Another long travel day – 7 hours in the air to get to Mumbai and another five hours by car to get to the Surat area where Hima’s family lives. We arrived at Hima’s grandparents house around 7am, where we were promptly fed and then brought to where we are sleeping (about a block away from Hima’s grandparents). The room is lovely with an ensuite bathroom and a private balcony where we can watch guys playing Cricket if we’d like. Kevin may sneak over there one evening to learn…
After a couple of hours of rest and a shower (colder water is the norm here as the water heater is solar heated from the roof… cloudy day? Cold water. It’s a bit of a shock to the system in the beginning, but not so bad after you get used to it).
We headed back to Hima’s for lunch — vegetable quesadillas which were pretty good, and for a real tour of the area. While on the roof, we saw parrots! I’ve never seen a parrot outside of a zoo before so that was pretty cool (supposedly there are monkeys around here too, but I’m not sure we will get to see any 🙁 ).
Their house is huge with a lot of land which is a rarity in India since land prices are so expensive, plus they have land that is being farmed which we we also were able to tour. Banana trees, cauliflower and sugar cane were all being grown by people who farm her grandfather’s land.
The rest of the day/evening we spent in Surat. The drive was a whole new experience in itself, since we only had experience with the driving in Mumbai at night. In Surat, as Hima’s dad would say ‘people have no fear’. The lines on the road? Don’t mean anything. The maximum amount of people inside a rickshaw, on a bike, in a car? Doesn’t exist. Seatbelts? Nope. Helmets? Nope. Red stop lights? That means go. Have to cross the street? Just start walking. No fear.
I digress…
I came to India with all my wedding attire, but we were advised to wait to buy Kevin’s clothes when we get here, so that was the first stop. Of course, he’s never worn Indian clothing before, so he needed to try the style on to make sure it would be comfortable. He was about to go into the dressing room and was stopped (we didn’t understand what was happening, but Hima told us that they thought he was too big to use it… meaning too tall… we think!). Anyways, he had to try the clothes on, so he just changed right in the middle of the shop. No fear. Two outfits later and he is set. Pictures to come (he’s quite dazzling..).
Next stop? The beach! As I’m sure most of you know, I love the water. Anything to do with the ocean, I’m there. This beach was much different than any others I’ve been to… it was the Indian Ocean which was grey and dark water, but there was a nice sandy beach that had a year round carnival set up. As we were pulling up to the parking spot, Hima says “would you like to ride a camel?”. Long story short, we rode a camel!
Four of us on one camel was an entertaining sight to see, I’m sure. I was surprised that they had all four of us on it, but they did. If you’ve never ridden a camel before, picture being on top of a really tall horse with really swaying hips. As it was standing up with all of us, Hima and Uwi almost fell off, while the owner was yelling at us to ‘sit normal, sit normal!’. I’d like to know how one sits on a camel ‘normal’? Anyways, we spent the next seven hours (okay it was probably only 5 minutes, but felt like a year) riding along the beach. All four of us were ready to get off the second we got on, but we were definitely ready when it was time to get down. However since the stand up was nothing short of rocky, we were all dreading the sit down… We survived to tell the story and we can all check ‘Riding a Camel’ off our bucket list.
At this time, it was time for dinner and we headed to a fancy restaurant called Black Pepper. We let Hima and the crew order for us since we don’t know the names of any Indian food, and we all passed everything around. Surprisingly we liked most of the items — enough so that we walked away full, so our fears of the food are starting to lessen each time we eat. Three meals now of traditional Indian food, and we are not sick to our stomach and are going to bed full. I’d say that is a successful adventure.
