From a very warm place

I stood at Heathrow last evening and asked "where shall we go?"   In his true, no-nonsense style, my Hero said "It'd better be Mumbai, because that's what it says on our tickets".

So a couple of hours later, having met Edward and Amy in the terminal, we did indeed take our four seats on the BA 777 flying to Mumbai, arriving at just gone 11am this morning; though the actual flight was just eight hours...a good night's sleep, in fact.

The honking, tooting traffic was dreadful and it took us a good hour to reach our hotel - our favourite Taj, right opposite the Gateway to India and a place which holds quite a few happy memories.

It's a city of contrasts, from the slums along both sides of the road in the area around the airport, to the flashy new skyscrapers in the business district.  Old and new stand side by side and during the next few days, we'll look forward to enjoying the best of both worlds.

One reason for the worse-than-normal traffic was that Benjamin Netanyahu is in town with the Prime Minister of India.  Not only that, but they are meeting in our hotel.  No wonder then, that security was tight - so tight as to be rather scary, especially in respect of the masked, armed guards by the hotel entrance with machine guns pointing at the front door (and us, as we walked through it).

Of course, we understand the need for such precautions, especially since only a few years ago this hotel suffered a dreadful attack which shocked us all, so we are patient.  Nevertheless, we are glad when the men move on mid afternoon and leave the hotel and the guests within it to breathe a collective sigh of relief and get back to normal.

What a beautiful place to hold a meeting, though.  Come to think of it, it's an even better place to spend a few days having fun!