From Philadelphia to Mumbai to Jodhpur

WOW.  So I've been all over the place, blah blah, you all know that, but India is nothing like anything I have ever seen in my life.  I thought I'd done third world (Cambodia) but even that doesn't hold a candle to this place.  First of all, our flight was long, 16 hours, and I've never sat on a direct flight for that long.  Even Thailand was broken up.  I am pretty sure save for one other person we were the only white people on the flight, and our flight attendant definitely took to us, giving us free bottles of booze! Mumbai is where we arrived at 930pm and we went straight to our hotel which was on the beach.  We changed and had some dinner and drinks at the restaurant outside, and were all ready to go out but were told to "take caution it's night time" so in our jetlagged state, we decided it would be better to just get some rest and drink those airport bottles.  The next day we hired a cab to drive us around Mumbai, and take us to the Taj hotel (site of the 2008 terrorist attacks).  The hotel was GORGEOUS, simply stunning, yet on the outside surrounded by slums.  I've never seen anything like this......children barefoot playing in garbage piles sitting in front of gorgeous palaces.  I was not a fan of Mumbai.  I could barely breathe from the pollution, our driver and hotel workers kept trying to rip us off and demand tips from us for EVERYTHING (including the guy working security, give me a break), I didn't see another white person the whole time in the city, and to them we were just dollar signs.  I can't blame them, but the city was chaotic and unfriendly and not for me.  So we got our cab ride to the train station for our 16 hour overnight train to Jodhpur in the province of Rajasthan (northwest)....not knowing our train station was the "second" station.  Good god.  I wish I had pictures but I was too scared to take out my camera.  It looked like a run down bombed building....there was literally shit everywhere, and we were not only the only white people but the only females as well....and EVERYONE was staring at us and crowding around us.  The men were just leering and pointing and trying to talk to us and grab us.  I thought Julia was going to panic and I had to stay calm or we both would have lost it.  Somehow we found our platform and waited for our train to arrive and when it did 4 westerners got off and I was so excited to see them I ran over to them and started blabbing away until i realized they were not American and their english was minimal.  They had just left jodhpur and told us to stay at Yogis guesthouse.  So we board the train.  Second class AC sleeper....in US? nothing this ghetto.  Like a subway with curtains around the "beds" that had cockroaches crawling over them.  16 hours.  The bathroom? a hole in the floor of the train where you just did your business and it fell on the ground below.  Good thing we drank all the airport bottles the night before.  The only thing that saved our sanity was a) the xanax i had left from my flight (unfortunately, only 1) and b) an indian family (young mother, 1 year old son, and her parents) who spoke english and fed us and had their adorable son playing with us.  They even invited us into their berth to sleep.  On a train full of men, they were so comforting I could never even begin to describe it.  FINALLY we arrived in Jodhpur....and what a breath of fresh air!!!  Still dirty by our standards, but beautiful little walled city of alleyways and everything is painted blue, and there is a giant fortress on top of a hill where apartments are carved out of.  We jumped in a rickshaw and told them yogi's guesthouse and crossed our fingers it would be good, and this place is FANTASTIC i don't ever want to leave.  Rooftop restaurant/bar with swinging couches, cushions to lay on, balconies to read on, monkeys and parrots....finally this is the India I came for!! Off to take a nap, will write more later!