28.12.2004

Mumbai

We've arrived in Mumbai from Diu after an interesting 22 hour bus ride. I had plenty of time to come up with a tourist jingle for the little Portugese island town: "Come to Diu, there's nothing to see, and nothing to do!". That pretty much sums up the place, but if you're ever in the area and love grimy, rubbish-coated beaches the only place worth staying is The Resort Hoka, which made Diu almost bearable.

The two week holiday Jo and Dad had planned with us in Sri Lanka was looking more than bearable, until of course we saw those BBC News reports revealing the scope of the natural disaster. The beach-side accomodation that was lined up no longer exists, along with whole towns we were to visit. It's a little weird to think if that earthquake happened next week instead of this week, we would have been on the beach in southern Sri Lanka.

It's also been really surreal watching all those images of places we've just visited: Rai Leh beach, and Koh Phi Phi Island in Thailand, and Chennai in India. To see the bungalows we were staying in on Phi Phi smashed into the ground and the beach in Chennai we were walking on just a mess of rubbish and cars. When we were there it was just a mess of rubbish.

So anyway we're bunkering down in Mumbai till New Years doing research on London, typing up resumes and preparing for the real world. Then after the stress of a few days real work we'll definitely need another holiday - we're off to Goa for two weeks with Dad and Jo which will be fantastic.

We'll get round to some weblog house-keeping of our journeys through Rajasthan over the next few days - but you're all off preparing for New Years Eve parties around the globe, so if we don't talk before then Happy New Years and hopefully see you sometime in 2005.