7676 km Mumbai

knock knock,

There we are, we arrived safe and well in incredible India!. The journey has not been an easy one, since we are not the types to enjoy long bus, train and plane trips. As you can see from the title, we kept our promise and did not cycle a lot this time. The 76 km was mainly getting to and from the airports.

After the last update, we spend one more day in Shiraz, relaxed a bit and had a look at a few of the beautiful gardens in town. We tried entering the famous holy shrine, but unfortunately it was only allowed for Muslims. Guess the beards were not long enough yet ;)

In the evening we left for our bustrip back to Yazd and around 3.30 am we arrived there on the bus station. Luckily we knew where to go from our previous visit and we got to the hotel quickly to recover a bit. We spend the next day getting ready for the flight i.e. moving all the heavy stuff to the handlugage and practising the phrase "this bike only weighs 11 kilo's" We had some time left because the train left late, so we wandered around a bit and drank some more tea in the nice dessert town. At night we hopped on the train; "hopped", being short for 2 hours of discussing how to get a bike on a train. then we were of to Tehran.

Tehran was, as we expected, not a very interesting place to see. There's a lot of smog in town and hardly anything noteworthy to see from a tourist perspective. With the lack of interesting things to do, we decided to take care of some practical matters. After a long search we managed to find the "one" bicycle shop that actually sold Shimano 9 speed cassettes. We bought two so our gear problems should be over for a while. We have not replaced the front blades yet, since we are hoping they will last for the duration of this new cassette.

Then at night it was finally time to head to the airport and say goodbye to Iran. Its been a great month and we won't forget this place. But now it's time for yet another adventure, Incredible India.

We arrived at the airport early, fully aware of the fact that we would probably meet lots of people that have no clue how they can get a bike on a plane. And of course we got into lots of trouble... First we had to put plastic around the entire bike, fill in forms, argue with people but in the end we finally managed to check in. Not an easy task we discovered, since Indians are not the type to wait in lines. It was some good practise, on what to expect in India. After checking in our luggage we headed for the plane to board it. But not before handing over some newly bought chains for the bike that we "obviously" bought to strangle the pilot ;)

We arrived here Saturday afternoon and the first thing we noticed: damn, its hot here :) temperatures are probably similar to Iran but the humidity here is a lot worse. We headed of into town, not having any clue where to go. We ended up somewhere in a area close to the airport of which we later discovered it was northern Mumbai. we found a hotel, but it was no "cheapy". We had to pay 1500 rupees (around 30 euro) for the hotel but it was the cheapest in the area and we did not fancy risking the traffic in the dark.

We met up with Ana a Spanish lady. She was on her second trip in India and we hang out for the night. Enjoyed a nice dinner and more importantly some very nice cold beers that went down very well after a month of Iran. We also managed to buy us a new bible and the next day we knew that Colaba was the place to be! After a very long night of sleep (we had a bit of a shortage after all those trains, buses etc) we headed of and confronted the Mumbai traffic once again. We cycled about 20km through the chaos and managed to arrive without any accidents in Colaba. It certainly ain't easy cycling here and i suppose it's good we had some experience in Tehran/Istanbul etc, to cope with this. We found a crappy hotel for 400 rps and now it was time to "embrace the chaos" and enjoy the Mumbai life.

We have been eating and drinking and enjoying ourselves greatly here. We got introduced with the 'lassie" a cold, milkshake like drink with all kinds of fruit mixed though it and i think we are already addicted to them. The food is absolutely fabulous here.

The absolute highlight of our visit to Mumbai has been a surprise to us as well. A guy approached us on the street, telling us he needed "extra's" (figuranten) for a Bollywood movie. We heard of other tourists that sometimes you can get lucky this way and we did!! There is currently no way to visit the studios (no tours like Holywood), so this was a great way for us to peak behind the scenes. We headed of the next morning at 7.00 am and were of to "work". Our salary for the day: 400 rps each. So in the end Tjeerd and I earned about 16 euro's with the two of us for a good 12-14 hours work. We got back around 12 p.m :)

Then again, it was a great opportunity to see a Bollywood movie set and some Bollywood actors. We added a little video for you all to see, but unfortunately it is not that good. Filming on the set was not allowed and we had to be a bit sneaky, holding the camera in awkward position to shoot some footage.

Now it's only a matter of time before we are discovered as the real stars in this movie :) The movie we are in (dancing in the background) is called "Bhanvraa" and will come out in cinema's here in India in spring.

We've had great fun here, and we have no doubt that we will enjoy ourselves here in the magical place called India. We are already loosing track of time. In the bus on the way back from the studio someone asked "what day is it today", we had to pull our agenda's to discover it was a Sunday...

Soon, we are off on the bikes again to Goa, a good 750 km to the south. There we will enjoy some nice lassies on the beach, sit under palm trees a bit etc....

in the meantime, have fun working y'all :evil:

Greetz,
Erik and Tjeerd

some pictures can be found here:
http://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa310/erikopdefiets/12%20Mumbai/

And we also added some in the Iran section at:
http://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa310/erikopdefiets/10%20Yazd%20-%20Shiraz%20-%20Persepolis/