Mumbai India, Pictures

Click on the following link to see the pictures. I suggest viewing the slide show as lots of the pictures have extra info on them.
>Mumbai Pictures

http://picasaweb.google.com/sarahemoloney/MumbaiIndia#

Well India was a little shorter than I planned on, but these things happen. I had to leave do to health reasons. I was ill right from the beginning not eating or drinking and was very afraid of getting dehydrated and needing an IV, but couldn’t get anything into my system. I believe the big issue was my malaria medication. The sickness and feelings are all side effects of the medication, but the big one was hallucinations and anxiety. I couldn’t sleep at night and my mind was going crazy. In my mind it seems like I was there for a long time. I was not right, some would say I was never right, but then this, oh my god, I was tripping out. I thought Dennis and Carol were there on my shoulder on more than one occasion. Sorry guys no offence but I was not myself.

The malaria medication is very potent and needs to be taken with a full meal and you should be having three full meals a day on it. I would take it when I ate but there wouldn’t be enough in my system to counter balance the side effects, hence my mind was going crazy. I stopped taking the medication and was starting to feel better the day I left, but was worried about being there and not taking the medication. One of those you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t situations. I will have to keep India on the list and return when I am healthy and my system can take the medication.

I did manage to get some site seeing in in Mumbai with Matt and Toula from Melbourne. They were lovely to me. We went with a driver and an employee from the hotel, Nareer on a tour of Mumbai. It was great we got to see a lot of non-tourist spots. We visited at least half a dozen different types of temples, The Gateway of India, Taj Hotel where there were bombings not that long ago. There is no evidence left of any such thing occurring there. We also went to a building were Gandhi lived when he was in India, it is now a museum. We went to the Dhavari Slum, the slum from Slum Dog Millionaire; tourists don’t get to see that. We were welcomed with open arms there; the people kept following us through the lanes. We had quite the entourage. We found out later that some of them thought we were scouting for Slum Dog 2 and kept wanting us to take their pictures. We also got to go to Nareer’s home and had lunch with his family that was awesome. They live in a building on the second floor and have two approx. 8’ x 10’ rooms across a common hall. There is a concrete floor, no furniture, some pots for cooking and a baby basket hanging from the ceiling. Ten people live in this space, three children and seven adults. There was a narrow ladder to climb to a second level where they slept on the floor. It was so cool to get to see their space and eat lunch with them. They were so happy to have us. Nareer has a son 5 and a daughter 12. She was very confident and took us around their neighbourhood. She was proud to show me her math book. She is in year 7 and their high school goes until year 10. In year seven math or at age 12 she was factoring and working with quadratics, for all you mathies following the blog. We toured around the city on a Sunday which was a blessing as most things are shut on Sundays and the traffic wasn’t too bad. It is usually insane.

Myrtle Beach

Last week I had the opportunity to go to Myrtle Beach. It was a fun time filled with family, friends, golfing, hot tubs and Margarita Ville. There were many people there from Peterborough and in our group we were 25 people between a couple of hotels.

Tomorrow night I will be flying to India and starting the next part of the journey.

Barbados more pictures

All is well in the Barbados. There is tons to do both day and night. Here is a link to some more photos.

http://picasaweb.google.com/sarahemoloney/Barbados#

Crop Over Barbados and photos

Barbados is fabulous, so great that I extended my stay. I met Carl and Helen last night for supper and drinks and they brought me my pictures from Crop Over. When I was here in the summer Carl took me to the Crop Over celebrations and it was such an interesting experience. I lost my photos after we had uploaded some onto Carl’s computer so they were able to give me a copy of them. Here is the link to the photos followed by a story about Crop Over. Sorry I guess you are going to have to copy and paste the link.

http://picasaweb.google.com/sarahemoloney/CropOverBarbados#

Crop Over is a huge celebration here. We went to the parade that takes eight hours in the sweltering heat. The people in the parade are drinking and dancing very sexually the whole time. I think there were 23 floats and each float consists of the following; a flat bed truck at the beginning with the DJ and stereo equipment, 200-300 people dressed scantily clad in one colour corralled together with ropes to keep them in, then another truck with the bar on it, tons of 60 pounders of rum on it and runners to take the drinks to the people in the parade, then two coke trucks to keep the mix and beer cold, another flat bed truck with six or eight portable washrooms followed by an ambulance and then it repeats, another DJ truck 200 -300 of a different colour and so on. I thought by the end of the parade these people will be naked and frolicking in the street. It was a real Bajan experience.