In India...

... it is hot and humid
... the food is delicious
... the tea is AMAZING!
... the people are nice
... the colors are beautiful

and luckily we have AC in our rooms. Yay!

It took over 24 hours to get here, but overall it was a good trip! We got in around 1am and went to the hotel and crashed.

This morning I woke up to a distant melody of car horns. Just like I noticed in Ecuador, people drive with one hand steering the wheel and the other hand on the horn. Despite efforts to have quiet zones in the city as depicted in this sign, the horns honk on!



Everything has been great so far and it's pretty much what I expected from a large city like Mumbai. And like most of the places I've traveled, people really like to stare at my blond hair. This one kid couldn't keep his eyes off me!



Here are a few images from the day.

Decked out auto-rickshaw, or as they say in Thailand, a "tuk tuk":



Taj hotel - one of the hotels bombed in the terrorist attacks:



The colors here are amazing:



Our faculty instructor told us not to bring many clothes because we would buy salwar kameez and wear them during our time here. Just before dinner tonight we went shopping in this tiny tiny crowded store and bought a few things. I'm really excited to sport my new purchases - pictures coming soon! The good thing about these pieces is...they are made for the weather so we will be keeping cool (hopefully!).

Tomorrow we'll go to a few museums and do some more sightseeing. I'll be glad to get started on our microfinance studies, but it won't be for a few days yet.

I haven't had much of a chance to take pictures yet - but I am so glad I was able to bring the mondo-camera. Thanks, Flanigans! I'm really looking forward to capturing this with these awesome mega-lenses.

Well, time to sign off. Hope you're all doing well!