Today's cricket match

Today was my first "proper" cricket match that I've been to. Unfortunately as you will probably know, England lost - although it was quite a close run thing. The day was a real experience though, and I'm pretty tired after it all.

I got up around 6 am so I could get some breakfast before the driver picked me up at 7:00. Lucky I did as I didn't manage to get anything to eat at the stadium. The trip over in the morning was pretty painless - we started off before rush hour and got over there within about 30 mins. The driver parked in the main parking lot (ie a dusty field) and then walked over with me to the stadium.

The ticket said that you weren't allowed "Hand bags", Radio transistors, bottles, knives or other weapons...so I thought - great, I can take binoculars and a camera...I was wrong. I got into the main enclosure, then they wouldn't let me into the seating area in the grandstand with ANYTHING. Fortunately I bumped into two English guys who were in the same predicament who called their driver and we left everything of value with him. They wouldn't even let you take bottles of water purchased there in, or sun tan lotion - hence me being rather red now.

Eventually we got in and picked our seats - they were pretty good actually. about 20 degrees around from being square on the wicket and the sight screens. Slightly raised so we could see over the press and the metal grid fence, and despite being the kind of plastic seats you got in your primary school assembly hall, not too uncomfortable.

The amount of police and security was incredible...it seems to be a wheeze for all of the local dignatories and officials to get themselves tickets to the cricket, or get assigned to police the crowd. There must have been 70 police officers in our small section alone at one point. To start with there were not that many, but gradually as India batted to catch up and win, the numbers multiplied.

It was interesting observing the crowd throughout the day. The Indians were quite a good crowd, but there was deathly silence whenever an Indian batsman was out. They did applaud when our batsmen had done particularly well, or when they'd fielded the ball well, but the line was drawn when one of their countrymen was out. I think the only exception was one particularly brilliant wicket where the stumps had been knocked by Geraint Jones from a distance but the batsman was in, and then Collingwood sprinted in from nowhere when the batters decided to go for a cheeky run, scooped up the ball and rugby tackled the stumps out of the ground with the ball. The decision went to the TV umpire and went England's way. Even some of the more fervent India supporters had to applaud the acrobatics involved in the dismissal of their player.

There were banners around the top of the stadium - obviously made out of fairly flimsy canvas or plastic, and by the end of the match they had been broken through by India supporters who had obviously scaled the walls and were trying to see through to the pitch. No-one really seemed to mind, and by the end of the England innings, even the officious security guards were letting people in with bags, water, food, and so on.

All in all it was a great experience and it's certainly not one that your average holiday would encompass.

K

Cricket mania!

Well - after having almost given up hope of getting a ticket to the ODI India v England tomorrow, the concierge managed to get hold of a ticket for a rather large sum of money. Still - it's a once in a lifetime experience, so it's well worth it. I'll be heading out very early tomorrow (ie in a few hours) and will be out there all day.

Tonight was very nice - mum got an invite from a business associate for us to go over to his house and have dinner with him and his wife, so we got picked up around 8 and driven over. They have a fantastic house on the outskirts of Delhi in the style of a home from Kerala where they originate from. It had beautiful wood-carved embellishments inside and was all around a very nice place.

The dinner itself was brilliant - I'm still absolutely stuffed from it...nice lamb, prawns, rice, veggies etc...

And we got back to the beaming concierge waving the ticket at me.

Altogether a great end to the day!

Ken

Delhi photos

Not much to report, but here are some photos...


The driveway up to the hotel

Sunset and palms

Sun over the hotel entrance

Hallway in the hotel

Outside the main tourist shopping complex in Delhi

The hotel from outside - classic Art Deco building

Palm-lined driveway and sundown

View from the pool

Some of the gardens

Another hallway

And one more for luck...

A plane to catch

Well, I think the moral of yesterday's story is don't travel around Mumbai if you've got a place to be at a certain time...because you almost certainly won't get there in time. We left the hotel at 4:45pm - plenty of time to get to the airport before our flight at 7 so we thought. We got stuck in a slip road for 20 minutes without moving, and when we finally did start going, we saw that they'd decided that rush hour would be a good time to demolish a wall next to the road, so they plonked all the rubble straight onto the road.

Long story short, we got to the airport at 6:40, 20 minutes before our plane was due to take off...we rushed inside, they gave us our boarding cards, screened our baggage, screened our hand baggage (we were 17 kilos over hold baggage and had about 8 items of hand baggage between the two of us. They said what the hell and rushed us through. We managed to get onto the plane before it was due to take off, and when we arrived in Delhi all our bags had made it too.

So all in all rather a lucky day yesterday.

Mum's out at meetings all day today, so I'm going to have a leisurely day at the hotel today. I think I'll go for a swim and then have a doze.

No more photos at the moment, but I imagine I'll have some soon. It unfortunately seems like I might not get to the cricket tomorrow as the tickets didn't go on sale when they were supposed to and there was some kind of a riot when they did!

We'll see...

K

Cheeky monkeys and holy cows

Today I had a bit of a lie in, and woke up to a bit of the first India v England One Day International. England had made a promising start, but in the end, as you will know if you have been following it, England choked when batting and lost. Needless to say the Indians here are rather pleased.

I took one of the little ferry boats over to Elephanta Island - named after one of the carvings of an elephant which is located on the island. The Island is famous for its caves which are carved out of the mountain. They date back to the 6th century and are in fairly good shape considering the time and the apparent lack of any barriers or anything to stop the tourists (or locals) going up and touching the carvings.

I seemed to get the slowest boat over - taking closer to 2 hours than the advertised 1 hour crossing, but it was alright. It's about a 2km walk from the jetty up the hill to the main cave. The way is lined with fruit, food, drink, and trinket vendors who try to ply you their wares as you hike up the hill.

They were actually fairly laid back and not being to agressive with their selling - in fact from what my mum says, it has got a lot better recently with less people descending on the tourists as soon as they appear.

Got back and then Shash's cousin Karan came by the hotel and then took me on a drive around the city. We went bowling and had a couple of games. In what I hope is a reflection of how the cricket will be, I made a good start in the first game, and then choked at the end, and in the second game I made a solid start and triumphed. Since I'm going to the second ODI in Faridabad on the 31st, I'm hoping it will be a good match (ie England winning!).

One thing I noticed today that I hadn't noticed before is that the vast majority of scaffolding here in Mumbai is actually made of uneven bits of wood or bamboo. It's pretty frightening seeing people clamber up even a few feet on the scaffolding as it seems to completely defy gravity, but I saw scaffolding made of the wonky pieces of wood held together with hemp string going up 30 or 40 stories high.

Pictures of stuff below:


Baby monkey

Coke fiend

Holy cow!

Spot the unusual McDonalds foods..

Family of monkeys

Same...

Grooming

Moo

Inside the caves

Same...

And again...

Some idea of perspective...

More carvings

Outside a cave

Some fishing boats

Dog meets monkey

Day 2 in Mumbai - city tour

I got up early (well...relatively) this morning and had a driver to take me on a short city tour while mum was out at meetings. He was pretty good and showed me some interesting places and had useful facts and figures. There are a selection of pictures below.

The architecture in Mumbai is fascinating. You have everything from shanty town huts to elegant buildings in British style that would not look out of place in Oxford or Cambridge.


A woman paying to feed a cow. Cows are sacred in India - it is considered good luck to feed a cow, so the people that own them bring them out during the day and sell feed to people so that they can give it to the cow. Quite a little moneyspinner I think...

This is the huge area where most of Mumbai's laundry is done. There are hundreds and hundreds of people washing clothes, sheets etc here - one day turnaround for the most part.

A temple we stopped at

The "floating" mosque - it's built out in the middle of the sea with a pedestrian causeway that runs out to it.

Detail on the temple

Part of the university - pretty cool spiral stair case in the corner

The university clock tower

In the university grounds

Victoria Terminus I think - can't remember if that is it or not

Definitely Victoria terminus

Detail on the temple again

Lively crab and prawns the size of your forearm!

Right...well it seems like I started like I meant to go on...it feels like I've done very little today other than eat.

I had a bit of a nap after my last post and then we went out to a restaurant called Trishna. It's a fairly well known seafood restaurant that my mum has been to almost every time she's travelled to Mumbai on business. She had regaled me with tales of prawns that were huge, and I had regarded this with a little bit of skepticism until I actually had some at a restaurant in London called Mint Leaf.

I was prepared therefore for the prawns tonight, but they brought them out fresh before they cooked them and they were pretty impressive I have to say.

Photos below:


Crab - very tasty too

the two jumbo prawns

King crab and a prawn

Sun going down over the city

Hello from Mumbai

Well, it's rather a nice change from cold, damp London - it's something like 28 degrees C here and the sun has been shining all day. I'm really enjoying all the Indian food, me being somewhat of a curry fiend.

Woke up in time to get some breakfast this morning and who should we walk past on the way but Michael Heseltine. I forget whether he's a Sir or a Lord now. For those of you who don't know who he is...he's an oldschool politician in the UK. Nicknamed Tarzan because of his haircut which hasn't changed much for the last two decades. Google him if you will...

After breakfast we had a little wander around the hotel looking at the shops which are inside it and having a look at the various bars and common spaces. Pretty cool hotel it is - Taj Mahal Palace hotel if you want to google it.

I've got it in my mind to try and get a few suits tailored while I'm on this trip - so I'm getting a business suit tailored in two days here, and also getting one of those very elegant Nehru jacket suits made too. I tried one on and it does look good - so getting one tailored to my measurements should look excellent. I'm going to need to get some collarless shirts to go with it I think too.

We went for a swim this afternoon and lay out in the sun which was so nice after two or more months of bitterly cold weather in London. I've only just realised how pasty-white I am compared to when I came back from my 3 months unpaid leave. I'm looking forward to tanning myself up again pronto - and hopefully by the time I get back to London it will be a little warmer and sunnier, so I can keep it for a while.

Anyway, here are some photos from Mumbai:

Me in front of the Gateway of India

Up close

The inscription on the Gateway

Mum walking ahead

Me in the pool

Gateway from outside our hotel

The pool

Looking back up at the hotel

View out onto the pool

Inside the hotel

Looking down the staircase

Looking across one of the atriums

View out the window across the Mumbai skyline