Bollywood Dreams

Hetty and Sam, the couple I had met on the train a week ago, had to leave for Delhi at 4am in the morning as they had to catch a flight back to London. We all shared a room to save money (£1 each: new record!!) and after they left I slept for ages. Every now and again I have a sort out of my bag to try and streamline my belongings; one thing I gave away was my shalwar kameez that I'd had made for me - it didn't fit very well at all despite me having it altered plus it was taking up a lot of space.

I made sure I got photos of the outfit before I left it in Pushkar - it consists of a tunic, baggy trousers and a scarf which I've kept. The women in India wear these daily in all different colours.

The next morning I got on a train to Mumbai that took nineteen hours and covered 1000km. When I arrived it was 6am, it was raining and I was tired. I got in a taxi and agreed the price, when we arrived they scammed me by swapping the note I'd given them for a lower one and claiming I hadn't paid them enough - they wouldn't give me my bag until I paid them again! I was so angry, mainly with myself because after four years working in a bank I should know this classic trick! They managed to thieve the equivalent of £5 and then I had to pay them another £4.50 - doesn't sound like a lot does it? But in actual fact this means over half my entire daily budget had gone and it was only 7am, plus Mumbai is very expensive compared to the rest of India.

I had booked myself in advance into a hostel to save money and I'd seen on Trip Advisor reviews that the owner has a friend who works for Bollywood and often asks him whether any of the guests want to be extras in a film for the day (film makers like to employ white extras as it gives their films an international flair!). I'm going to share with you a life long dream of mine - I have always wanted to be in a Bollywood film!! Unfortunately the owner's friend didn't need anyone in the few days I was in Mumbai however I've heard that you can be head hunted by recruiters in certain parts of the city so I spent my first day in Mumbai hanging around these areas trying to look as white as possible in the hope I'd be approached!! Unfortunately this never happened but I had a great day navigating my way around the city metro system; I was quite proud of this because riding the Mumbai trains is a crazy and sometime terrifying experience - picture rammed carriages with people spilling out onto the tracks and hundreds of Indians hanging out the edges of moving trains.

Email from hostel owner after I inquired about his Bollywood connections.

I also saw my first Asian beach! There was a festival going on where clay intricate, handmade models of the god, Durga, were thrown into the sea by boys covered in pink paint.

Durga Puja.

Part of the Mumbai skyline.

This is called bhelpuri and is spicy puffed rice with vegetables. It's Indian fun fair food, equivalent to our hot dogs!

Once I'd arrived at the nearest station to my hostel I tried to get a rickshaw back which I'd done easily and cheaply on the way to the station that morning; it was so strange because the drivers all refused to take me. I asked over twenty in total and they all took one look at me or one look at the address of the hostel and shook their heads and drove off! I had to beg two Indian girls to hail a rickshaw and pretend it was for them until the driver agreed however once I got in he drove 100m, stopped and told me to get out!! It was dark and I was wondering around Mumbai by myself for over an hour trying to get back to my hostel. Every other day I've been in India I've been plagued by pushy rickshaw drivers trying to get my business yet today it was the opposite.

The next day I took a fascinating tour around Dharavi slum where the film 'Slumdog Millionaire' was set and where over 1 million people live. I met two friendly guys from Germany at the hostel and they decided to come as well. Before it started I was approached by a glamorous looking man and woman and they asked me whether I wanted to be in a Bollywood film on Monday!!! I was so upset to tell them that I had a flight booked to go to the south of India and so couldn't do it!! By some miracle they said they were making a film in Goa at the end of the month when I'll be there and they have given me their business card!

Yes! I've been head hunted!! Life long dream alert!!

The slum tour was led by a charity who puts the profits back into the slum for things like education and our guide took us through tiny dark alleys with wires hanging all around, to watch women drying out poppadoms in the sun, to the commercial part where people work in horrendously squalid and cramped conditions and to what he comically called the '5 star section' where some shacks even had cable television! We walked past some boys playing cricket on a heap of rubbish and one of them poked me quite hard in the chest with his cricket bat in front of everyone - obviously we were quite a fascinating sight to the slum dwellers.

I wasn't allowed to take photos in the slum but this is the edge of it.

Experiencing slum life was exhausting in the heat and so the to Germans and I went for a meal and a couple of beers that evening to recuperate. We were talking quite loudly and a waiter told us to be quiet, it wasn't until later when I was walking across the restaurant and a man handed me a napkin with writing on it that I discovered he'd been the one that asked us to shut up. He'd heard I was English and had taken it upon himself to write me a to-do list in Asia, one of these was 'old monk kum thumbs up'!!!! A few mins later the waiter returned with three glasses of rum (called 'Old Monk') with (they use the word kum when they mean 'with') coke (Thumbsup is India's version of coke!) and said the man from across the restaurant had bought them for us so we 'cheersed' him across the room and ended up chatting.

To do list.

It was my turn to chose the drinks so I asked the bar man to create a mystery drink - I have no recollection of what was so funny in this photo :)