Fun times in Mumbai

We're back in India! And this time, accompanied by our lovely housemate Jill. Fun times!

Like Jordan said, we've been pretty much taking it easy, doing a little bit of shopping and a lot of napping. Today was definitely our most eventful day so far: in the morning, we ventured out to the train station to buy tickets for the train to our next destination, Aurangabad (to visit the ancient cave temples of Ellora and Ajanta). The station itself, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, is worth mentioning. It is an immense piece of over-the-top gothic architecture - we took some pictures, but I doubt they will do justice to the way this building just dominates everything around it. It is also, according to my guidebook, the busiest train station in all of Asia.

After that, we took a ferry out into the bay to get to Elephanta Island, home to a temple to Shiva carved into a network of caves. It was pretty impressive - a lot of the carvings were in remarkable shape considering that they were 1300-1600 years old. The place was packed with Indian tourists, several of whom stopped us to take their picture with us, which is always fun.

By the time we had seen all of the caves, we were very ready to head back; we were positively melting. It is SO hot here, and we have to stay covered up for cultural reasons, which makes us that much hotter. I'm kind of dreading what the weather will be like when we move further inland. But, I guess this is what's to be expected when you decide to go to India during the hottest time of the year.

I think there are more things I could say about today, but to be honest, the combination of heat and jet lag (I've been awake since 2:30 AM today) is frying my brain a bit. Hopefully I'll be feeling a little more put together once I get my sleep schedule figured out.

We'll be heading to Aurangabad on an overnight train tomorrow night. Jordan is working on sorting through and posting our photos from Costa Rica on Facebook, and once he gets through those, we'll post what we've got from India. So we'll have pictures coming soon!