Oopsie daisie! I haven't done an update for a few weeks. Well, sorry guys/gals, but I've been busy LIVING! (Did I mention that I've been to New York and Barcelona recently? More in about twelve blogs' time...)

Right, back to business in India:

DAY 12: Around Murud

• After a splendidly splendid breakfast of yumminess at the Golden Swan, we got a tuktuk to take us to the harbour down the coast a bit, from where we hired a sailboat to take us out into the bay to Janjira Fort.
• Janjira is an island fortress built in the 17th century and never conquered. The key to its success was a freshwater spring on the island, which, combined with huge food storage space, meant sieges were unsuccessful. Oh, and the bloody big walls and cannnon helped.
• On our way back to the mainland, we spied a buffalo swimming along near us! This is not normal. Back on land, we watched as several people coaxed the beast back to shore, and finally up the jetty we had just landed at.
• The tuktuk back to Golden Swan was driven by a friendly beardy chap who stopped briefly outside his house to show us his wife & kids, before heading back along the coast road, his vehicle wheezing and coughing up inclines under the weight of three fat Europeans.
• Back at the Golden Swan, we had room service bring us some light lunch snacks - because we couldn't bring ourselves to walk the 10 metres to the restaurant! We declined the invitation to join the Norwegian group in a game of volleyball, feeling too lazy.
• Some late afternoon sunbathing was livened up by me being shat on by a passing high-altitude bird. Which brought to three the sum total of how many of us had been shat on in India. Still, it's good luck, isn't it. Hooray.
• In the evening, Michaela & I took a donkey cart ride up & down the beach whilst Christian took more flying fox photos. Our donkey driver told us that Murud is half Muslim and half Hindu, and just as he spoke those words we heard the evening call to prayer from the mosque - a building that we hadn't spotted hitherto.
• And then came another orgasmic dinner in the Golden Swan restaurant! Oh yeah, baby!

DAY 13: Murud -> Bombay

• We had a final Golden Swan culinary knock-out breakfast, taking some photos of the staff in their Hawaiian-looking uniforms, then checked out and started back to Bombay.
• Our timing was blessed: the bus came along past the resort just as we left. It was a much faster bus than the one that had brought us here two days previous. As a consequence, I didn't get my camera out in time to catch what would have been a marvellous reworking of Constable's The Haywain: a small village square with four zebu chewing on straw that was tumbling out of a wooden two-wheel wagon. I'll just have to enjoy remembering the scene.
• We changed buses in Alibag without delay (okay, there was a slight delay while Michaela went to the toilet, during which time several knee-high scallywags tried to get me & Christian to open our wallets). The small bus to the ferry was full of call centre workers, one of whom (a slim young woman) had such an annoyingly prim and self-satisfied English accent - she deigned to speak Hindi only with her ugly fat girl friend, not with the ugly fat guy they were travelling with - that I was sorely tempted to punch her in the sari.
• The ferry left soon after we reached it, and soon enough we were back in the heart of the city. We decided to have a refreshing cup of tea that turned into an afternoon snack feast in the Taj Mahal Hotel's tea room.
• As we gazed at the fabulously rich people sitting around us - some of them tourists, some of them butt ugly, but some of them gorgeous! - and listened to the cheesy muzak on the hammond organ that was playing in the background, we had another rose falooda, but it wasn't quite as spectacular as the one outside the Haji Ali Mosque had been. I don't think that one will ever be beaten.
• Nair was so good as to come and pick us up, and a few hours later we were back at Gareth's flat. The four of us then walked down the road to the Saffron Spice restaurant, the culinary highlight of Hiranandani Gardens. Oh dear, is all I can say. The service was DIRE! They got the orders wrong, they brought Gareth a half-raw chicken kiev, and it was generally a poor show. Or perhaps we were just tired from our long day. Anyway, we got back to Gareth's and fell asleep pretty much instantly.