We arrive in Mumbai tired but excited. As we leave the shelter of the terminal, I'm expecting hordes of touts and beggars pulling at my shirt but it's not so bad. We prepay our taxi to avoid too much hassle and emerge into the night air. We're immediately assaulted by a horde of mosquitoes instead. They seem to focus on the dark fabric of my backpack instead of the juicy arms I have sticking out of my sleeveless shirt. I use my mosquito battle as a diversion and an excuse not to hear the frantic cries of 'taxi' and the repeated attempts to carry our bags for us. Kiran is inside the terminal calling her relatives and as I wait a man approaches me scratching his turban and trying to look casual.
"You need a taxi?"
I go through the ritual dance with him. I refuse one thing and he counters with something else I obviously need that he will be happy to arrange for. We've both danced this number before and he doesn't seem too enthusiastic. When I've exhausted his repetoire we start to actually talk to each other. He perks up a little as I ask him about upcoming festivals, holy days for Sikhs and the general state of business for taxi drivers.

Kiran comes back and we jump into our prepaid taxi. The little yellow and black dinky toys that pass for taxis are made by the Pal company. A coincidence I enjoy pointing out to Kiran. As we wait in the back seat for our driver to return from some mystery destination, we are sitting ducks for some begging children. They start with "Where come from?" and without hearing our reply jump to "One America dollar?". When that doesn't work they try for "Chewing gum?" which I happen to have. Against my better judgement I decide to give one of kids a small pack of gum. Of course this causes another child to materialize. I tell the first child to give his friend a piece of gum from the pack. He says "Not my friend, he's cheater" and keeps the gum for himself. There's no brotherhood of the streets or any such romantic notion here.

As we head south into the city the taxi weaves and jumps from one imaginary lane to the other, with the horn blasting the whole time. We dodge taxis, rickshaws, cows and ox-carts. Kiran and I take turns covering our face with my bandana trying hard not to breathe too deeply. The pollution in the air is stinging my eyes and blackening my boogers.

The apartment we're staying in is the top two floors of a massive skyscraper on the ocean. There's a name on a floor directory plaque with 'His Higness' before it. As soon as the servants open the door and usher us in it's like I've stepped into a Rudyard Kipling novel. Ancient daggers hang on the wall amongst paintings of regal ancestors. Black and white photos of big game hunts include rhinoceros and a dozen tigers. The skins of at least three of these fallen tigers cover some of the floor with their stuffed heads frozen into toothy grimaces.

We're exhausted and overwhelmed but can't refuse a call from Rishad, a friend of the family, who drags us to a party at midnight. Although we haven't slept and are reluctant at first, we end up having a great first night in Bombay. It's five in the morning when we finally get some sleep. 6:30 Thai time.

Mumbai (from ), has 13 million inhabitants. Driving in from the airport, we saw thousands of people sleeping on sidewalks and streets, some in the open and some in improvised tents made of plastic. Many live a few feet from heaps of garbage and piles of trash along the side of the road. Poverty, dirt, rats, and pollution (the smell of gas) are pervasive. The air is so dusty you don't breath it, you shovel it in. The smog, mainly from fumes of the hardly moving traffic, brings tears to the eyes, makes the throat start scratching, and makes even walking around very tiring.Yesterday we met my cousin for lunch at the cricket club. The lunch was an Indian thali, my first so far on this trip and absolutely delicious. My cousin is a skilled and aggressive business woman who is having an entire Bombay expressway moved just for one of her business ventures. I'm really enjoying getting to know my family again, and recognizing common strains of personality and hearing stories about my dad.

Outside of the club, bats and balls cracked in the air. Cricket is everywhere in India. The kids who can't afford to buy proper bats and balls use wooden planks and tennis balls. India and Australia will be playing each other soon.

I can tell that Kiran doesn't feel right taking a plane in India. It does feel decadent but with our short time here it would be a shame to be on a train for four days. She'll get over it. Our plane lands in Bagdogra after a pleasant flight. It's nice that veggie meals are the norm here and people have to request non-veg instead of the usual reverse situation. As soon as the plane has slowed down, the runway opens up for stray dogs and bicycle traffic. It's a first for me. Considering the security guards with shotguns everywhere it seems odd.

Yesterday we arrived in Darjeeling, in hope that we would make it for the Lossar (Tibetan New Year) festivities. When we arrived, exhausted from a Bombay all-nighter goodbye party and hours of travel, we were told by the Tourist Info people that it was only celebrated in Tibetan homes. We were disappointed but too wiped out to pursue our quest to the main gompa (Tibetan Buddhist temple) an hour's walk away. Rain begins to pour down on our heads, confirming our decision to just find a bed.

Early this morning, though, I wake up to the sound of horns and crashing cymbals... "must be ongoing Lossar celebrations!" I think with glee and get dressed in two minutes, dragging Geoff behind me out the door. By the time we reach the bottom of the twisty and long path down the hill, the procession has left. From our room, we could see that everyone had been outside of a hotel. We find the hotel and inquire inside if the procession had been for Lossar. "What procession?" the receptionist asks. Since we are up, we go for a walk through some of the alleys, coming alive with a new day's sales on the horizon. Since Darjeeling is in the hills, all of the roads and walking paths twist in bends to offer relief from the steep slope. Under our feet is stone, sometimes dirt, sometimes asphalt. I've seen the workers by the side of new roads, heating the tar inside piles of hot rocks, the vapor a daily irritation to their lungs.

We try to find the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Centre for the second time. Yesterday we walked in a great circle and ended up exactly where we'd started. Today we walk down a promising lane down the west side of the ridge that Darjeeling is balanced on. We don't make it to the Centre, once again. Instead we stop at the Hot Stimulating Cafe. We only intend to stay for a quick drink but fate has decided otherwise. It turns out the owner is a lively Tibetan character with the highly unoriginal name of Kiran. Not only that but he's a big fan of the Rheostatics, an amazing Canadian band at whose concert Kiran and I first met. We hit it off right away.

As we sit on his small balcony and stare across at Darjeeling he fills us with stories and a strange drink called tongba. A French couple at our table say they stopped in for a drink, tried the tongba and haven't been able to leave for two hours.

Bhutia Busty is a Tibetan gompa around a bend on one of the twisty roads on the other side of the hill from Darjeeling town. It is colorfully painted in white, red, green, yellows, with a huge prayer wheel inside the front doors. A young girl shows us how to use it. Her hands reach around the right side of the upright brass cylinder inscribed with 'Aum Mani Padme Hum,' and pulls. The wheel spins around in a clockwise direction, ringing an old-sounding bell inside it every three rounds or so. We follow the girl behind the gompa which, incidentally, houses the original Tibetan Book of the Dead. She points to her parents, who are breaking large rocks into gravel with small mallets and infinite patience. Life is slow and sweet in the hills.

Waving goodbye, we head back up the curly roads, passing smiling locals and kids racing the downhills on a brittle-looking board with wheels. Finally we reach the plateau. On our left we can see the way we came up, and on the right a stone wall of the exposed hill. A few minutes later we come upon huge Tibetan letters and a blue buddha carved into the stone, painted in the same primary colors as the gompa. A Tibetan man crosses our path and walks up to the stone shrine. A small ledge has been carved out of the middle and has incense and now-dry flowers on it. The man puts his forehead to the ledge three times and then puts his hands in prayer to the buddha.

We return to our friendly restaurant, where our host regards us as his grandchildren. We meet a girl who just so happens to be related to our Ngarrindjeri friends in South Australia! Our conversation makes us alive with energy as we speak of our friends and reminisce about what seems to be years ago. In fact, only three months have passed.

We spend as much time as we can in the warmth of the restaurant- our rooms have no heat. It is nice to share travel tales with the community of travellers gathered at the restaurant. I meet Bruce Beese, a talented artist who draws a mean portrait. He has drawn a great one of my parents (from 2 separate photographs) for their' 30th wedding anniversary. . If you need an artist (he lives in the U.S.) you can contact Bruce at mainsqueeze@mail.com.

We visit the Hot Stimulating Cafe again, in search of more stories. Kiran is full of them. Read about them on our Indian marriage page. He corrects me when I say 'Darjeeling,' preferring it to be called 'Dorje Ling' (Land of the Thunderbolt) instead. Determined to get to the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Center, we make plans to see Kiran later and head back up to the town center. This is our third attempt to make it over, once it was closed, the other time we got lost in Kiran's pub. This time we know where it is and that it's open and how to get there.

We came to Nainital, in the Indian hills on the western side of Nepal, to see my great uncle and aunt. Some time ago, my great uncle wrote a long essay about our family history, called An Ancient Family of India. We chat about my family's ancestral home, and a large temple complex built in their name. Yesterday I bought some childrens' comics telling the Mahabharata and Ramayana, I am told they are epic Hindu tales in which the gods and rules for living come from. It was a short, but sweet visit.

After lunch, my Great Aunt's nephew (I have no idea what that makes him to me), Alok, joins us as we jump into a rowboat and take in the sights on the other side of Naini Lake. My cousin told us about how he and his friends used to steal the boats at night when they had been tied up and the owners gone to bed, and hang out in the middle of the lake. The boat owners would never know! We passed a shrine to Hanuman, the monkey god. Each of the Hindu gods have an auspicious day on which prayers should be made; for Hanuman it is Tuesday. There is a temple with at least 40 bells of different sizes hanging from a pole. When a wish has been granted by the gods, the receivor must hang a bell in thanks. At the other end of the lake are another Hindu temple and a Sikh temple, side by side. From behind the temples, a Muslim prayer via megaphone invites devotees to come to the mosque.

A troupe of men of all ages are making noise on the street when we return to shore, so we go to see what all the commotion is about. It's a procession of Holi celebrators. Each of them is wearing a white hat splashed with paint, and has red paint on their faces. They are singing and playing drums and tambourines. These are the kinds of celebrations proceeding Holi, the festival to celebrate successful harvests. On March 10, all Hindus must take part in the celebrations by putting the red paint on their faces, among other things. The fun-loving rest of them will roam the streets with all kinds of means to splash the public with paint: squirt guns, balloons, enlarged squeeze droppers, buckets, whatever. Hence the vendors set up on the walkways with bowls full of bright-colored powders.

We stop by a little cafe in one of the market alleys for chai and jelebi, a traditional Indian sweet. We watch as they make them: a syrupy dough is poured from a cloth cone into hot oil, making curly designs, which harden instantly. They are served hot, and are sweet and delicious. This is a nice close to our trip in India.

As always, we don't know if we're on the right bus until we ask at least three people, and then it's stilll never 100% until you arrive. The driver winds the steering wheel precise degrees right and left to maneuver the winding passage down the hills. At the bottom of each turn appears something new; first, silver long-haired monkeys, then a painted shrine, carved out of the rock, and then another couple of monkeys, these brown and humping. Another corner showcases a warning "life begins at 40, be sore to drive the same." Down, down into the valley we turn and turn. Larger villages welcome us nearer to the bottom, dust and squealing brake sequences are our response.

Village after dusty village brings new sellers onto the bus. They sell fruit, drinks, crunchy chili papad. I look out the window just before crossing a bridge and see the local barber, with his mirror leaning up against a tree and his client sitting on a wooden box. As we pass the barber, we board a small bridge over a shallow river. The man sitting in front of me stands up, apologizes to the passenger next to him, leans over and throws a coin out the window into the river.

The flat land is a far cry from the hills of Darjeeling. The only hills here are dung heaps, patted down by hand in a spiraling cone, 3 meters high. We pass goats, cows and oxen. By the ninth hour on the bus I am coated with dirt. It's under my nails, matting my hair and in my nose. How satisfying it will be to see the little chunks of black snot flushed out on a tissue after the dust turbulization is over.

We are finally nearing Delhi. A Hindu god themepark is being built, with a Hanuman roller coaster and ferris wheel of Shiva. We are told that we have arrived... only nine more hours to kill until we board our plane. We have dinner in the city and then catch an airport bus, pick up our stored luggage and head into the departure terminal. Some ridiculously inconvenient rule is in order, perhaps for security purposes, that one may not enter the terminal more than three hours before one's flight is scheduled to leave. The entrance security officers are very strict and as a result, all the early passengers, with family, friends and piles of suitcases, are sprawled on the asphalt in front of the doors. We leave entrance #1 for entrance #2 and, as there is balance and harmony with all things in India, there is a security officer here who lets us in. We whittle away the late hours of the evening reading, eating, writing, waiting for our 3:00 am plane. What a cruel departure time. Closer to 2am the minutes slow down considerably and then the voice everyone has been waiting for informs us that there will be a delay due to engine problems. Now the hours tick by with visions of loose bolts dancing in our heads. An extra three hours slither by and we finally board, becoming a perfect bunch of sleeping angels for the cabin crew.

London in the last week has provided us with a network of convenience that we lusted for in Asia. The rain and cold has us lusting for Asia. The flu in the air caused Geoff and I to slow down- a lot, but we still managed to squeeze in a night of partying, a visit to the London Eye (the huge ferris wheel), Trafalgar Square, Canada House, Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the lovely underground, and a travel agent for our tickets to Africa.

While bouncing around the web, I found a great public discussion, "Is Marriage an Outdated Institution?" To read some of the comments (from Europeans and North Americans), click here. Feel free to comment on any of our own discussion topics on our Discussion board.

Tanya and Ian, friends of Geoff's from university, took us to see Stonehenge on Saturday afternoon. Stuck in the middle of two large highways and gated all around, were the historic stone structures. We got out of the car and right back in again, the area was not to be visited due to the foot and mouth disease problem. We stopped at Old Sarum, an Iron-Age fort, to wander around. Closed due to foot and mouth. We decided to stop at a pub for lunch. Closed. We spent St.Patrick's Day in a pub on the way home, drinking Guinness.

Now we're taking turns looking at the clock and packing our stuff again. In five hours, we'll be boarding a plane for Africa!