Hound the House Guest

We played host recently to our good mate Hound. He dropped in on us on his way to a nice, relaxing holiday in Europe.. The evening arrival time of Qantas flight from Australia means we can make it out to pick visitors. We were hoping the Noddy the Ambassador would get us out there but its wheels were packed up in the boot while the front end received some much needed attention. It would have been great to have Noddy to avoid the normal adventure to the Airport in a rickshaw. Our driver gave us the head wobble of "sure I know where I'm going", and off we went in the wrong direction, poor bugger didn't have a clue. Our lengthy and frustrating trip ended when the clutch cable snapped and the rickshaw came to a halt on the 10 lane, western expressway, which was in completely the wrong direction. Luckily the rain stopped for a minute and we played frogger crossing the traffic. We made it finally and as usual the flight was delayed..
It was all worth it though when Hound arrived to give us a big grin after seeing see his personalized welcome card... Welcome to Mumbai...
The next day we headed off with Ash to an expat brunch in the Taj Lands End 5 star hotel to watch the Aussies and the Kiwis followed by some of the Aus v Japan soccer match. The food was plentiful and it was raining Kingfishers which set us up for the night ahead. The Taj is where we met Alifiya (Lif) from Sydney, up here to be the GM of a new business. It didn't take much to convince her to give us a lift home and join us at China House for a night on the town.
Noddy had his wheels back on by the evening so we rolled to the Grand Hyatt in style. Actually we we cracked up with laughter when we saw the faces of the onlookers in the line waiting to get in to the club as we climbed out of the Ambassador in what felt like slow motion. Noddy disappeared to be valet parked next to the Mercedes and plush cars of the other guests..

Sunday was a slow day, with big plans of heading to South Bombay lost to naps on the couch while Hound did battle with his body coming to terms to being in India..
Monday we gave Hound a quick debrief from the Lonely Planet and he was sent off to the local train for his First Class train ride to town. Actually we weren't good hosts, we were at traffic lights which were about to change and decided he needed some adventure, so we booted him out and yelled some rough instructions out the window as we drove off.. To our relief we caught up with Hound and Ash at Leopold's Cafe doing the Shantaram pilgrimage tucking into some Chicken Tikka and a cold Kingfisher.
Tuesday came and we bid farewell to Hound the house guest. We called for a rickshaw, made sure the driver knew the International Terminal (the leaving India Terminal), well.. he smiled and wobbled his head... and we waved goodbye...

Hope your feeling better mate, great to see you!!