Mumbai and Home!

When in India "expect the unexpected" and Mumbai is no different.

Lots of traffic but shock horror it is all going in straight lines and obeying the traffic lights and no beeping horns. Loads of people but walking on real pavements and no time or inclination to stare AND NOT A COW TO BE SEEN!!!!!

The stories of boom time are true. Still masses of slum poverty but gilded with economic progress.

However this is still India - at the end of a couple of lazy days wandering around Mumbai's a street hawker taps me on the shoulder and tells me "you have very dirty ears sir!" excuse me? " I do very good clean job for you"!!!

Is there any where else in the world with an personal ear cleaning service?

This has been a fantastic holiday on lots of different levels but we are all glad to be going home.

It might be a few years but we will be back !

Pilgrimage into the Gujarat

So from Mt Abu it feels like our tourist trail ends and a mini family pilgrimage begins. Our entry into the Gujarat was not without frustration – the state border bureaucrats didn't know quite how to deal with the toll for an eleven seater minibus so after an hour of discussion and a multitude of phone calls from the 10 people in the tiny toll office an appropriate tax was decided and our details entered by hand with exquisite care into one of a small mountain of dusty red log books, several other triplicate forms are completed and the toll exchanged not without Ba trying to negotiate a discount for the delay!

After a great night's sleep in a "proper" hotel, you know TV, Wi-Fi, room service, the day begins with a laugh. I open the my hotel room door to the laundry man who freezes for a moment as he enters the room then gives me a smirk as he spots my illegal Indian rent boy languishing half asleep in bed - to try and innocently explain that this was actually my son and that my wife and other two children were next door was just too much to explain at 6.30am!

So as we headed towards Ba and Dada's villages, Bhadran and Dharmaj, my thoughts turned to how they must be feeling as their first and probably last opportunity to come to their childhood home with their grandchildren. How can the significance of agonizing decisions made by grandparents and great grandparents to seek a life far apart from family but with greater opportunity be impressed on our children? Is there any point? Or should I shut up for once and allow time and maturity to allow them to make their personal reflections rather than impress my sentiments upon them? Don't be daft I will lecture as always - it is a fathers job to expound his opinions on his children and a child's job to tell him what a "jake" he is!

Having visited Bhadran and Dharmaj before it was great to have the context of Ba and Dada's explanation of some of the finer detail. Funny for the kids to see the upstairs window Dada and his four brothers used to pee out of during the night, funny for us all to hear how much Ba hated India preferring her adopted Kenya and for them both to boast that unlike most arranged marriages they got to speak to each other for "more than half an hour" before they agreed to their wedding. The kids were a little bemused, moaning about having to visit elderly relatives (surprise surprise!) but held by their grandparent's enthusiasm.

After a long day we drove due west to Rajkot into an immense colour of evening sun - an appropriate end to a poignant day. That vivid colour was however a warning of the approach of another bustling city and as we hit the usual chaos of bodies and traffic it filled me with a little dread that having left the relative peace of a lush countryside we were going to end on an urban downer. Despite a mosquito infested sleep the warm welcome from Tina's "other Mum and Dad" and after a fantastic breakfast of "real" Indian food any negativity was soon lifted. We spent the day being taken around the city and how much more appealing an ordinary city can look through the eyes of the people who live there taking us to see real places away from the usual tourist ambushes. An hour spent walking around a local market turned out to be one of the highlights of the entire trip which I have to say in retrospect, but admittedly out of necessity, may have been a little too sanitised.

Bombay and, sadly, the final leg home.

OK so Kim who has been looking over my shoulder has just judged me as being a wanabee writer who just isn't quite making it – how the truth hurts!!!!!

Diarrhoea of the verbal variety.