Escape Monsoon - Mumbai Day 2

After a half day of wondering around the streets of Mumbai in heavy rain, I had enough of the joy of early Monsoon and decided to change my travel plans. In stead of heading down south on the Arabic coast, I would actually go up north to the state of Rajstan where I can see the cities of colors and maybe even reach Taj Mahal, one of the 7 wonders of the world. But of course, knowing me, that would only be a goal.

I let a good travel agent talked me into buying a very expensive bus ticket from Mumbai to Udaipur, sleeper, A/C and all and most importantly - "this is a bus especially for foreigners like you", guiltily and surely, that was the most convincing argument of his sale. 6pm, I was on the bus, 9 pm i woke up, finding the bus still stuck somewhere at the out skirts of Mumbai, the Driver missing. By then the empty bus which I got on 3 hours ago is now filled with Indians, I was the only foreigner on it. One of the friendly passenger helped me situate myself - "it should take another 16 hours before we reach Udaipur" and he also explained to me that the driver, guess what, he is trying to fill the bus with more passengers. As I saw a family of husband and wife and 3 kids all crammed on the double bed facing me, I wondered where the driver would put other passengers. I also noticed one other problem - no bathroom on the bus. hmmm....??? I guess I would have to stop drinking water.

This is the day, I abandoned all local eateries to avoid stomach problems and reduced my alimentation to only almonds and raisins. As my nutritionist told me, almonds have all necessary vitamins, proteins and fat one would need in a meal. I was quiet certain that I can survive with no problem on almonds and stay healthy for the rest of my journey. There I happily opened my big bag of almonds for a late night snack.

In the freezing air conditioned upper sleeper with no sheets or blankets, I was ready for a real escape of Monsoon to the dry land of Rajstan.