Last Day in Bombay

Tomorrow morning at 5:50 AM, we're flying to Udaipur, so today is our last day in this city. We're still being a bit cautious about what and where we eat, so our stomachs don’t dictate our travels :) That’s why we had breakfast at Barista, an international chain where the quality seemed a bit higher than at the more local spots. We promised to call the casting agency again today to see if they needed one more person for a commercial. They told us to head over to Cafe Leopolds, but with so many people around, it was impossible to find anyone, so that was the end of our career in the Indian advertising industry :) We even considered paying to catch a Bollywood show, but it was incredibly expensive, and there was no guarantee of getting in, so we had to drop that idea, unfortunately. Yesterday, we shopped at Fashion Street but didn’t manage to see everything, so we went back. We came away with even more t-shirts and tops. After a long shopping spree, we needed a break, so we headed to Chowpatty Beach to relax a bit. This little oasis is right in the middle of the city. The water is polluted, so no one goes there to swim—just to chill out. We hadn’t taken many steps in the sand before a little Indian girl joined us. She didn’t seem poor and wasn’t begging for money. She was more interested in playing, building sandcastles, and touching our hair and skin. At one point, she saw us using hand sanitizer to avoid having dirty hands. She thought it looked fun, so she tried it too. Very lucky for us since she wanted to touch us :) She quickly figured out that when you press on our skin, it leaves a white mark until the blood comes back—strangely enough, this didn’t happen to her :) Indians aren’t shy about their curiosity, so several people sat just a couple of meters away from us to watch. They didn’t say anything; they just sat there observing us. We weren’t done shopping for the day, so we headed to some new markets—very local markets. It was packed with people, and everyone wanted to sell us something. We had picked out a nicer restaurant for dinner. It turned out to be quite popular, so we had to wait about 10 minutes for some chairs that the restaurant had set up on the sidewalk before we could get a table. This waiting area made us very accessible to the poor who came to beg. These are probably the hardest experiences you’ll have in India. Unfortunately, we can’t give to everyone... Inside the restaurant, we were served really good Indian food—kebab/BBQ—and of course, garlic naan :)