Mumbai has misplaced its monsoon...

Well, I have been procrastinating another blog entry until I had something exciting to write about.  Life in Mumbai is certainly different from life in Austin in a lot of ways, but my days are, for the most part, filled with small everyday acts and events.

The monsoon still has not really started, leaving Mumbai steamy and hot in the sunlight, with only brief onslaughts of pouring rain and clouds to alleviate the heat.  However, the temperatures are not as bad as Texas, and while there are a few hours in the day that are uncomfortable, for the most part it's not so bad.  I'm able to sleep easily without the air-conditioner, leaving the windows open and the fan on to make sure the air is moving.

It's also true, however, that between the heat and my unfamiliarity with life here, I can usually only get one to two things done in a day.  Sometimes I go to the market to buy mangoes and raw sugar, sometimes I visit with my friends and eat lunch and chat.  Sometimes I walk everywhere, which means that I'm usually tired and sweaty by the time I get where I'm going.  By about 6 pm, all I want to do is take a shower and a nap. 

Shivani is on the mend from her horrible bout of jaundice, however, and we hope that when her results come back next week they will show her body free of the last of the illness.  We are hoping to be able to head to Kanha in a week and a half, at which time I will make a much more dedicated effort to update everyone regularly with stories and photos. 

But here is a little taste of Mumbai so far:

Bridge across the bay.  Munir took me into the main part of the city to visit an editing studio this day.

 Concert in a giant warehouse at some studios in Bandra.  A recent weird prohibition of alcohol in Mumbai means there was only juice and soda at this event.

Languishing with Priya and Shivani on the balcony at Samsheeba, Shivani's family house.

Ratna is trying to coerce little Akira into eating more food, with little success.

This is the street between the studio and Shivani's house, which I walk most days.

Bahrain International Airport

I’m sitting in Bahrain International airport, waiting (and waiting and waiting) to board my flight to Mumbai.  I’m not entirely sure why, but I find this airport rather intimidating and confronting.  Maybe it’s just how out of place I feel (and look) here.  I'm writing to try and sort through my responses and to wake up a little bit. It’s a lot to process on a few hours of sleep snagged on the way from London.  Speaking of which, Gulf Air is officially one of the best airlines I have ever flown with.  I’ve been spoiled rotten with delicious food, strong tea, mango juice, and various other odds and ends.   I also passed out on some benches for the first two hours I was in the airport, and despite the cup of coffee that I bought at the airport- with absolutely no idea of how to function in the currency in Bahrain, so I could have bought a fifty dollar latte- I’m hoping to snag another few hours of sleep on the flight to Mumbai.  Luckily I arrive at 7 pm, so I should be able to go to sleep early tonight and hopefully avoid too much jet lag.

This airport is such a bizarre collision of sights and (cacophonous) sounds- attendants walking around in yellow vests, shouting for whoever should be on the flight that's about to leave.  Right now its "Abu Dhabi?!" I wish I could understand Arabic, which is one of my favourite languages to listen to.  I like to try and imitate the beautiful, throaty sounds that we don't have in English.  The people here a collection of all different ethnicities, modes of dress, languages.  Lots of hijab, burka, sari, flowers and colours, black from head to toe, Saudi white, headdresses and the red-and-white checkered scarves.  In fact, I'm probably the weirdo of the whole lot, in my long blue skirt, sweater, scarf, blue eyes and very white skin.  The other thing that makes me noteable is that I am alone, unaccompanied by a man or even a few other women.  I rarely feel pressure from that aloneness, in fact feeling a strong sense of freedom when I'm travelling alone, but I am struggling with a wistful desire to have a companion on this trip.  Maybe it's just that I want someone to step into the foreground, so that I feel as though people are looking at me less.  Or maybe I'm looking to bury myself in a conversation so that I can simply ignore the bustle around me.  Either way, I suspect these desires are simply me wanting to retreat from the world, instead of embracing it and watching and learning.  So I will write and watch, and look for a freedom in being watched back.

Erk, the woman next to me has just asked me to watch her bag while she goes to the washroom.  I have to pee too, lady!  Hopefully she goes and comes back quickly before I get in trouble for watching a total stranger's bag.  Oh well, I guess I can always claim ignorance.

And sure enough, I'm not really alone anymore because the woman has returned and struck up a conversation.  She is going to Lebanon.  We have both been waiting for a long time in this airport.

I’ve had a few emails from various people who read the article about me and Shivani in the Times of India, and are interested in working with us, which is incredibly exciting and inspiring.

The article is here: Two women look for a story none of us have heard  for anyone who wants to take a look.  The journalist who wrote this and interviewed us is really lovely!

Arg, I have to use the bathroom so bad, but it's so crowded here that I don't want to get up and then have to hunt for a new seat. Only an hour-ish left until we board! Yay, I've managed to kill almost 5 hours between sleeping, coffee, reading, and now writing this.

Time to take my wellness tonic, some vitamin c, and find the bathroom and then hopefully board in a little bit.  The adventure has begun! 

The end of one journey, the beginning of a great adventure.

Well friends, I don't know how well it bodes for the next leg of this adventure that I couldn't keep up with my blog while in the UK and Germany.  However, in many ways this first part of the journey was a very personal one, and therefore not something that I felt the need to document in a public way.

Needless to say, after a few days in London, a week in Berlin, and a handful of days in Newcastle and Edinburgh, I am feeling quite a lot of things and am balancing the wait of a few far-thrown decisions.  But, coming back down to earth for a moment, here are some of the highlights of the past two weeks:

Corinne and I are actually able to find one another, sans phones, in the GIANT train station in central Brussels!  What a way to start our adventure!  Corinne is also deliriously tired at this point, because she hasn't slept in like two days.  What a trooper!

 Since we only had part of a day in Brussels, and both of us were pretty much immediately smitten with the city, we decided to take some frantic pictures and do some quick exploring.  And buy some Belgian chocolate for our train ride, of course.

Beautiful downtown Brussels! It was pretty cold and rainy, but compared to the weather I left in London, it wasn't so bad!



Museum in Brussels.  Shortly after this,we were picked up by our host Astrid, who was one of the most lovely, warm, and generous people that I met on this trip.



We nipped off the train in Cologne to get a look at this incredible cathedral on our way to Berlin.  Corinne was terrified of it and refused to take any photos!  It was the most intimidating, beautiful, stark church I've ever seen!


Once in Berlin we had some lovely wanders with my old friends from Edinburgh, Chris and Jenny, who have a lovely flat in the city.  As soon as we arrived we were off to the Turkish Market to stuff our faces with fried plantains, beans, and various other delicacies.  Poor Corinne was still delirious at this point, as we had only been able to snag 5 hours of sleep in Brussels before our train left.

Jenny took us on an amazing walk around the city to look at some of the history and some of the most amazing graffiti I've ever seen!

The wall.  Jenny's flat is on the east side of town, so we were able to cross where the wall used to be and have a look at this section, which is the only remaining part of the wall that still stands.  There are cobblestones that run across the city, embedded in the pavement to mark where the whole wall used to stretch.  What a heavy, bizarre, intense city.

More amazing socio-critical graffiti!

We played a lot in the photo-automat.  I don't even know where the pictures we took in there went, but these were just as funny!

After a few days we went to stay with a lovely French painter, Etienne, who is a friend of Corinne's friend.  He had a gorgeous flat in Neukolln, which was amazing because it's a very immigrant-populated part of town, and was an amazing crush of cultures.  This is the view from his balcony.

We cooked delicious dinners every night at Etienne's flat.  Produce and food in general is so cheap in Berlin!  Spinach, sesame, gouda cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, potatoes baked with olive oil, courgettes and aubergine, oh my!

After 7 days of wandering, eating, seeing silly German films in a theatre in the park, markets, and successfully busking on the street corner, I left Corinne in Berlin and headed back to the UK.

And, somewhat hilariously, this is the only photo I took in Edinburgh.  Me and Irina are watching an amazing Romanian film and lamenting how freezing and rainy and miserable it is outside for summertime.

And now I'm in London, preparing to head to India tonight! What a whirlwind!

London Jubilee

Well, I'm safely arrived in London just in time for the madness of the Jubilee and some classic cold, dreary rain.  It's actually a welcome relief from the scorching summer that I left behind in Austin, and mild compared to the snowy Himalayas that I will soon be traversing.  Consequently, however, I am finding my wardrobe sadly limited in terms of London weather appropriate clothes.  Guess it's time to go buy a new sweater!

Rewinding a bit, however, both of my flights here were incredible (and therefore sleepless).  I made wonderful friends on both flights, and ended up having a great adventure in Chicago as a result of the first one.  Said adventure resulted in a lift from/back to the airport, with a few hours eating pizza, having great conversations, and walking around downtown Chicago.  Step one of my adventure set me off on a great start!

The flight from Chicago to Heathrow was also brilliant, and included hilarious arguments with my seatmate, one of which resulted in me sticking a spoonful of cheese to their face.  Good times, very little sleep.

Immigration was a horse of an entirely different colour.  In fact, it was an emaciated, washed out, cranky horse that had been prodded one too many times with a pointy stick.  After three hours of shuffling, delirious and near tears from lack of sleep, through a line longer than that of the Japanese fashion addicts outside Laforet on New Years, I finally made it to my immigration officer.  Who, in turn, grilled me constantly about why I was visiting my friends from university and WHY I was travelling in India for six months.  Lady, I have a six month Indian visa and my ticket out of the UK- what the hell do you care?


After some kerfuffles with getting a hold of my friend Yuko in London and getting my UK phone working, I finally put myself on the Tube and managed to get to London Bridge, where my lovely amazing savior (Yuko) was waiting to haul me off to her flat.  There was dinner of quesadillas and guacamole (didn't I just leave Texas?), salad with Japanese dressing, pasta with homemade sauce, and Irish cream mousse for dessert.  Then there was sleep for twelve blessed hours.

Today we walked around the London Bridge area, enjoyed the sight of so many nutballs out for the Jubilee festival, failed to get near the river, had a lovely cup of coffee and slice of tomato tart, and am now back at the flat just in time for it to start pouring chilly rain. 

Now I've settled down with a cup of Moroccan mint tea to work on my novel while Yuko studies for the last of her postgrad exams.  For the first time in many months I feel inspired to work on my novel, and have pulled out the scenes which take place in London to knuckle down on.  I'm so hoping that the writing comes back to me, slowly, over the next week or two.  There are also some poems that have been waiting an awfully long time to come out.  I will try to put a few up here for you guys to peruse throughout my journey.

And now Esme must confront her landlady and a wealthy angry patron, and decide to buy a ticket for India.  Mmm intrigue in the 1800's.
Next post will be from Brussels or Berlin, as I bus to Brussels tomorrow! 

Me and my travelin' shoes.

Friends, family, students, strangers: I am again preparing for some epic, exciting, creative adventures.  For the next two weeks I will be updating from the UK and Europe, and then, from June 18th I will be in India, beginning the storytelling project with miss lovely Shivani Gupta.

Prepare for photographs of beautiful things and strange, possibly not-beautiful things, poems, stories, fleeting thoughts, and lord knows what else!

Yeehaw! And 出発！(Both cultures in me are excited!)