Travels pt 1

On Sunday I flew to Mumbai to meet my parents. Their plane got fogged in in Indianapolis and they missed their connecting flight, so instead of getting to Mumbai almost an entire day before me, they arrived about five hours after me. So when I got to the hotel, I checked in and then went out to explore a little and have dinner alone.
The reunion with my parents wasn't very dramatic, but we were all happy to see each other again. Its weird that it'd been four months. When I talk to my friends who are in their first year at college, I say things like "it must be weird to not see your parents for so long, I can't even imagine how that would be" only to realize that I'm doing just that.
Mumbai is really nice; I like it alot. Its so different from Khardah and Kolkata that it almost didn't feel like India to me. Its very chic. Of course I only small a very small part of the city, but the buildings were well maintained and the architecture. I thought that it felt very European. I asked my mom if she though so too and she said no, it felt more like Mexico. Haha. So I guess its all a matter of perspective. Coming from Kolkata, Mumbai feels like Europe (or so I imagine, I've never actually been) and coming from the US it feels like Mexico. Anyway, the part we were in was beautiful. Our hotel was literally around the corner from the Taj Hotel. There were huge barricades around it and the Gateway of India, but they were both beautiful nonetheless.
We went on a self-guided walking tour and went to Chowpatty Beach to watch the sunset and walked on Marine Drive. Mumbai was nothing like how I imagined it from the books I'd read. I'd like to go back for a longer period of time if I ever get a chance.
Mumbai is very different from Kolkata in many ways. One of the first billboards I saw upon my arrival was for Kotex thin maxi pads. That would never be up in Kolkata. The women who would definitely wear saris in Kolkata wore salwars in Mumbai, sometime with big white sneakers (which you also wouldn't see in Kolkata) and with or without the dupatta, or with it on backwards or askew (which would never happen in Kolkata; dupattas are very important). The girls and young women who would wear salwars in Kolkata wore westernized clothes in Mumbai. I hardly saw any saris at all. Another noticeable difference was, frankly, there were alot more fat people. I saw people jogging on my taxi drive to the hotel and I knew I wasn't in Kolkata any more. And of course, the people in Mumbai didn't look like Bengalis because they aren't. I do miss being able to read the signs though. I took pleasure in sounding out words in Bengali even if I didn't know what they meant.
We spent one full day in Mumbai and then flew to Jaipur. Rajasthan was somewhere between Mumbai and Kolkata as far as Westernization and general atmosphere. But it had its own feel. The forts we visited were amazing. They are so old and yet ingeniously designed and beautifully intricate. We did a fair amount of shopping in Jaipur. We visited an ancient archaelogical center which was amazing in its complexity. It sports the biggest (or maybe second-biggest) sundial in the world.
We spent two days in Jaipur before driving to Agra. The buildings here too were amazing. I wish I remebered the names of everything we saw (in Jaipur and in Agra) We visited the Agra Fort, or the Red Fort, which was huge and beautiful. And we visted a fort outside of
Agra which was used instead of the Red Fort for about 10 years. It was neat too. We went to see the Taj Mahal from across the river. It is amazing. This morning we actually went to the grounds of teh Taj, but it was so cloudy that it couldn't even be seen from the main gate. Up close, it is huge and beautiful. The marble inlay is so intricate. The weather was very unfortunate though.
After seeing the Taj, we drove to Delhi, which is where I am now. I saw the Taj this morning. I'm going to go eat dinner now. Don't know when I'll write again. Happy New Year! (oh, we celebrated new year's eve at the hotel in Jaipur. We danced with the Indians)

~m