Sarah-Kate Lynch's Blog, page 3

Now that I am off cloud 9 after my visit to the Taj Mahal, I can think once more about a place I visited the day before � Fatehpur Sikri. Try spell-checking that baby!

Both these wonderful places are in Agra and if the Taj didn�t hog all the limelight, Fatehpur Sikri would be much more famous. If it was a person, it would be the jaw-dropping redhead soon unbelievably overshadowed by the birth of a glamorous blonde younger sister.

In real life, Fatehpur would cut the backs out of all Taj�s dresses and burn her hair with the curling iron.

What is even more amazing is that both these beauties live in the � how can I put it? � dump that is Agra, a 3-5 hour drive south of Delhi.

I thought the traffic in Mumbai was bad but in Agra, which is just a fraction of its size, it�s 100 times worse plus when you are in a jam you are in it with donkeys, bullocks, cows, monkeys, trucks, cars, bikes and tuk-tuks. I counted 12 people in one of these tiny motorised rickshaws in one standstill.

We tried to fit three in one back in Mumbai and had to give up and get a taxi!

Anyway, my friend Michael who has spent a lot of time in India told me about Fatehpur Sikri and it�s just as well because it�s 40km on the other side of Agra from Delhi, so not exactly on the way to anything.

My guide, Sanjay (he of the despairing �Mumtaj!�), was delighted that I wanted to go there as just like the Taj it has a pretty good story behind it too.

So, Akbar, the grandfather of Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal, built this royal palace on a somewhat out-of-the-way spot to thank the saint who lived there for helping him have a son, a job he was otherwise struggling with.

(This son, by the way, turned out to be a hopeless lush who drank 24 bottles of wine a day, according to Sanjay. When Akbar gave his boy the hard word about his boozing, he turned to his father and said, �God gave me two lips, Pops, one for tasting wine and one for tasting women,� which just goes to prove that kids have always been spoilt and ungrateful.)

Anyway, Akbar used the best of Persian and Indian architecture and workmanship to build this most amazing red stone palace, on a hill looking out over his enemies in all directions but almost the moment it was finished, in 1585, he had to abandon it.

No water! Bit of an oversight.

And with a boozehound for a son he probably didn�t want to stick around if wine was all there was to drink.

So Fatehpur Sikri was left as a ghost city, with no guests staying in its beautiful arched rooms, no king and queen sleeping in its raised super-king-size bed, no dancers in it�s dancing school, no beautiful girls playing on its human parchese board, no private audiences in it�s small court, or public ones in its large court, nobody anywhere doing anything.

But the place is to this day in perfect nick.

Perfect!

Like a smaller, more accessible version of the Forbidden City in Beijing, it�s a beautiful monument to how life once was in a galaxy far, far away.

We visited in the late afternoon � it closes at 5.30 and we were leaving just before then � which is a great time to go because the light is just gorgeous, not only on the red brick but on the surrounding countryside.

Sanjay and I walked back down the hill to the car park instead of taking the bus so we could commune with the goat world and walk in Akbar�s shoes. Not that they probably ever touched the ground.

And his son must have been permanently legless so I guess he was carried everywhere too!

But my flip flops and I kicked up the dust most spiritedly, stopping only to admire the tomb Akbar built for his favourite elephant whom he used to squash people to death when his court found them guilty.

(With his foot, not by sitting on them. Well, you would have asked too.)

At the end of 2010 I wrote a travel story detailing hot spots on my Bucket List. The Taj Mahal was at the top of the list although I doubted I would ever get there.

Yesterday I did.

All I can say is that the pictures of this incredible monument don�t even begin to do it justice. I�ve seen a hundred of them and you can tell it�s magnificent but I guess I always figured there was a bit of Photoshop involved or that the real thing was not quite so spiffing. You know, like there would be a bad fun park next door or a bowling alley underneath.

There isn�t. When I walked through the red brick arch and saw the Taj Mahal right in front of me for the first time yesterday morning at sunrise I burst into tears and had trouble stopping.

My guide, Sanjay, was thrilled. A dedicated romantic he was very happy that I had been able to drag the Ginger away from work to come to the Taj with me because it is the �palace of love� and you should always visit it with your loved one if he happens to be in the vicinity.

�Tears on the cheeks of history,� Sanjay said proudly as I blubbed. I couldn�t help it. The whole place is so majestic and serene and perfect and I felt unbelievably lucky to be there.

The 16th century emperor Shah Jahan built the giant white marble mausoleum for the love of his life, Mumtaj. He had picked her out at a tricky bazaar when looking for a wife to add to his collection. A tricky bazaar is a line up of hot chicks from all around the world. Anyway, Shah Jahan already had a big wife and a simple wife - who were neither big nor simple but had been unable to have children - so they went to the tricky bazaar with him to find someone a bit more child bearing.

The moment he clapped eyes on the beautiful daughter of a poor Persian tradesman he breathed the word �Mumtaj� and that was that. �Mum� means beautiful and �taj� means royal and from then on Mumtaj was just that.

She was also a good choice, bearing him 14 children, although she saw the writing on the wall at the birth of the last one and called Shah Jahan to her bedside making him promise three things as her strength started to fade: to build a monument to prove his love; to never marry again; and to look after the 14 children.

It took 22 years but he managed the first. He also managed the second. The third? Hm. Half of the children died of natural causes and one of the remaining sons killed the rest so that he could become emperor. He then threw Shah Jahan in to the jail in Agra Fort cross the river where he lived for eight years, his only view that of the monument he had built in memory of his adored wife.

With his last breath, he cried a despairing �Mumtaj!� and died.

You see what I mean about Sanjay being a dedicated romantic?

He does a very good despairing �Mumtaj!�

Anyway, so, I am imagining that Princess Diana might have heard the same story when she went to the Taj in 1992 and might have thought that sure she was picked out in a Tricky Bazaar but Prince Charles had another Mumtaj all along.

If you�re even slightly romantically-inclined, you can�t help but feel the sadness that lingers in the beautiful grounds for this tale of love-gone-wrong.

But louder, stronger, sweeter and so much more hopeful is the staggering ode to love-gone-right standing right there in front of you, in all its glory, 600 years old and still going strong.

I�m now in Delhi, a 1 hour 45 minute flight away from Mumbai � it�s really green! Who knew?

Yesterday was a full-on day of sightseeing which I had organised for myself as the Ginger is off doing work things which would be boring for me to be in on and anyway I�m not invited.

Now, as a cling-on I have no say in the hotel situation and the Maurya in Delhi is very nice but it�s not a patch on the Taj Lands End in Mumbai. They may never get me out of that place! I seriously consider it �home�.

Help!

But I�m not here for the hotel. Yesterday I started in old Delhi with a visit to the amazing Jamma mosque, built in 1650, and far more beautiful than I was by the time a little man had dressed me in a colour I would not choose for myself.

UP to 25,000 can pray here although I don�t know how because it is COOKING in Delhi � well beyond 40 degrees C. After the mosque my guide Sunil and I jumped on a rickshaw and this poor boy about the size of my arm took us through the market streets in the old town.

True, he didn�t go very fast. But also true, I�ve had lunches bigger than his whole body so I tried to think thin to help him out a little.

We rattled through narrow streets where the power lines looked like balls of wool that had been mauled at by kittens. Scary! One lane was the sari market, another the book market, another the wedding market, another the wedding invitation market. Yes, weddings are big business in these parts.

Next we went to Raj Ghat where Ghandi was cremated � it�s in a gorgeous park and an eternal flame burns there. I asked Sunil what Ghandi would think of modern India and he gave it the big thumbs down.

Next we visited Humayun�s Tomb, a deeply impressive structure that apparently inspired the Taj Mahal (where I�m headed today). Those 16th century Indians sure went to a lot of effort to house their dead.

To be honest, by now I was so famished I could eat a tomb. We�d had to get up at 4.30am to get our flight from Mumbai and had skipped breakfast and now it was past 2pm.

I asked Sunil if perhaps we could get a samosa or a naan bread and he said he would have to think about that and in the meantime would I like a nice cold Kingfisher beer?

Actually I am not much of a beer drinker but the word �cold� appealed and thinking this would tide me over till my samosa, I sat in the back of the van sipping it. This is quite a good way to travel as it happens.

However, instead of going to the samosa emporium we went to a shop full of expensive clothes and nick nacks, none of which I wanted to buy, but one of which I found myself haggling for. Although is it really haggling when you don't want to buy it?

I did fall in love with the most beautiful pashmina that you could pass through the middle of a ring it was so fine but at first the salesman told me it was $500 at which I dropped it like a hot potato. Then he did a complicated series of calculations on his giant calculator and the price came down to $350, then $330 with some pretty little coin purses thrown in.

He was just giving me his final spiel on the quality and great beauty of the item when I obviously sobered up enough to remember that I didn�t want to be shopping in the first place.

Sunil looked shocked that I was leaving without a purchase and even when I was sitting in the car begged me to reconsider but after I saw him winking at the driver I toughened up.

I�m not saying he starved me and liquored me up so that I would $pend but it felt a bit that way.

What he didn�t know is that I am a Lynch and a Lynch will take something large you can eat over something small you can wear any day of the week.

When I wrote radio news bulletins years ago, and had to get up at 5am to do it, I used to marvel at the number of bush crashes in India.

One day, being a trifle facetious, I wrote a news story about how on this particular day I could find absolutely NO evidence of there being a single bus crash reported anywhere on the continent.

The real journalists told me off for taking the mickey and some months afterwards one of them wrote to me to say she had been in a bus crash in India and they were no joke. I have since seen the scar to prove this.

I would suspect that it was soon after this that I gave up the facts altogether and started concentrating on fiction.

But today I did the Reality Tours public transport tour of Mumbai � which involved getting a taxi to the meeting place, a bus to the train station, a train station to the flower market, another train to a different market, and a taxi back to the train station.

This is a lot of public transport for anyone � but in the 35 degree heat of Mumbai it was something else. Actually, I loved it! (There must be something in the tea here because I love everything.) And we didn't even come close to crashing - unlike last night when our rickshaw driver took out a motorcyclist but that's another story.

Today we were going against the rush hour, which I suspect was the key: although at one train station our arrival coincided with that of a train bursting with men pushing and shoving to get off and make a connection. Our guide, the lovely Suraj who also took me around the Dharavi slum earlier in the week, shoved myself and Kathryn, the other person on the tour (an acrobat instructor from Melbourne), in front as we were carried up the stairs in the throng.

If anyone was going to give us a whole body massage, he said, it would be him!

Suraj is currently my favourite person in the world because he says I am beautiful and clever.

I tried to tell him he was beautiful too but he said no, he is handsome.

Interestingly enough, we had quite a chat about being handsome. He said he used to be more handsome before he spent so much time in the sun and his skin darkened.

I said that I thought handsome was more about bones and features, and Kathryn thought eyes but then we explained that where we come from people go out in the sun so they can make their skin darker!

Suraj said women are also considered less beautiful if they are darker and I said surely a good personality counted for something.

�It would have to be a very good personality,� was his answer.

If you are in Mumbai and want to tour the city, choose Suraj. His smile is worth the price of admission.

Much as I loved my Senior Citizens yoga the other morning, I was still keen to check out the Laughing variety so this morning I once more got up with the crows (the even earlier crows) and headed for South Mumbai�s Chowpatty Beach.

Unfortunately I left my phone behind and my map and forgot to find out exactly where on Chowpatty Beach the yoga was taking place so it wasn�t my cleverest morning ever. What can I say? My brain just doesn�t work that sharply at 6am.

I clomped up and down the sand on the somewhat vast city oceanfront, the sun coming up behind me, looking for people who might be on the verge of laughing.

A lot of them weren�t.

But then in the distance I saw a small group move from the shade of a tree out into the sun and put their bags in the sand, slowly forming a loose circle around them.

It was either Hammersmith Odeon circa 1989 and the DJ was about to play Yaz or I�d found the Priyadarshani Laughter Club!

�Join us, join us!� cried a lovely, smiling woman in a pink sari, drawing me into the circle as I approached. The club leader Kishore Kuvavala, chairman of the international club and a multiple laughter record-holder, introduced himself, then me, then we started our yoga with a robust round of �ha ha ha, he he he�.

But laughing is a serious matter and you need to be in good shape for it so before we laughed any more, we did some exercises. They were significantly less Senior Citizens-oriented than earlier in the week, in fact bits of me are throbbing slightly as I write, but it was not the hard-core ouchfest yoga that I have stopped going to back home.

And every few exercises I had to stop and just marvel at the fact I was bending on a beach with a group of smiling Indians, the sun still rising above us and the sea shimmering across the sand. Mumbai is still quite peaceful at that hour of the morning, the major horn honking is still an hour or so away, and the sun was hot, but deliciously, not awfully.

�Left, I said left,� Kishore would say, getting the whole circle to bend in the same direction. �Right, I said right.�

After a while we split into pairs. Being the new, tall, pale girl I was dragged into the middle of the circle to be Kishore�s partner. Normally this would embarrass the heck out of me but at Laughter Yoga there doesn�t seem to be any embarrassment. Under Kishore�s instruction we pulled and tugged and pushed and stretched each other in a way not usually associated with a first meeting but extremely pleasing nonetheless.

Then it was time for the laughter.

We started with more ha-ing and he-ing, then moved into the welcome laugh, the complaining laugh, the apology laugh, the Chinese-Japanese laugh, the mirror laugh, the Mumbai laugh and then the loud as you possibly can laugh.

All the time you�re laughing, you�re making eye contact around the circle with the other laughers. It is, of course, unbelievably jolly, and before you know it you�re just laughing for no reason other than because everyone else is and it feels so good.

We finished up with a quick prayer, a few �ommm�s and a round of high-fives before I said my good-byes, promising to return, which I will.

I usually start my morning with a coffee but I must say, laughing on a beach in the Mumbai morning sunshine beats that hands down. Ha ha ha! He he he!


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As much as one is capable of spending one�s entire life in a lovely hotel, when there�s a great big bustling world out the door that�s so unbelievably different from the one at home, it�s a crime not to dive into it.

Today I did a guided tour of Mumbai�s Dharavi slum. My friends, the Ginger included, seemed a bit perplexed as to why I would want to but yesterday I only ventured out of the hotel to do Senior Citizen yoga and go out to a nice restaurant for dinner. The rest of the time I was in my room working, or by the pool, both things I can and do manage quite well at home.

I�d read about the Dharavi tours in the Love Mumbai guide book and so got a taxi from the hotel to Mahim Railway, the meeting point. Finally I saw the trains packed with people billowing out the doors like bubbles about to burst, as it goes in A Fine Balance!

From the station our group of six tourists and one guide, Suraj, crossed the tracks and entered the slum. Photos aren�t allowed so the one above is from the railway overbridge.

The tours are run by Reality Tours, an ethical non-profit company, dedicated to improving the reputation of the slum. There�s a bit of grumpiness about Slumdog Millionaire painting it as a grubby hive of non-industriousness but this, we were told at the beginning of the tour, is far from the truth.

�You will leave this place never again wanting to complain about how small your house is,� we were told, �or how hard you work.�

Having just written my next Woman�s Day column about how teeny my wardrobe is, I felt instant shame. Whole families live in spaces not much bigger than my one at home! Luckily for me I rarely complain about how hard I work because, erm, I rarely work too hard.

We started in the commercial area of Dharavi where every tiny doorway revealed a slither of one industry or the other. Music blared out of one small tin hut � it�s the local cinema! There was a goat outside looking like he was queuing to go in � the strangest looking goat I�ve ever seen. It looked like it had run into a wall at full speed and flattened the front of its face.

Down a muddy alley doorways on either side revealed people crouching around piles of plastic, separating the colours. The plastic is all melted down then made into pellets which are then exported outside the slum to be turned into something else. Down another alley, the same thing was happening with aluminium, down another it was plastic party plates!

Women sat in their doorways washing shirts or swept the floors of their tiny spaces while children seemed to run up and down ladders to the higher stories like monkeys. No one asked for money � although my sunglasses came very close to being filched from the top of my head.

The smell, about which I confess I had been a little concerned, moved from spicy to sweaty to slightly pooky (beside the truck full of sheep fleeces) and back to spicy when we were passing through the markets or doorways were cooking was going on in the tiny kitchen spaces.

There are one million people living in the slum � which is the half the size of New York�s Central Park. It is a city within a city and many of the residents never leave. They have their own schools, university, hospital and police. But many other residents work in the rest of Mumbai � doctors and software designers and other professionals among them.

I can barely explain what it felt like to be moving through such a world. I felt like I was in a dream or on the set of a Tom Cruise movie just before the generic car chase through the village scene.

It was not a depressing or upsetting experience � quite the contrary, it was strangely uplifting.

Poppadoms dried in piles on the sides of the alleys, clay pots in the pottery district teetered on overfull trays, a baby goat chased a chicken, a crying baby stopped and gawped at the tourists clomping past.

You won�t find that at the Taj Lands End! (Although I am enjoying a very nice cup of marsala tea and feeling very grateful for the air conditioning.)

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Yet another first today � laughing yoga. I read about it in Fiona Caulfield�s fab Love Mumbai guide book and rang yoga club organiser Mr Hirani yesterday to make sure it was on. It took quite a while for me to understand that it is indeed on not just yesterday and today but 365 days a year at Jogger�s Park which is not too far away from our hotel.

So I was up with the crows (doesn�t sound as cute as sparrows, does it?) and hailed a taxi to take me there. My taxi driver knew exactly where to go and offered to stay and have his tea while I did the yoga.

What Mr Hirani might have been trying to tell me on the phone was that I sounded too young because it turns out the yoga at Jogger�s Park is for Senior Citizens.

What Mr Hirani doesn�t know is that while in physical years I�m not quite there yet, in flexibility I am, so being in a senior citizens yoga class felt just about right.

The men were standing on one side of the little park - which is ringed by tall hedges and has three palm trees in the middle � and the women on the other, with Mr Hirani in the middle.

I stood at the back, owing to being a foot taller than everyone else, and just copied the person in front. The person behind was quick to correct me when I got it wrong which was extremely helpful and in fact, this is really my kind of yoga. It�s not about holding poses or maintaining strength, it�s about �moving every part of your body� as one lady told me.

She also told me that in fact the yoga is only on 364 days a year because the senior citizens like to go out late on New Year�s Eve so there�s no yoga on New Year�s Day.

At the end of the class, the lady who had so kindly corrected me took me up to Mr Hirani who introduced me to the class and prayed that I would bring lots of sweet sweet love from India back to New Zealand, which I will endeavour to do. Then I got to high five all the senior citizens.

After that, the class sang happy birthday including a whole verse to the same tune that went: �We are glad God made you, We are glad God made you, We are so glad God made you, Happy Birthday to you!�

Isn�t that adorable?

My only disappointment was that there was no actual laughing. Maybe tomorrow. And in the meantime I�m left basking in the thrill of being the youngest person at something.

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I can see why the rich and famous live in hotels � it�s fabulous!

We�re staying at the Taj Lands End in Mumbai. Well, when I say we I mean the Ginger is staying at the Taj Lands End and I�m mooching off him. Why wouldn�t I?

He is very excited because he gets two free pieces of laundry a day so is enjoying the giddy rush of having someone other than himself iron his shirts. This doesn�t happen at home.

I, on the other hand, am enjoying having someone in white gloves bring me my dhal and tandoori roti for lunch. I get the dhal and roti at home but I just cannot get that man of mine to wear the white gloves. Annoying!

Yesterday we went sightseeing in South Mumbai (although everyone here still calls it Bombay), stopping on Malabar Hill to walk through the gardens. At the lookout point where you can see the beach stretching in front of the skyscrapers, I thought we were being pickpocketed when an Indian man thrust his small child at us. Turns out he just wanted to take a photo! We were then photographed with every member of the family. The children looked terrified and we looked bamboozled so God knows what sort of addition that is going to be in their photo album.

It happened again when we went down to the incredible Gateway of India at the port. People who know and love me would not want to see a photo of me pale and confused and dripping in sweat � I don�t know why a stranger would! But it was amazing to walk through the throng of locals outside the gates, crouched under the shade of the trees selling all manner of local delicacies and shiny baubles.

It was less amazing that the Ginger was stalked by a gentleman who kept grabbing one of his ears and saying something about wax. He either wanted to pick some that was already there out, or put someone that he happened to have on him in. Neither option was that appealing. I liked my stalker more � she just wanted me to buy a fan made of peacock feathers.

Mumbai is a mind-boggling mix of crumbling former glory, crumbling former dilapidation and rising power and fortune. Driving to the Gateway, we passed the 27-storey apartment building that houses a single family of four. Why would four people need 27 storeys? For the 500 staff of course! Now that is a LOT of white gloves.

I�d thought Mumbai would be smellier and dirtier but the most powerful element to me is the colour. It looks like a lorikeet jamboree has exploded! The women wear such divine arrangements, putting purples with yellow, reds with orange, turquoise with bright pink. Scarves fly in the wind, skirts billow � it�s a smorgasbord of vibrance.

We had lunch by the pool at the Taj Palace Hotel which is beyond sumptuous and then headed to the back streets behind it to go shopping. The clothes and homewares are lovely, but not cheap, so I kept my hand in my pocket however I was sorely tempted by the Indian inspired modern design. An enticing colourful flowing gown I tried on at one store elicited the following comment: �Well, I�ve only just met you but I think it�s a little too dosey-doe.�

We tried to go to a bar halfway back to our own hotel but there was a wild party going on with a lot of drunk people in white so we got dropped off instead at a restaurant closer to where we were staying. The wine was perilously expensive (not altogether a bad thing) but the food was delicious. This sleek modern restaurant has falling down buildings on either side but that�s Mumbai.

If I had the digestive stamina, I would eat the street food. It�s deep fried � sometimes in front of you on the pavement � but it smells sensational. I saw a man stirring some sort of batter with his hand, sitting in the gutter next to his little frying station. There was a queue of people waiting to eat whatever he was making so I guess I�m gutless for not giving it a go. Or could it be I want to retain my guts for as long as is humanly possible?

Remember, I am the person who never wanted to go to India at all because I avoid countries that don�t have proper toilets.

And yet, here I am.

OK, so, depending on what country you come from, you CAN get a visa on arrival in Mumbai, but I�m not sure I would entirely advise it.

I arrived in the city after a 16 hour flight in remarkably good shape thanks to drinking litres of something the pharmacist talked me into called 1Above which is a � oh, like I know what it is! It comes in a blue bottle and looks a bit like wees but tastes OK and (fill in the blanks) hydration.

I queued at Immigration with the other passengers but when I got to the desk was told I needed to go back through the zig zag ropes to wait in the Visa On Arrival Interview Area. There followed a somewhat Benny Hill-like scenario of me weaving my way through the ropes only to hit a brick wall, literally. Luckily the man at the Immigration desk was still watching me over the heads of the hundreds between us and, using very efficient gesticulations, indicated that if I walked approximately half way back to New Zealand, I would find the Visa On Arrival Interview Area around the corner.

The Visa On Arrival Interview Area consisted of three leather sofas and a vast empty space. After sitting there a while a little man came over and went through a very long form that I needed to fill out. It would be a problem for me, he said, that I did not know the booking reference for my husband�s hotel. I knew everything else about it, even what room we were in but this was not enough.

After I filled out the form, I was asked to follow him across the vast empty space to a single stand where he put my passport in a machine about 42 times and shook his head a lot. Then I was asked to follow him back across the vasty empty space to the leather sofas where he pointed out again how big a problem it was about the booking reference.

I texted the Ginger, who I knew was waiting for me and would be getting antsy about now, and he said he would find out.

Meantime I was asked to follow the little man back through the zig zags, although just like a drug mule or the mother of triplets, this time we were able to take a shortcut.

We arrived in an office with three women sitting at two desks doing, erm, some talking.

Some of the talking was even with me. I found out that Jaipur and Agra are the Siamese twins of tourism if you want to see the Taj Mahal and it�s best to go to the Taj at 7 before the crowds and heat.

The little man was filling out another form by now and asked me to follow him to a different seat on the other side of the office while he did so. Then he asked me to follow him to a different office, so another man could stamp the different form.

Then I followed him back to the original office. There were now only two women there so we did some more talking.

Still, we had the problem of the hotel booking reference. Now the little man rang the Ginger on the office phone and asked him if he was expecting anyone and the Ginger very rightly decided not to play silly buggers and say: �No, send her home,� and said yes he was, and he even got my name right, but he was still waiting to get the booking reference, so the little man told the Ginger to ring back on that same phone number when he had it.

I sat for a while as the little man kept filling out forms and the two ladies talked. Then the phone rang.

�That must be my husband�� I said to the little man but he was too busy with the forms.

For a while I thought that no one was going to pick the phone up but finally one of the ladies did. From watching her face it was clear she didn�t understand who was on the other end but finally a big smile blossomed on her face. �Oh, yes,� she said as she held the phone in my direction: �It�s for you!�

During the hour I had spent in the office by this stage, the phone had only been used the once � to call the Ginger � and had only rung the once � for the Ginger to call me � and no one else had come in or out of the office so it was surprising that no one had put two and two together a bit quicker but hey, we got there in the end.

Or almost there.

Next I was asked to follow a different man to a bank in another part of the airport so I could pay for my visa. This man was very polite and let everyone else go ahead of us in the queue which was not my favourite thing at the time but eventually, I paid the money, after correcting only a tiny bit of maths, then followed the other man back to the office and gave the receipt to the original little man.

Then the little man did some more filling in of forms and finally his boss came and stamped my passport, another man came and delivered my bag which had been circling the carousel having a whale of a time, and voila, I had 30 days in India at my disposal.

After having the contents of both bags x-rayed and then checked by the Indian Richard Gere from Officer and a Gentleman, I emerged, smiling, into the Mumbai sun.

The Ginger was beyond shocked to see the smile, but here�s the thing: even though it took one and a half hours and 10 people, everyone was lovely � friendly, interested, polite � just a little tied up in red tape.

And at the end of it, I was in Mumbai. What�s not to smile about?

Well, my dear sweet lovely little baby, The Wedding Bees, has finally hit the shelves. It's been a long time coming - my own fault but I do blame the fact that the day only has 24 hours in it and I'm a gal who really likes her sleep. And who writes two weekly columns and up until this month, a monthly one. And is always behind on her exercise. And her communications with friends and family. And updating Facebook. And her blog. Oh sheyoot: that reminds me, I have a whole other blog somewhere else that I have completely forgotten about! Must track that down so I can ignore it some more. Anyhoo, I'm just doing two events for The Wedding Bees: one in our lovely fallen (but not for long) city, Christchurch, and one in my old stomping ground, Arrowtown. They're going to be like my very own book club but bigger so as well as hearing me talk about The Wedding Bees, I'll be talking about other books as well. Or, if it really is like my very own book club, we will spend five minutes talking about books and then an hour talking about where to get your legs waxed and how to find the perfect red lipstick.