Mumbai/Bombay

We arrived in Mumbai on Sunday afternoon...what else to do but shop?? We headed out in search of pashminas and Indian-style tops and were very successful in both! Below you can see the carnage from our pashmina shopping....the vendors just kept bringing out more colors, more designs. They did their job well and their product was amazing, Ann and I left with about 5 each!Then we asked our driver to leave us to wander the markets, by his reaction this was a strange request, but we insisted and were off into the maze of street vendors. I was amazed by the sheer volume of produce/flowers/spices/grains. I mean really, does this guy have enough customers for all that garlic before it goes bad??
We searched for "new" fruits and vegetables that we were unfamilar with, but couldn't find many. Mostly it was the same produce, just more vibrant colors...check out those carrots! We spent Monday and Tuesday at the office and it was extremely bizzare because we were meeting with the teams that support the US business and thus didn't even get to work until around 3pm. It was so strange having the day off instead of the evening. On Wednesday, our great tour guide Roy took us around to see some of the sights. We went to the Taj Mahal Hotel...a gorgeous 5 star hotel overlooking the water...sight of the 2008 terroist bombings. Checked out the Gate of India.... I was tempted to buy some peacock feathers! Street vendors have to have liscences and most do not, therefore they get shooed out by the police every so often and we were part of the mini-stampede. Roy also took us for talis which is a style of eating food, and was one of my favorites of the entire trip. There are all kinds of little bowls... ...the servers come around and fill them up with small portions of all kinds of good food. And extra bonus...free refills, not that you can really take advantage of that because there is so much food already. Finally, add various types of bread to eat the food with and you have a very typical Indian meal.