Welcome to India!

We flew into Mumbai at 4:30 a.m., which was not the best. After a struggle to find our hotel, we finally got there, but they wouldn't let us check in until 8. Neither of us had slept in about 30 hours, and were exhausted. We finally got into our room, and slept until about 1. After walking around Mumbai, we both decided we did not like this city. It is the business capital of India, and not the best tourist destination...and very expensive. It is a bit of a shock to see cows roaming aimlessly in the streets, people going to the bathroom on the side of the road, and how crowded it is but we were slightly prepared for this from stories of other people's experiences.

We decided to leave the next day for Jodhpur. Unfortunately the guy thought we said Jaipur, so we got tickets to Jaipur instead. Oh well, $#%^ happens. We just decided to go there instead. It was a 22 hour train ride, which was surprisingly nice. We had sleeper trains, and it went bye faster than you would think a 22 hour ride would. Jaipur was much better, we found a great hotel, that was only $12 a night. We also found the nicest Tuk Tuk (a small 4 stroke rickshaw) driver, named Naeem. He took us around for two straight days, to all the sights, and his choice of restaurant, and shops. We bought some nice stuff, and sent it back via Indian post office(hope it makes it)! The only hang-up was the antique guns we bought in Petra. When I pulled them out at the post office to ask if I could send them, Naeem and the other guy kind of freaked out, and advised me that I should not show them to anyone else, because they are illegal...WHOOPS! Anyway, everything else got sent.

At Jaipur we saw the city palace, which is called the pink city, because of the color of the wall around it. We also saw the Wind Palace (pictured), and the water palace, which were both beautiful. We went to a museum and a fort as well. We liked Naeem so much we called him the second day to take us around for the day again. Having your own guide and taxi for a day for $6 is hard to beat. If your ever in Jaipur, we have his number and email!

One night we had a hankering for some MEAT, as most of the places are vegetarian, since Hindu's don't eat meat. We found a very expensive restaurant and gorged ourselves on some Chinese and Indian dishes. It is hard to keep the money situation in perspective in India, as everything is soo cheap. $1 U.S. dollar is 47 Rupees, so when I say the restaurant was really expensive, our meal was around 600 Rupees, or $13, which is real expensive, as main dishes are normally around 60-90 Rupees. Since we are so used to haggling with everyone for everything to do about price we have found ourselves fighting to talk a Tuk Tuk driver down by 10 Rupees. There is nothing like spending 5 minutes arguing with a guy over 10 Rupees(20 cents).