India Begins

Please ignore spelling mistakes as this is written awkwardly from a kindle.
15 months after leaving new zealand, I have finaly touched down in india. I stepped out into the suprisingly pleasant, tepid soup that is mumbai air, a fragile parcel clinking preciously in a plastic bag at my leg. Task 1, deliver two duty free bottles of whisky to one Mumbai doctor as delicately prescribed. Sidarths driver picked me up from the air port and drove me through the cacophany of rubush and richshaws to the site of my first couch surfing host. The over flow room of a back street medical clinic no bigger than a car boot. Dr Sidarth greeted me and the whisky warmly before giving a detailed but rappid scrawling of instructions for an evening exploration of mumbais atractions and sending me off into the maddness. The old colonail buildings were beautiful but the train ride more interesting as it tore  through the city like an electron through a thriving machine of human squalar. Wind blowing through the wide open doors and the many bony bodies that hung carlessly from them. Dr Sidarth took me and another american couch surfer up to his high rise family apartment for a platter of indian home cooking and whisky tasting with his mother and father. His father pointed out the great  view explaining the 3 levels of the city. "The rich look out of their high rise windows to the moderately sized homes of the middle class who in turn look out their windows and down to the pore in the slums. All clases living together." Perhaps a good time to introduce the topic of castes and untouchables but I thought better of it. Sidarth dropped us at the beach the next morning where we were left to become immursed in  a where's wally sceene involving 900 cricket games amongst 500 football games and groups of boys practising back flips. Sidarth was a great host. Despite being overrun with patients as it was sunday, his day of free consultations he was very patient and helpfull. In the afternoon he orgonised my rickshaw ride to the train station out to my next destination and loaded me with a collection of rupees. A generouse man who's meeting is well worth couple of bottles of whisky. I now have have 5 weeks to explore the north of India before begining the tricycle project in Kerala down south. I hope all of my encounters are as warming as this first one.

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