the final countdown!

my last day or two in kolkata were cool. i wandered and i wandered and i wandered. the most impressive part was around the bbd bagh area, there were lots of wonderful examples of british colonial architecture. admittedly most of the buildings were now in a state of decay but it was really easy to imagine how grand and impressive they were in their heyday. interestingly the best preserved and cleanest building in the whole of kolkata was the income tax office :D

my train from howrah to mumbai was scheduled to take 30 or 33 hours (i forget which) - and it took 40.... it wasn't that bad actually, what's 7 hours or so when you're on a massive journey? i was sharing my 4 berth with a really miserable old woman, her daughter and her daughter's young baby. they were the messiest people i've ever seen in my life! after day one there were crisp packets, cake wrappers, rice, curry and all manner of crap strewn everywhere on their bottom two bunks - i was glad to be in the top berth and well away from it all though the smell caught at the back of my throat which was quite annoying. actually the stench coming from the whole carriage after 2 days was pretty hideous! the baby was the cutest thing i've ever seen and was really well behaved, which was a blessing as when they got on i thought "uh-oh... screaming baby for 2 days... augh!!"

usually on the train in 2ac you get a plug socket so i didn't bother charging my ipod or mini dvd player thinking i could just plug them in when i got there. silly, silly david! had i learned nothing from my trip in india? of course there was no charge point, so i read my book for the most part, and got some good work done on the best man speech i have to give in just under 2 weeks... it's not worrying me at all i promise! ordinarily i would sit in one of the doorways smoking, drinking chai and watching india glide past but on this train i had a tyrant of a conductor. every time i got settled in he would tell me to get back to my seat, despite protestations that i had travelled all over india on the train and had never encountered a problem before. which really sucked as this journey was my farewell to india. i was crossing the whole subcontinent so it seemed the perfect opportunity to sit and reflect on my time here. oh well, the view from the window was just as good i guess.

so now i'm back in mumbai and i'm having a great time. i had yesterday to myself which was top, visiting the sights i had seen before to take one last look and chuckling to myself about how scared and shocked i was by the place when i first got here in january. compared to the rest of india this place is a little slic

e of heaven. it's pretty clean, there's pavements, coffee shops, restaurants, everyone speaks english and it's so not scary at all!!!. i met with kim and hannah again this morning, we had booked a room for the three of us at bentley's back in january and paid the deposit and everything. bentley's had no record of this, despite the girls having a receipt! so they lost their 2000 rupees which sucks big time. i reckon we should write to the lonely liar, as they have bentley's as "our pick" and it shouldn't be... the gits. luckily my hotel owner is cool and he's put a mattress in my twin room so we're going to watch movies (superbad is on the list... :D) eat cake and have a fun last night for them in india - they fly home tomorrow morning. today we've spent all day wandering and shopping. first to crawford market to get a bucketload of spices, then to fashion street (the mg road) and back to colaba to actually buy some stuff from the street hawkers we've ignored the other times we've been here. the art of haggling is our bitch.. we've gotten so so good at it after 3 1/2 months travelling that we've gotten some real bargains!

i'm really going to miss this place, india has gotten under my skin and i love it, i really do. i'm ready to come home though. bangers, mash and onion gravy for tea on thursday if i'm lucky!