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sorry for the long time between posts.

i spent last week in aurangabad, nashik, and bombay. near aurangabad are the ajanta and ellora caves, both really old carved-rock cave temples. it's amazing how well they have been preserved (they were only rediscovered in the 1800's i believe), particularly the wall paintings. my hard drive crashed recently, which partly accounts for the delay in posting and is the reason i cannot post pictures from the trip just yet. we also saw the poor man's taj mahal in aurangabad (bibi ka maqbara).

i only decided to go to nashik because it's the napa valley of india. yep, indian wineries. we spent the day going from winery to winery and in the vineyards. particularly impressive was the sula vineyards (http://www.sulawines.com). sula's the largest wine producer in india. i think the sula folks may not have appreciated me nearly as much as i enjoyed them given that they had to send a couple of men to hunt me down as i frolicked through their vineyards picking and eat from the hanging bunches of grapes. apparently these grapes are the late season variety, which means they are naturally very sweet and juicy. simply picking a grape from the bunch would often cause the juice in the grape to squirt a foot away!

finally, bombay. i was corrected a couple of times for calling it bombay, especially by the bus stand man in nashik who rather poignantly informed me that there were no buses to bombay, only mumbai. true, its name is mumbai. but i grew up calling it bombay. people in chennai don't get mad when the city is called madras. it's not derogatory to say bombay. same to same, as the indos say.

every time i go to bombay, i love the city more. the people are by far the most hip, well-traveled, and fun-loving of any indian city. some say bangalore is great in these respects - i'll write back at the end of the month when i'm there. bombay: the food is great - variety, quality, quantity, price. i went to a wine bar one night to meet the old roommate of a med school friend, which turned out to be a lot fun. in contrast, i cannot legally buy wine in chennai. i only say that to highlight the contrast because i do really really like chennai. but it's very different from bombay. i had great cheesecake at basilico, a cafe in colaba. a pitcher at a pizzeria on marine drive overlooking both the sea and the south bombay skyline after having spent the day roaming the narrow, hot and poverty-stricken yet cheery alleys of dharavi - the largest slum in asia. great pancakes and brownies at theobrama in bandra. the victorian architecture, the broad avenues, the parks (maidans) with their greenery, the cafes at every corner. it's hard to reconcile my experience of bombay with for instance the grim depictions of its workings in suketu mehta's maximum city.

will post pics soon. and i'll try to write something humorous tomorrow.