Right, well I'm halfway through blogging my India trip now. Well done me! I shall try to be a bit more concise for the second half. We had a whole second week of spectacular experiences, but I figure you, my dearest readers, might be a little jaded after all this Indian narrative. Perhaps if I leave out conjunctions...

DAY 10: Bombay blast

• For only the second time on this trip, we had a delightfully slow start to the day. There was a whole lot of washing to be done, but more importantly we were knackered from all the early starts! We didn't exactly lie in, though. Instead we had breakfast with Gareth, who had to go to work of course, but didn't really get dressed or anything all morning.
• At breakfast, Gareth saw fit to describe me as "a low-rent baddie from Doctor Who" because of my huge gut. Thanks, mate! But this was immediately topped by MY OWN SISTER, who promptly called me "the wibble wobble monster from the lagoon"! The cheek of it! All I'm saying is: Pot, Kettle...
• Nair drove us into the city, along our usual route on the "fast" road past Bandra and towards the Old City. We jumped out just by the Haji Ali mosque, which is on an island off the west coast that can only be reached via a long causeway. We managed to get there just before the high tide came in to cover the causeway, and after viewing the mosque we had a bite to eat out on the island (just some yummy falafels with hot chili sauce and scrumptious white rolls).
• Then we walked back over to the mainland and stopped at the Hali Aji Juice Centre (as recommended in Lonely Planet) for a some fresh juices, some mango mousse and some rose falooda. Wow! Rose falooda! What can I say? It's a symphony of flavours and textures, all in one glass. Got to be seen to be believed!
• Next we visited a nearby Hindu temple before embarking on a long walk through the hot dusty streets (in that midday sun Christian must have been the mad dog, 'cos I'm an Englishman - but what about Michaela?). Having missed our target of the Doby Ghat, which is a massive open-air laundry where thousands of shirts are washed by hand right behind one of the larger railway stations, we jumped into one of Bombay's cute fifties-style taxis (I basically had to fold my head down onto my shoulder to fit in) to get there. It's a crazy sight to see all those bright clothes hanging out in the middle of a slum.
  
• We got another taxi to take us to the Mani Bharam Gandhi museum, with its quaint dioramas of the life and death of the Mahatma, and then we walked to Chao Pati beach, which is bizarrely silent considering you have to cross a six-lane highway to reach it.
• It was hot, and we were peckish, so we got some kulfis to go from a small bar. (Kulfi is the Indian ice cream that's made using condensed milk - yum!) They clearly don't normally do kulfi to go at this place; after an interminable wait, I was handed a plastic shopping bag containing three slabs of kulfi that had been wrapped in banana leaf and newspaper! Still, it did the trick: they didn't melt straight away, even though the afternoon sun was beating down on us as we nibbled at them whilst waiting for Nair to pick us up.
• The drive back to Hiranandani was the longest we had yet experienced. Nair was surprised too, because the traffic snarled up in a place that's normally plain sailing. But hey, what's two & a half hours among friends?
• We ate dinner in Gareth's flat (his housemaid had kindly cooked for us again) and washed the food down with the bottle of wine that Gareth had given Chrstian for his birthday, but that we had somehow not got round to drinking in Rajasthan. And so to bed.

DAY 11: Bombay -> Murud

• Today our intrepid trio recreated what people familiar with Gareth's blog will know as the Keeping It Real trip. This involves minimal use of chauffeurs to get to a place that is quite far away from Hiranandani. In our case, we cheated straight away, by having Nair take us down to the Gateway of India (there really is no way we would have fitted on a train on a weekday, Gareth informed us). But from there on in it was plenty real...
• We jumped on a ferry at the Gateway of India and crossed over to the mainland. This trip was less than an hour, but oh what a difference an hour can make! On the far side of the bay from Bombay, it was as if we were disembarking in Thailand or some other verdant lush jungle somewhere. Suddenly, we were in the country.
• The cramped transfer bus that took us to the nearby town of Alibag was bouncing along over the potholed single-lane road for half an hour, passing through tiny villages and occasionally dropping people off literally in the middle of nowhere.
• Alibag was a bigger town, and there we had to walk between bus terminals to reach the long-distance bus that would be our home for the next two hours. Oh boy! We only just caught the bus as it was about to leave, and it was standing room only to begin with. Thankfully, about a quarter of an hour in, a few small families took their kids onto their laps and we gratefully sank into the seats beside them. The road was way too bumpy to be able to stay standing for long.
• The views out of the bus windows were great. It was a different kind of countryside here from what we had seen in Rajasthan and UP. Much more tropical, with lots more trees. And of course we were travelling down the coast rather than on an inland plain, so there were lots more hills to climb (sputteringly - it wasn't the newest bus) and then zoom down again (wheezingly and with a disturbing level of overall structural vibration).
• At one point we passed through a village that was thronged with people and cows. The cows had been decorated and appeared to be taking part in some sort of procession. Sadly, I didn't really get any decent photos. Ah well.
• We worked out just in time where we had to get out of the bus. Then it was just a few more steps to our destination: the Golden Swan Beach Resort. This was a slightly unattractive agglomeration of bungalows along a stretch of beach at the northern end of the small town of Murud. But what the resort lacked in lustre it made up for in the kitchen. We ate like KINGS the whole time we were there!!
• After checking in but before dinner, we ventured out onto the beach and were astonished to find that the trees abutting the beach were chock full of flying foxes! There were thousands of the things screeching and stirring from their diurnal slumber to head away to forage away along the coast. It was an unforgettable sight.
• And then came dinner. It made the rigours of the multi-mode journey (we all three of us had whopping headaches) seem worthwhile when we tucked into course after course of delicious dishes, all served by our friendly waiter with the cheeky smile.
  

Ready for another dose of Indian delights? You'd better be, 'cos here it comes!

DAY 9: Jaipur -> Bombay

• Our last day in Rajasthan was top notch - just like all the other days, to be frank! We did some more major sightseeing, this time focusing on the royal palaces just outside Jaipur at the settlement called Amber (pronounced Ammer - don't ask me why). And, thankfully, we this time had a guide who had a wonderful command of the English language - and a sense of humour to boot!
• The first stop was Amber Fort, ancestral base of the ruling family of Jaipur. This splendid fort sits atop a hill that commands the only pass through the hills to the northwest of Jaipur. Not only are the views spectacular, but the architecture is delicious too. There are ceilings inlaid with mirror-like polished metal shards; frescoes done with the dust of precious stones (ruby: red; emerald: green - ah, it was all coming back to us!); and an ingenious inner courtyard for the prince's wives that doubled up as a freshwater collection system.
• We nearly had an elephant ride up to the Fort, but because of Holi there had been no elephant service for a few days now, and consequently the queue was obscenely long. So we decided to save the elephants the trouble of hauling our lardy arses up the hill and got Mr Singh to drive us up instead. We had lovely views of the elephants in the arrival courtyard of the palace anyway, with their artistically decorated flanks and noses covered in multicoloured chalk drawings; there was even one with hippy flowers all over it that could have just walked off the set of the Peter Sellers film The Party!
• Next stop was Jaighar Fort, a less well preserved fort up the hill of which the main draw is the world's largest mobile cannon (it's a huge cannon on four wagon wheels), but which for me was most memorable for its lovely views of Amber Fort below.
• We then went to a fort that doesn't even get a mention in Lonely Planet - gasp! - called Nahargar Fort. Okay, so it's not particularly historic (it's a late nineteenth century confection) but it has dreamy views over the whole of Jaipur city. When we were down there, the place didn't seem so big, but from the roof of this fort the city seemed to stretch to the horizon!
• Out in the car park, we treated ourselves to some delicious papadums from a street vendor who had a monster stack of them piled under a shady tree. They tasted like the papadums you get in Indian restaurants in England, all fluffy and crispy, not like the ones you get in Indian restaurants in other countries, which are brittle and cardboardy.
  
• Mr Singh insisted on taking us to a cloth factory next, where his nephew works. I was fully expecting it to be a massive rip-off, but in fact the wares on offer were lovely. Christian & Michaela indulged in some bedspreads and such; I just sipped on my tea and enjoyed the show.
• We dashed back to our hotel for a quick bite to eat, and then Mr Singh brought us to the monkey temple on the outskirts of Jaipur. He has a friend who likes to show people round there, and indeed we had a marvellous time feeding the monkeys and generally watching them, erm, monkey around. They got up to all sorts of, erm, monkey business!
• While we were there, a few people washed themselves in the holy waters of the temple lake. I have to say, you wouldn't catch me in there, not after all those monkeys have been doing goodness knows what in the water. Eeeeuw!
• As dusk came on, Mr Singh brought us to the airport and we bid him farewell. He was quite smitten with Michaela, and seemed genuinely very sad to see the back of us. We promised that we would send him photos of our time together. And we will.
• Our flight was delayed (just as Gareth's had been the night before) so we hung about in the airport for what seemed like an eternity, nibbling on mediocre airport snacks. But eventually our flight was called and we joined the thronging masses on the steps of the runway tarmac, waiting to be ushered onto the right bus for our aeroplane.
• Back in Mumbai, we suddenly realised how pleasantly un-humid it had been for the last few days. The air was super sticky in the big city! Thankfully Nair came to meet us in Gareth's definitely NOT four-wheel-drive (I stand corrected!) Innova and whisked us back to Gareth's flat, where we could enjoy the gentle breeze of his air-conditioned fans.