Mumbai, Dec 31-Jan 2, 2013

After a fantastic lucky flight in business with our standby ticket - thanks to Eva- we land in Mumbai at 11:30pm.
I'm expecting an assaulting crowd of sellers and drivers outside the airport but it wasn't bad at all. At that time there are no women at all in the streets. We stay at Hotel New Bengal near the Fort area in the center, it's recommended in the Lonely Planet but it ends up being creepy and overpriced, $56, bad wifi, and horror movie music to remind you to close the elevator!
During the day there are definitely more women in the busy streets of Mumbai, almost all them wearing beautiful traditional dresses, either saris or panjabi suits, the typical long camisoles with matching pants... I want to wear that too!  The best ones are tailored: the fabric could be about $40 and only $6 for the work. I'll work on it.
I'm having some resistance to adjust to Mumbai: everybody horns all the time in the streets, it's crazy! Even bikes on the walkways horns at you to pass you! Also everybody, I mean men n women, croak n spit all the time. There's a lot of people begging and sleeping in the streets as well, and everybody wants to sell you stuff, but I expected that.
New Years Eve is a flop, we go for dinner at Koyla, nice rooftop restaurant in Colada but there's nothing special for the evening apart from a nosy crowd of people wandering around the place, so we leave and go to Marine Dr thinking there will be parties and bars there to have a drink n celebrate but instead there's just another huge crowd of people and honking cars, no bars at all apart from one Hotel asking $80 entrance... I mean not one bar, can you believe?!?
Now I'm on a 12 hr $10 night train to go to Goa, I was expecting the usual crowd but instead it's basically empty, lucky us. India so far is unpredictable!
PS Crazy coincidence: a guy at the hotel is wearing the same t-shirt of the Notte Rosa 2010 I brought from Italy to give away... A sign??
Restaurants. We have few excellent meals: -  in Colada, close to the famous Taj Hotel and the gateway of India at the restaurant of Hotel Apollo and at Basilico. - in Fort at Yoko Sizzles.

PS. I went back to Mumbai before leaving India and stayed in Fort at Hotel Benazeer
2200 rps, good quality- price ratio, but Mumbai is expensive in general.

Beautiful Painting in Mumbai Restaurant