Ward Family India Trip: Mumbai

Mumbai was quite an experience! We were constantly on the move from one place to the next. Although, we did have some "bumps in the road". When we were leaving the hotel, we were expecting a driver and a tour guide to go with us to tell us about all the sites that we would be seeing. Unfortunately, our tour guide was unavailable, so we had a driver who didn't speak any english! He spoke little words here and there to try to tell us what we were seeing, but a tour guide would have been much easier to understand. It was really tough, that is, until my mom had the brilliant idea of buying an India travel book when our driver took us to the famous Taj Hotel. That is where we had lunch, too. Lunch has a very interesting story, as well. As we were waiting for our food to be served, there was a table about 5 feet away from ours with 2 Indian women and 2 Indian men, and they kept staring at and whispering about me. I was a little shaken, because I had no idea why they kept looking at me. And then one of the women walked over to me and asked "Photo?". Um, what? It was a shock, but I agreed. After they took a picture with me, they kept on looking and smiling at me. I still have no idea why they wanted a picture, but I guess I should be flattered; I'm not sure though. After lunch, our driver took us around to the different sites in Mumbai. We even asked him if he knew where a Mormon church was, and he said "Mormon church? Yes." So, he took us to a Mormon church. Too bad it had a cross on it, so obviously he had no idea what we were talking about. I was a little afraid of that. And our last stop was to a random building that sounded like he called "Money Bone". We had no idea what he was talking about, so he called his boss, who spoke English, to explain to us that this building was where Gandhi lived. It was super unexpected, but it was a treat to see it. That was our last stop before we headed to the airport to fly to Chennai. Something you should know when traveling internationally is how to sleep sitting up. We got to the airport with 2 hours until boarding, so we all slept in our chairs at the gate, and on the airplane.

We are now at the Marriott in Chennai. We got in at about 10:00 last night. We are going to leave with Rising Star to go to the leper colony in about 30 minutes. I believe it's about 2 hours south from where we are, so today will be interesting! I'm not sure what to expect, but we will see, I guess. Here we go!