We already feel as seasoned travelers as we've negotiated our first few stops by taxi, auto rickshaw, local bus and overnight sleeper train. Finding our way around the mammoth Victoria Station in Mumbai (as seen in Slumdog Millionaire) was a piece of work. Biggest problem was finding our platform and then where to stand, as it went on forever & had so many people vying for places we couldn't possibly believe they could all cram onto the train. Then a kind man noticed our dazed looks and showed us to go way further down where the reserved sleeper cars would be. As the train pulled in, a large group of young people rushed towards the reserved section & a uniformed man was yelling and whacking them back with a stick as we cowered to the side. Quite the scene. Our little compartment was definitely adequate with 4 berths. I climbed in, popped a half an ambien and was out by the time another passenger boarded and climbed in the third berth. We started at midnight and arrived at our destination at 7 am near the astounding World Heritage sites of Bhuddist and Hindu carved caves of Ellora and Ajanta.
Not many foreign tourists were at these sites. According to the souvenir sellers, business is way down after Mumbai bombings. We are thus gently hounded in skillful ways to buy their wares. Whenever I get irritated by them following me, I try to imagine myself eking out a living in this country.
As we visited the various sites, we were a huge curiosity to many villagers and school children on field trips and constantly asked to pose with them. Their English was mostly limited to asking our names and country which we repeated over and over. One particularly vivacious group had a teacher with good English and we were surrounded by them begging for pictures taken with us. I tried to spread world peace and remedy 8 years of G.B. by teaching them all the hokey pokey and caused a lot of giggling & screaming as we "shook it all about".
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