Bollywood

Mumbai, shmumbai, everyone calls it Bombay. July 1 -9

Well we made it to Bollywood all in one piece just for the torrential rains to make rivers out of Bombays streets (no one calls Bombay Mumbai). But we like the rain, its a cool 28c! (I never thought I 'd say that was cool, but it is, I even wore a cardi..what will we do when we get back to Melbourne?!), it doesn't smell bad, all the smells have been washed away. The best way to describe it is like it's a tropical London- all old fashioned Victorian buildings that look like they should be in Britain, red double decker buses, old 60's style taxis, old crumbling apartment buildings... but with palm trees and monkeys.

The people are trendy and everything is 3 times as expensive as anywhere else in India.

The first day we got recruited for Bollywood by our guesthouse owner. So the next day us and an Irish couple were taken off to the studios. The Irish guy had already done it.. and he got to dress up as a Mughal emperor from like the 1500s for a movie and got a cool costume, lots of bling and a fake beard so we were pretty excited to see what we would get to do...Unfortunately it was nothing that cool.

We were extras at a surprise wedding on a popular TV show. The guys got free shaves while me and the Irish girl were taken to wardrobe- the other girl couldnt fit into the tiny Indian dresses, and it was so bad.. we were trying to explain to the wardrobe guys that she wouldn't fit, and they didn't get it.. they were saying to her boyfriend- 'make her put it on'.. like he should control his girlfriend. By the way.. why would it be all guys in the wardrobe department? A girl would know how to fix the problem. I got a red dress, Jon got a cool pinstripe suit!. But when we went back to the set, the directors were like -'no you cant wear a red dress you will clash with the red and white decorations'. So they gave me a see through light pink dress! It was disgusting! But they were like it doesn't matter. And the Irish girl got to go on in her daggy tshirt and pants..in a wedding scene! ? It was so odd, and I got to go on in my manky pink thongs, because they couldn' t find shoes to fit.


Anyway the life of an extra is far from glamorous. It a lot of standing around and sitting around.. being called on set, then for some explicable reason being told to go off set without even getting on.... it was a long day. We got to watch the dances though..I love Indian dancing.. the other extra loved me cos I could do the Indian head wiggle move! We didn't get any makeup either, so I don't know how we will look.... so we were a little disappointed with the experience but we got 500 rupees each- A$12.50, which is jack all in O z but paid for 2 night s accommodation, dinner and our laundry....if we weren't in Mumbai we couldv'e lived off it for a week!

Another day we got the 1hr ferry to Elphanta Island to see the carved temple caves. Which we weren't terribly impressed by. Its a Hindu temple hewn out of a cliff. And we'd already seen similar ones at Ajanta and Ellora..where there were 20 caves at each site. It was still kinda cool- in the only worthwile cave temple there was an incredibly serene 6m 3 headed Shiva statue- kinda looks like a 3 headed Buddha.

The best bit was all the monkeys, so many of them. But not scared of humans.. infact we were probably more scared of them.

We saw a monkey steal a bottle of Fanta from a guy, and sit down, unscrew the lid and drink it, which was hysterical. But then it wasn't so hysterical when I brought a corn on the cob, and they started to take interest in me....We walked away down the stairs back to the jetty when we were ambushed by a snarling monkey, and while Jon tried to hit it wi th our umbrella, another monkey appeared from the other side and lunged at me. I screamed and threw my corn cob at it. It was probably funny if you were watching..

View from ferry of Taj Mahal hotel, and India Gate.

Marine Drive-4km walkway around the bay...with people sitting the whole way..




And at the end, Chowpatty beach.


Probably not our idea of a beach..but a beach none the less.

The view from the hanging gardens out over Chowpatty.

On Monday we were meant to be leaving we were super organised and got up early to go to the station, we brought our suburban tickets to Bandra where our Amritsar train was leav ing...the guy at the ticket counter said our train would be next leaving from platform 1 so off we toddled... got our seats, nice and relaxed cos we had plenty of time... half an hour went by.....50 minutes... and we realised we were on the wrong train. We asked some other people and they told us just as we suspected. And a nice guy checked his little timetable book for us and worked out that by the time we got the right train to the right area our Armistar train would have left :(

So feeling dejected we got off at Vishii, and waited for a train back into the city.. we started chatting to a girl and her mother and they told us to get on their train to get back, and we told them our story and they invited us to their house for lunch! We agreed and th ey were so excited. But when they got to their house after a maze of little tiny alleys and chickens, they found their brother had taken the keys to school and they attempted to bash the padlock with a metal bar. The poor girl Maya and her Mum were nearly crying that they couldn't get in, Maya had really wanted to cook nice Indian food for us and Jon had to take the bar off her to stop her breaking the lock, we said we'd take them out for lunch, so we shouted them masala dosa's (new fav indian food- thin crispy pancake with spiced potatoes and cahew and sultanas and tomato and coconut dipping sauce....mmm so good when you dont feel like curry!)and ice cream ! They were so sweet, Maya waanted to improve her English so we asked her lots of questions, she is 17 likes dancing and wants to go to Switzerland. We met the younger brother that had the key too, and they all came and waited at the station for our train back to the city and hugged, kissed (sweet) and touched our toes goodbye(bit strange). So it ended up being a nice afternoon! Back at the station we could only rebook our tix for 2 days after.... Jon, Maya, Arun (who had the keys) and Rita their Mum



We used our extra days to go on the net, drink tiger beer, go to the infamous Leopolds, eat delicious brownies, and realise we had the perfect juice and chicken shwarma stall right around the corner from us, too little to late....so sad. The important thing was that when the time came, we had enough time to get on our train!