travel journal: Udaipur to Mumbai

We left Udaipur in the evening after a nice day walking around the city. After a final meal at one of the many rooftop restaurants in town overlooking the lake, we got a taxi and headed to the airport. The flight from Udaipur to Mumbai was only an hour and a half or so, and went by fairly uneventfully, except for the guy next to us spending the entire flight fidgeting uncontrollably and unbuckling and buckling his seat belt every couple minutes (probably a really nervous flyer or..crazy person). We landed in Mumbai and we picked someone from our guesthouse, the Anjali Inn. It was a fairly tiny hotel and a very tiny room (also about 4 times what we were used to paying for a room in India) but I suppose that's just Mumbai. We picked a place a little further from the center of the city to avoid the noise, and also only about 10 minutes from the airport for our next flight, leaving pretty early in the morning.

Dinner (it's hard to photograph Indian food...)

The view

We had one full day in Mumbai so we hired a driver for the day, and drove down to the south part of the city. We stopped in the Kalbadevi market first, to see if we could find the brown leather jacket Elliot has been looking for, probably for about 2 years, in the very large leather market there. We found success in the second shop we went to, the exact color and material (camel leather) he was looking for, customized the way he wanted, and for a great price (after some intense haggling). They fitted him, and we made plans to come back about 4 hours later (because apparently it only takes that long to make a great leather jacket?) We then headed further south to the more touristy areas of Mumbai, although I was surprised that we really didn't see many tourists. We visited a mosque at the end of a long causeway going out into the water (that is closed at high tide because the entire thing is covered in water) and then went to Colaba, where there is some amazing architecture and the Gateway of India. We found a spot along the water to have a cup of tea, then headed back to the leather market. After a final street side samosa, Elliot's coat was ready to go, so we paid and headed back to the hotel. After a bit of reorganization and creativity, we were packed up for our early morning flight. On the recommendation of the manager of the hotel we went to a restaurant called Chakra Bar. The food, though a bit pricier, was a great end to our time in India-- tandoori roti, jeera rice (rice fried with whole cumin seeds and cilantro), banarsi kofta (a darker, spicier curry compared to it's more northern variety), and a rich tomato based chicken curry. A couple kingfishers and our last meal in India was complete.