It's Morning in Mumbai!

January 5th,
In Bombay's Victoria Terminus (now called Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) we again ran the gauntlet of porters and taxi-wallahs, though this time I was not prepared -- still we paid a couple of porters a hundred rupees to carry some bags a hundred yards to their friend the taxi guy, who then haggled through a long negotiation about our destination (about which I, it turned out, was mistaken) and the price. But we got a tour of Bombay out of it, and finally arrived at the Methodist Center -- the headquarters for the Methodist Church in India, where the top two floors are reserved for guest rooms: Spartan, clean, safe, methodist. The Bishop of Hyderabad was staying there as well, in town for some meetings. He reminisced about Woodstock and property transfers (the Presbyterian and Methodist churches used to own most of the houses around Woodstock School, but recently transferred all title to the Church of North India Woodstock Trust). The Methodist Center is located near the YMCA, and near Mumbai Central Station. Also, by the way, it's warm. In this city, anything below 20 degrees (68fahrenheit) is Cold. We were hot and sweaty for the first time in several months!
After learning the proper price for a taxi, we negotiated a ride to the Gateway Of India for 70 rupees, and battled the horde of persistent vendors and touts and tourguides to escape into town to seek a nice lunch -- Christopher got a real steak sandwich! Jeff got a real draft beer, at Cafe Mondegar! We walked a bit more, but all were tired, so we went back to Victoria Terminus to see the outrageous colonial architecture, and caught a cab back to the guest house. We walked that evening to a nearby "family vegetarian" restaurant (Christopher: "But I'm not a vegetarian, so I can't eat here!"), for South-Indian forms of pizza and spaghetti and curry. This area is not a standard tourist area, so we were the only non-Indian faces evident. This was surprising -- it felt like we got more stares (and even hisses, Barb reports) in Bombay than anywhere else.