Thursday, January 31st Suburban Highlights

Once more we went with the conference bus to see the tour company. We were scheduled to take the 4 -5 hour tour of the sights in the suburbs. (Mind you this wasn’t the suburb that we were staying in – it was one that was closer to the city. We really are far out.) We also were to find out how much the tour to Elephanta Island was going to cost. After much dithering and disorganization, the guy really wasn’t ready to tell us. He finally said that it would cost 2500 Rupees each. That would include two cars to the dock, the boat and entrance to the caves on the island. It would not include a guide. That was about $65 apiece. We said, “No thanks” and decided that if we weren’t going to get a guide, we could do the trip for much cheaper. We are getting really confident!

The Suburban Highlights tour again involved a lot of traffic, (everything here involves a lot of traffic) but not for as long a distance.

Our first stop was:

This was where the Beatles came. Now we know where all the money that the Hare Krishnas collected went.

I really like the guy with the glasses on the right.

This lady was stringing the flowers for the offerings.

It was nice to see some homes that were not hovels.

Next we drove by the Khar fishing village. The fisher folk dry the fish on scaffolding and also were drying salt. We didn’t stop because there wasn’t a whole lot to see and the smell would be rather strong.

We drove by Juhu beach and up to Mount Mary Basilica. We have seen a lot of different religious buildings here. This one was Catholic.

The stand selling candles also had wax holders in the shape of the thing you were praying for: a child, a house, an arm or leg.

The suburbs definitely had some higher end stores. It is interesting to see the various areas.

The last stop on the tour was the same department store that we had gone to on our first tour. We moaned and whined. Couldn’t we go for lunch instead? We had already visited one shop, wasn’t that enough? We had already been to this one! The guide said sorry, but it is required. (We really knew this. We were just yanking his chain. In China you have to go to the factories, in India it is tourist department stores.) He did promise that we only had to stay 10 minutes. It was more like 20, but we did get out quite quickly.

Since we could only be dropped off at one of our hotels, we decided to go for lunch to Felicia’s (another Hefei 8). The coffee shop had a great buffet. After lunch 3 of us took a taxi and 3 an auto rickshaw.

This was the banquet night. It was being held in the garden of our hotel. It was a really nice idea, because the physicists have been inside almost continuously all week. Unfortunately, it was the chilliest night here. They started by passing out orange juice and soda. Oh, oh, a dry event? Things got better when they broke out the beer, wine and hard stuff.

They had a buffet. We all chatted awhile after dinner, but I heard Chuck snore and snort himself awake, and I was getting cold, so we excused ourselves and headed inside to bed.