India

Well since I'm in India I thought I'd make a post :) I've come to Mumbai to work
at TIFR for three and a half weeks. I'm
working with Kajari Mazumdar on an analysis of Invisible Higgs Boson decays, which will form the backbone of my PhD thesis.
I arrived here on Monday (24th) after 19 hours travel, and I'm just about over the jet lag. Monday and Tuesday merged into Muesday and I've had to scribble down a makeshift calendar to help me keep track of the days.
Although the journey was long I actually enjoyed it. I was sat next to a builder from London - a real salt of the Earth - who was going to Kathmandu to walk for a few months. We parted ways at Doha. I arrived in Mumbai a bit sleepy but buzzing from that weird adrenaline you get when you go to a new place. Got through customs and passport control pretty quickly and was met by a driver from TIFR.
The drive through Mumbai was a real eye opener, like any city every inch of tarmac was being replaced, but here it was done by hand, the workers along with other families living by the roadside. It reminded me of a Roy Bailey song "... why choose to live where the petrol fumes go....its not our choice but a choice they made for us" (well something like that). And above this poverty there were huge adverts for ADSL and mobile phone companies. A really weird mix. At traffic lights people stop and try and sell you fruit and magazines ("What Car?"), and the driving is mania! Three cars where in england you'd maybe have one.
TIFR is a really nice place to work. It's on the Arabian sea (the site is on loan for 100 years from the Navy), you can see across the bay to the posh part of Mumbai (looks extra nice at night) and there a nice gardens around the buildings. Everything looks like it was designed and built in the 70's, and in a lot of cases hasn't be painted or repaired since. Still, I prefer it to CERN, perhaps because its new.
I'm staying on site at the guesthouse. My room is a bit run down, though not really any worse than my room in halls, but it's really homely. The walls are painted the colour of black birds eggs and there are two pigeons nesting above my window. When I shut the curtains they get scared and fly off, making me jump, so the curtains are staying open :) Sleeping has been hard because of crows and fighting ferral dogs.
Last night it rained quite hard, the smell was amazing and it's really freshened the air today - hurrah! Even Kajari was saying it was hot.
Well I'd best head back to the guesthouse as my friends CJ and Tara should be ringing in a bit to organise our trip to Goa next week. I'm really looking forward to it so will work all weekend so I can have as much time with them as possible.