Friday 2^nd November

“Enid” (Enid Bite ‘Em) left a comment a few days ago, also in response to our Indian ID photos.  It did make me laugh…

Oh dear about the photos ... it reminds of when I went to college, and had to have an identity photo ... we were the last school group to go through ... there were 600 students, give or take, who had photos taken over the previous two days ... and he took mine, took it again, took it a third time and said "hmmm ... can you come back again on Monday? And try not to wear white..." After 600 photos I was the worst!  And he came back especially to take my photo, the following week, BECAUSE THE FIRST WAS SO BAD.

India #8

The day after we arrived, Amed very kindly took a day off from his busy dental practice and showed us some of the sights of Mumbai.  We zipped around the place and asked him trillions of questions.  For example, Do people obey the lane markers – we could see no sign of this.  “A lane is where I want it to be,” he said, firmly.  “I make my own.”  And – why all the tooting of horns, constantly?  Does the tooting have special meaning?  “Yes, it means get out of my way you stupid bastard.” 

We had lunch in a beautiful restaurant, absolutely delicious food.  There was a big TV set in the room, informing us that “Goa is to host a world chess championship for the blind.”  Oh goody; sounds like it was all go in Goa, our next destination!!

He thought (rightly) that we might be in need some greenery, so the next stop were the Hanging Gardens, built on top of a giant water tank.  These gardens were very formal and not very shady.  Full of courting couples, huge topiary animals – not very Indian ones, either – a giraffe, a huge kangaroo… Scampering everywhere were darling little squirrels, tiny stripy creatures with big fat tails.  We were enchanted by them, although we saw them everywhere we went.  They never lost their charm for us. 

Every time I go overseas I say to myself, and to anyone who cares to listen, Damn and blast, WHY didn’t I bring a What Bird Is That-type book with me??  People don’t always know, when you ask, or they say, helpfully, “That is a black bird,” or “That is a very big bird.”  But I did manage to identify the medium-sized birds wheeling purposefully over our heads – kites.  These are mini-vultures and they are very busy everywhere in India.  I read in one of our travel guides that vultures are becoming increasingly rare in India, because of pesticides in cows.  The vultures feed off the cows and have been dying as a result; now there is quite a problem with not enough vultures to eat all of the dead bodies, bovine and human.  They have had to re-think their pesticide usage and I think numbers are now increasing, which is a good thing all round.