Colsh:

Party bum: think Danny Singh's, 16.4 million people in the queue, 16 million boxes of pakora, a few spicy chicken pizzas, chips.

It's nothing like that actually. But when we arrived at 1am we thought we had made the biggest mistake of our lives; the obligatory sense of horror you're supposed to feel when you arrive here at first. Luckily, when the sun rose it cast a little light over the darkened sprawl of shanty houses, 40,000 sleeping taxi drivers in their cars, bodies on the streets under blankets, shadows, dereliction. We thought we were able to make sense of what we had seen the night before, so we gave ourselves up entirely to the myth of tolerance, coherence, and the idea that India is beautiful. However, only a drugged-up Hippie can 'fall in love' with India, only Nayaran and other intellectually decrepit hermits and romantic history-loving Hindus can ignore the 'squalor', says V.S. Naipaul. Naipaul is from Trinidad, of Indian extraction and cultural heritage: 'too close and yet too far away...to [merely] sight-see...': for him, even the palaces and manors of the princes and upper castes are themselves squalid, given that they grow out of the sprawl and are fed on the reverence of those below them. Let's hope we can find a happy medium between the extremes of the hippy and the ferocious critic.

That said, Mumbai is strangely beautiful, containing as it does so much of what is so wonderful great and so ugly about the human condition; the perfect environment to nurture literature (according to Lonely planet, pp.455-456). It's a shame then that so much of what we can see of art in the home of Bollywood is so trashy; I'm sure there are many great Bollywood films out there, but given that Jenny and I were hauled off the street and cast into a film makes me worry. We were 'scouted' within about 20 minutes of leaving our hotel, we must look sufficiently exotic! Or so we thought. We ended up getting to see the glamour of Bollywood (the line the scout used to hook us was 'you must come to be an extra, because in Bombay we only have glamour, we do not have palaces like they have in Rajahstan!') up close, with all the grime on full show. We were to be cast as crowd members at a football match between India (who were to win 3-2) against that other footballing power Canada. Some of us were unlucky enough to be cast as players, to act as stoodges for the big Bollywood star to run rings around us and to score the winning goal - not only did that require humiliation, and standing around in the sun all day but it was also your job to show the star 'how to kick a ball'! He was trully awful, and had clearly never played the game in his life. One of the extras, an American, daft enough to take up the challenge ended up being sick and being taken off the field. I'm sure he's alive, but with bad sunstroke.

Jenny and I were lucky enough to be cast in the crowd, with face paints and flags, free breakfast and lunch, and periodic watering. We were only out in the heat for three periods of around 30 minutes, and it nearly decked us. It must have been 35 degrees. For some reason only some of the crowd shots were filmed under the terrace (we were on location at a cricket ground somewhere outside Bombay, near Bollywood itself). Ok, Roll.....ACTION "us Canada Canada, them: India India!, the commentator: what a game, what a match i i can erm can we do take that again please?". Fascinating. A tour of Bollywood costs over $100 - we got that 14 hour day out in the sun whilst being paid 500 rupees (about 50p per hour)!

The oddest and most intriguing thing about the day was that we had obviously been cast alongside some serial extras: they make good money compared to most Bombayides (? ) (about 500 rupees for a day's work compared to 134 for everyone else). The one thing they have that nonbody else in Bombay has is light skin and ginger hair. Extremely odd. They must pass as Europeans (in this case, Canadians) from a distance and so find regular work easily. Easily and regularly enough to afford cowboy hats and designer jeans. Truly amazing looking people. Odd, but amazing. They had more reason to protect their skin from the sun than us, so they used all our sun tan lotion in order to keep themselves looking pallid and, well, weird. Great day, but we were insane to stick it out for the full day, we still haven't recovered.

Better run, neither of us feeling well. Hope everyone is doing good.

Love Colin

=================================

Jenny:

Hello! I thought i'd quickly write my experience of Mumbai because I dont know about you lot, but I dont understand a word of what that boy has written. He's quoting the lonely planet using specific page numbers??!! Dear Lord.

Ok, so yeah we did panic a bit when we arrived in the middle of the night but this place is probably the most beautiful city I have ever seen. I'm trying to upload the photos as we speak so seriously have a swatch, the buildings are stunning. And ok, the beautiful part is only a couple of miles wide and the rest of the city is pretty much a slum but its amazingly clean and vibrant and amazing. Dont get me wrong, I dont think I could stay here for any length of time but it was such an amazing surprise. I didnt expect to like Bombay at all.

Anyway, we've spent a few days now waiting for Colshy to feel better (hes on the rehydration salts one week in-he beats my 3 week record in Thailand!) so hopefully he'll be feeling well enough to travel tomorrow night so we can get the overnight train to Goa. We're a bit behind schedule now, but I think we both needed a rest anyway. A big bunch of cats live outside our bedroom window and I think they're rehersal time for the opera they seem to be writing is 2am PROMPT. My god, I didnt know i could actually hate a cat. But, apparently I can. (only joking Smudgie).

OK well, I just thought i'd put my wee bit in that its an amazing place and Colin, it doesnt make me a hippy for thinking that. It means I can see.

Peace out young ones xxxxx