Tin Amigos - Mumbai!

Mumbai was a great place to recover from our crushed Kerala expectations. We flew "The Good Times" and arrived on a lovely Tuesday morning. After some cranky cabbie negotiations, we were soon our our way to the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers. I think I've been forever spoiled. When you start with one of the best hotels in town, how do you ever downgrade? Our rooms were on the 17th floor, overlooking the Gateway of India and the harbor - just beautiful.

We spent the afternoon wandering the Colaba Causeway and having a few beers and some snacks at Leopold's (Shantaram fans will recognize the famous bar from the novel). It's smaller than it seems in the book, but definitely a local expat hang-out and a great place to while away your afternoon. We even strolled through Sassoon docks where the fishing boats come in. This is high on my list of things that I would NOT have been doing without Kevin along, and it may have been the most odoriferous mile in Mumbai, but the waterfront was still pretty, with brightly colored boats and trucks pulling up with their loads of fish.

I have to pause here and say that, although this is probably not technically true, I felt as hot as I have ever been in my life in Mumbai. It's just steamy; you can't step outside without immediately feeling like a dim sum bun. We would practically dive through the revolving doors at the Taj each time we got back. Thankfully, the Taj has a great pool, so we were able to cool down every evening before tackling the trek to dinner. Our first night, we ate in the Taj at Wasabi by Morimoto, which is owned by Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto. The night we ate there, Chef Morimoto himself was in residence, supervising the making of our sushi. It's the first time that I've seen someone star-struck by a chef. We tried to get Kevin to ask for a photo, or "snap" as they say here, but our shy guy was having none of it.

Our second day in Mumbai was spent over breakfast buffet and on a ferry ride to Elephanta Island to see the cave temples. Being out on the water was a nice break from the closeness of the city. I think I lost half the water in my body on the way up to the cave temples, but they were beautiful (and cool) once we got there. It definitely whetted my appetite to go and see the cave temples at Ellora and Ajanta, which are UNESCO sites and supposedly phenomenal. By the time we got back to the Taj, we had our first travel casualty...Kevin got sick and was down for the count (about 24 hours). Do you still call it Delhi Belly in Mumbai? Shannon, Lauren and I entertained ourselves with dinner at Indigo in Colaba, and by a solid day of massages and sunning ourselves by the pool - life is rough all over.

We rounded out our Mumbai experience with dinner at Bademiya, a hoppin' street cafe in Colaba, and an evening of bootleg Bollywood in our hotel room. Little did I know that Shannon would sucker for the melodrama, action, and hot bods that is Bollywood - I've created an addict. With Kevin slowly rejoining the living, we packed up and headed for Udaipur, and the next leg of the adventure.

3 Amigos - Mumbai