings) and within minutes we were marching back up the streets of Colaba to the Apollo. 

Vish and I somehow got separated from Pete and Mary.  We thought we knew where we were going, and probably we did, but a very persistent young bloke attached himself to us and said No NO NO, the Apollo is THIS way!  Well it was very hot and moist and sticky, and my pack, while beautifully designed with both wheels and straps, was not comfortable for high-speed hot-weather streetwalking.  I flagged a bit and we found ourselves in completely unknown territory.  We were sure we were going the wrong way.  “But the Apollo Guesthouse is VERY nice and it is JUST around this corner!” our young bloke said, hopefully.  We had told him fifteen times we wanted Apollo Hotel NOT Guesthouse, but he had hoped we wouldn’t notice; he obviously didn’t know that actually there were another lot of us up ahead, and that NO we would not want to be plonked down in a backpackers hostel without Pete and Mary!  Vish and I had already decided we would give our uninvited guide some money, and we both had appropriate notes tucked into our hands ready and waiting, but we actually began to get quite cross with him because he just wouldn’t listen.  In the end Vish, who is extremely kind and patient in normal circumstances, told him to GO AWAY.  (Actually I think we might also have PAID him to go away, he was such an irritating presence, but I wouldn’t want to swear to this, or, more to the point, to admit to it…)

After all of that, we found our way quite easily to the Apollo, where we found Mary and Pete quite bemused – “Where DID you go??  And why??”  It was a very nice hotel, only 4 years old and already starting to grow mouldy frescoes, but MUCH nicer than the Strand, with MUCH more cheery staff.  And right across the road from the Mondegar; we were starting to feel at home in Mumbai!