Lost: Season 1

Today, we went to the Lost Island, which appeared out of a haze:

We saw the caves where the tailies lived:

And the barracks:

And the dock where Locke ruined it for everyone:

For some reason, what you don't see on the TV show is that there are like 10 monkeys there. And the monkeys are awesome. There were monkeys hanging from vines, monkeys walking around, and monkeys sunning themselves on rocks while other monkeys picked at their tummies. They are mischievous and sneaky creatures, and they will steal your food. And if you give them some of your food, they will hold onto the food you gave them while they go after the food you still have in your hand. When you ask for monkeys in India, India delivers:

On the boat ride back, I learned that what we had actually seen wasn't the Lost Island, but was instead Elephanta Island, an island off the coast of Mumbai with a very interesting series of caves and sculptures carved into the mountainside. Sadly, a lot of the sculpture has been damaged over time. They were, however, shooting a movie there at the time, so the place had a lot of dramatic lighting, and you all know how I feel about dramatic lighting.

After Elephanta, we rode to the Mumbai University, which is way nicer than any university I've ever been to, and has a tower modeled off the Tower of London that chimes like Big Ben. We broke open the delicious lunch Ben's nanny Dianne had made for us on the street outside the university, and many passerbys were confused about why the two white people and the asian were eating Indian food out of one tupperware container with three spoons on the street corner. Dianne had previously complained that Rachel never keeps chilies in the house, as she pulled chillies out of her purse. Bless Dianne.

Unphased, we walked down past a couple of disappointing things to the Price of Wales Museum. The museum has awesome grounds and is itself very cool looking, and inside has a small but fairly impressive collection of Indian artifacts. The old map room was particularly interesting, as none of the maps were correct (having been made by Europeans based off of other maps and hearsay from travellers returning from India), but also because it was the only room that had air conditioning.

We then drove off to the Gandhi market, another fabric market where I had much better luck than yesterday (hope you're excited, Anita), and stopped along the way (at Raju's suggestion) at a really beautiful Jain temple, which was a highlight, despite being listed as only worth one fork in Time Out: Mumbai.

After returning home, we had dinner with Rachel and Wayne, and we're now napping / packing for our early morning flight to Cochi tomorrow.

Monkey count: approximately 11 real, 1 fake, and 1 Zack Efron.