Hello everybody!

My whirwind of travel has brought me up to Mumbai, getting charged double for a taxi ride from the domestic airport to a skanky hotel in Colaba, the southernmost part of Mumbai, touring by foot around Mumbai in the morning, and then hopping on a train up here to Aurangabad in the afternoon. Unfortunately this computer isn't reading my camera, so no pictures (perhaps tomorrow I'll go to a different cafe).

I'm staying at a nice little guest house in Aurangabad. In general things are not as cheap here as when I travelled in Asia a few years ago. Or maybe I'm getting more picky. But I'm regularly spending $10/night (except for at the 'ram). Tomorrow I'm going to Ellora to look at some cool caves. I was wrong, they're not Gupta era. I will learn more and tell you soon.

I'm going to back to Mumbai in a few days to spend more time, but I'll share my impressions now. Accomodation, at least on the budget end, is as skanky as i've encountered. yuck! No windows, and unpainted, and some suspicious bites on my legs this morning (my mantra for the day "no bedbugs, no bedbugs..."). The city itself is really fun though, and different than Delhi. Way more cosmopolitan (though the film producer I ran into in Delhi says that Delhi is where all the cutting edge culture is now), cleaner, bigger, and the climate is way better, at least this time of year. Nice big trees (always good for the urban forester), and plentiful. And the architecture... the architecture is very interesting - I'm not a big architecture buff but it seems to me that my sister Amy would really really like it. Lots of old Victorian buildings, some art deco, and all of it in pretty good condition and on a fairly large scale. I think Bombay may be the first city in India I encountered that has a standing gay club night. Women wear western clothes (well, some of them).

Also in Bombay right now is lots of seething ethnic tension. The day before I flew in 5 or 6 people were assaulted in the streets by crowds riled up by local politicians' inflammatory anti-northerner words. His words were in response to an announcement by Amitabh Bachman (forgive me if I spelled wrong), a demi-god of the Bombay film scene, that he was going to build a school in his native Uttar Pradesh (though he lives in Bombay). Back in '92 Bombay crowds were spurred to violence, that time against southerners. So it seems as if there exists some tension. I think it's the same old immigrant story - people come for work, get treated like crap, some of them persevere, and all of them are targeted by the "locals" for whatever goes wrong as handy scapegoats. My train today was a maiden voyage. Very exciting. There was a big press conference with the Maharashtra minister of transportation outside my train window as we waited to pull out the station. At first I was worried when I entered the police station because I saw cops in riot gear, then I figured out what was going on. And besides, I wasn't even that worried. Through my travels I've become more adjusted to the site of the (friendly?) police or military presence at airports, train stations, museums, etc., and even adjusted to their somewhat intimidating weaponry (rifles, AK-47's, etc.).

Well, that's it for now. I plan on being up here for a few days, but they may be long days as both caves (Ellora and Ajanta) are fairly far away. I think I might even (gasp) go on an organized tour! i hope to get some time to do a little silk shopping tomorrow too. Aurangabad is known for a certain type of weaving that incorporates silk and silver into cotton (or something like that).

Adios,

John