Tuesday, January 26th, 2016
It was Republic Day and I was still drunk from the night before. We forced our way out of bed to join the others for breakfast. I was in no mood for eating anything, but I couldn’t miss saying goodbye to two of our first friends on this entire trip, Bennie and Verena. They were going to leave our hotel that morning to stay the night at a super fancy one elsewhere in Mumbai before they returned home to Germany. We were sad to see them go.
We spent some time in the lobby trying to get our airport transport and flight to Thailand situated before returning to our room to take a nice long nap. I was wreaked. We tried the “hair of the dog method” with Carmel in our room as Amelia recovered, then got a breakfast to-go lined up with the lobby so we’d be set the next morning when it was time to leave. Carmel and Ameila didn’t fly out until 10 am, but decided to split a cab with us to the airport the next morning. We watched a cricket game on TV with Ray, Pat and Graham in the lobby, then returned to our room to try to recover some more. We paid the lobby another visit to say goodbye to Jim. We hoped to cross paths with him sometime when we returned to the States.
Everyone else was planning on joining the new members of the tour for dinner after they had their briefing. They seemed like a nice group.We were meeting at a restaurant called “Indigo.” Amelia still felt like death, so she decided to stay at the hotel. Nick and Jules wouldn’t be joining us at the restaurant since they wanted to grab some pizza instead. So after hanging out a bit out front of the hotel, we had a very emotional goodbye with them before they walked off. We had made so many friends on this trip. It was really shitty to say goodbye, but I felt in my heart that this wouldn’t be the last time we’d see all these incredible people.
We struggled to find a rickshaw or cab driver who knew where “Indigo” was located. Eventually we gave up and returned to “Leopard’s Cafe” where we got annihilated the night before. It was pretty busy in the restaurant but we managed to find a table. The three of us felt pretty gnarly and tried to eat what we could stomach.
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Start from the Beginning at Part 1: Don’t Forget to Pack Your Anxiety
Stubbs Rambles On 