Our flight from Bangkok to Mumbai had a stopover in Delhi.  We wouldn’t change planes but some passengers disembarked and others boarded.  We watched with raised eyebrows as the cleaning crew simply refolded used blankets, fluffed pillows and set them out for the new passengers that were boarding.  We later were told this was the typical Air India experience… buyer beware.

We arrived in Mumbai and were pleasantly surprised by the hassle-free ease with which we were able to hire a pre-paid cab and zip into the city more than an hour away. We glided past the Back Bay, touring Marine Drive, and arrived at the famed Taj Mahal Palace hotel in the Colaba district. Just for fun, Lauren walked in and inquired if there was a room available for the evening.

The receptionist shook her head, restraining laughter.

Down the street, we found a drearier but wonderfully inexpensive alternative in the Hotel Carlton. Before the sunset, we traipsed down to the “Gateway of India”, a main docking point for ferries. We thought we had dressed appropriately, mindfully covering legs and arms, but were shocked by the open-gaped stares we received from passing men. Granted, our being shocked could have been due to the fact that we had just come from SE Asia, where we had grown accustomed to the milder, less confrontational looks from men there. Nonetheless, shocked we were, and we raced back to the hotel to consult the Lonely Planet on what we were doing wrong. There we learned that long sleeves were not enough, that shirts needed to be sufficiently baggy so that “the breasts should remain a mystery.”

Donning baggier alternatives, we headed out for a night on the town, where we stumbled into a very busy Leopold’s Café and Bar.  The restaurant was so crowded that we were forced to share a table, but we ended up dining with an extremely entertaining mother and daughter from the UK traveling together. After enjoying an evening of swapping stories, getting advice (apparently, our baggier alternatives still did not make our breasts mysterious enough), and watching mother and daughter debate the worthiness of the daughter’s choice in men, we dubbed this two-person comedy act “the British Duo.”

The next morning, we headed out on a day-long train trip to Goa, where India’s renowned beaches are and where we were meeting our friends Thomas, Kalpana (whom we’ve renamed Thomana, a la Brangelina and TomKat), Trac and Thomana’s friend Moira.  We shared a cabin area with a nice Indian-Canadian family and spent the day sleeping, reading and playing a few dice games.  Every 20 minutes, a man carrying a teakettle came by announcing Masala (Chai) tea. Lauren, having learned about the joys of Masala Tea from Abby in Chiang Mai, quickly ordered a cup. Followed by another. And another. And another.  (Until Beth announced we were out of rupees.)  So began Lauren’s Masala Tea obsession.

Around 6:30, the Canadian family bid us farewell and got off at an early stop in Goa.  Beth was responsible for getting us to the Goa hotel, and as she scanned the Lonely Planet, she thought she had the directions to the right hotel but wanted to recheck the internet to be sure. There were no internet places near the train station, so we took a taxi to a nearby beach neighborhood that she thought was the right place.  A quick check of the internet, however, showed that we were 40 kilometers south of where we needed to be – we should have gotten off the train with the Canadian family two hours earlier.  (How exactly did Beth get into Harvard?  We may never know…)

While Lauren fumingly wrote an email to Thomana about our being lost, Beth managed to find a taxi that would drive us to the right place.  After another hour on the road, we finally arrived at our hotel. We dumped our bags, ordered beer, and were met shortly thereafter by Thomas, Kalpana, Trac and Moira who were just heading back from an evening at the night market.