Day 2 and 2,5 - Bombay - Stardom

First: Happy Valentines day! (Late, I know, sorry)
I had breakfast yesterday, accompanied by my rough-guide. This resulted in the plan to go and have a look at the cathedral, the museum and the oval maidan, and spend the afternoon sending mails to delhi and studying. I had, however, only set foot out of the hostel when the tigerprint-scarf-wearing lady that approached me on my first morning popped up and asked me again: would you like to be in a bollywood movie? Well duh… So after making sure other people where coming as well I set off on a Mumbai-transportation-tour: taxi-suburban train-bus-riksha. The set we worked on was a reproduction of colva beach in Goa. It was really classy, and in the real goa, there would have been less puma-commercials and more cows, but that said: It rocks! I’m in a bollywood movie! It’s called golmaal returns. Have a look on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golmaal_Returns.

There were a few strange features though: The most remarkable was a bellewaerde-giftshop rebuilt. The second was a sign at the entrance reading: Please leave your ego at the gate, you can safely collect it on the way out. Also strange: lots of Indians dressed as cowboys… It’ll take me some time to get over that. I mean what’s next? Kilts? We got lunch (aloo-matar with roti) and chai, and our transport (yes all of it) was paid. On top of that we got 500 rupees a person… how cool is that. On my second day in India, I succeeded in making money instead of spending it! On our way back we went through the remaining means of transport: on foot, bus (again) and tourist bus (in mumbai rushhour… oy vavoi, as anke would say). On the tourist bus I had an interesting conversation with some Walloon from Charleroi about Belgian politics. He and his friend are biking trough India. Madmen…. It was a twelve hour day, and consequently very tiring. A finnish girl from my hostel, Minna, was my co-star for the day, and there was also a Canadian couple on the set. I met with them for breakfast at Leopolds this morning, and afterwards we went to Elephanta island by boat. It takes an hour to get there, but as most of you know, I love the sea, and I hadn't met the Arabian sea before. So I had a brilliant time. On the island there's a labyrinth of caves (2nd century B.C. to 8th A.C.) carved out of a hill. In the biggest is a wellpreserved, beautiful 8th century statue of the trimurti (the three faces of Shiva) (and some other reliefs which are in bad condition, since the portuguese used them for target practice). It was wonderfull, as was the reward of the fresh lime soda when we had climbed down.

I might meet up with Minna in Delhi next week. She’s travelling to Rishikesh, in the north. (ooh, and she actually gave me a valentinesday bouquet, because I let her use my internet. How sweet is that?) My home-office apparently only works until 21:30, so I didn't get any mails sent yesterday. So that's what I'm gonna do right now. Afterwards, I plan to go and run through mumbai to see all the things I planned to go see when my acting career suddenly came up. Tomorrow afternoon I'm off to Delhi, by train. O, and I have had a change in animals. The pigeon is out, the lizard is in. You're never alone in Mumbai... I've also taken some pictures, but it takes my free-internet connection too long too upload them, so you'll all just have to wait, at least 'till I find broadband internet. Untill next time: Love, peace and understanding (and not too many hippies) for all!