On the decent into Mumbai, Hannah started to get real excited to see her parents, pawing at the windows, hyperventilating the works. I almost had to ask the pilot to drop the oxygen masks to get her under control.

Customs were a breeze and from leaving the plane and getting our bags we were approximately 5 minutes.

At the airport we had some time to kill so after a massive mission we found an internet café for the first time in about a week. After reading my emails I looked at the computer time and saw it read differently from my turkey black market watch, and according to it Hannah’s parents had been scheduled to land 20 minutes previously. Hannah started stressing when I tried to point out to her how the computer time was wrong.

I tried to add to the situation, “We probably missed them Hannah, they must have left without us.”

After waiting for 30 more minutes I started to believe myself. To kill some time Hannah stared daggers into my body.

Finally they arrived. Hannah’s prediction of her father, Charles, wearing a check shirt was true and her mother Glenys having tears in her eyes also spot on. It was all very emotional.

Charles was leading a team of 6 to go to this girls orphanage mission. This team consisted of Ziggy and Yvonne (married couple), Chiang (young doctor man) and Chris (our Australian/Indian guide) and this lady (I forgot her name) who was amazingly 80 or 90 and travelling! Crazy!

The plan was to drive from Mumbai to a small village off Poona and go to Mukti mission. It was a few hours away so Chris’s dad had organised a van for us. Along the way the driver took us all to McDonalds for a McChicken, McCurry.

Coming out of McCurryhouse Zig said, “Look at the tires on our van. The wire is sticking out and it’s going to blow soon.”

“Don’t worry there is a set of racing slicks as spare.” I pointed out at the completely bald spare tire underneath.

“Oh that’s comforting.”

We were quite lucky in that our van was air-conditioned and the windows were all curtained up. Otherwise we could have seen the state of the roads. As it was we were blissfully unawares, and ignorance is bliss.

Chris’s dad had organised to meet us at his friends’ house who was the Indian minister of something or rather. They had some snacks set out for us, some Indian sweets and pizza. My McCurry burger wasn’t enough and seeing as I didn’t want to offend the hosts I generously ate the 7 remaining slices of the 8 slice pizza. Sometimes I am a martyr. I sure took one for the team. I don’t know what they would have done without me. It could have harmed Indian Australian diplomatic relations for years to come. I left the place with a spring my step with the knowledge of having done something good.

Driving along my eagle eyes soon spotted the first monkey butler. I wished I had oxygen mask due to my lack of oxygen from hyperventilating. I couldn’t even speak just wave in the direction of the dancing monkeys. Hannah just nodded and smiled. At least she understood. The others just nodded and shuffled further away from me. Now I knew why my monkey butler plan had failed. I had been in countries without monkeys. I couldn’t believe I had overlooked such a thing. Now I was in the perfect place to launch my plan of taking on the evil taxi alliance.

Along the way the driver was getting lost so Chris handed him the phone to get directions. The police spotted it and took the passengers licence. The passenger and not the driver, because, I don’t know why.

This coming from a country where road rules are closer to suggestions and horns are for passing every car, bus, motorcycle, pedestrian, chicken, goat, cow, tree, dog, cat, field, house, interesting scenery, because you hadn’t horned in the last 2 second, it was sunny, rainy, cloudy, hot, cold. Besides that I guess you wouldn’t use the horn much except for maybe if you were happy, sad, excited, bored, your passenger was talking, being too quiet or you need to the loo.

Also if you are over-taking someone you flash your lights so the cars coming the other way slow down and get out of your way. Anyway I can’t see after all this why phoning and driving is such a crime. Chris slipped the driver 500 rupees, ($16) and driver ran up to the police and bribed him for his licence back. The policeman even gave him 300 change from the 500 rupee note. He must have bargained for the bribe. It seemed so strange and novel for the driver to give us the change back as well instead of taking it as a commission. An Egyptian would have taken it and slept soundly in the knowledge that he deserved the payment for pain and suffering caused.

While we were waiting for all this we saw a stall of coconuts and Hannah and I decided to show off our skills. We sauntered up.

“How much?” gesturing at the pile of coconuts.

“20 rupees” like 70c.

We gasped. “Expensive!”

He shrugged. Didn’t really care what we thought. We tried for a long time to get the price down but he refused. We walked away and walked back and still he didn’t lower the price. This wasn’t how the game was played. In the end we had to plead ignorance and grab a coconut and give the man 10 rupees and pretend we didn’t understand what he meant with the gesturing and grabbing of sticks and chasing us with raised fists. (Coconut Sellar above)

We returned proudly showing off our wares. The Indian driver man seemed confused and in the end told us you don’t bargain with the coconut dudes. You just pay the asking price. Everyone was pretty impressed with our efforts then. We didn’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.

In the end our 5 hours journey took about 9 hours. We found out the children had been waiting for us for about 4 hours with flowers and songs prepared. Whoops.

We were all pretty tired after a few days of constant travelling so we went straight to bed.