What an amazing country! I just got back from 2 1/2 weeks in India and I had an absolute ball. I was introduced by The Baby Whisperer Jo Ryan (http://babybliss.com.au/) to a friend of hers who lives in Mumbai and is a food and travel writer. Well, you can imagine my delight. What a wonderful person to meet – the person who knows where to eat and what to do. If you are ever going to India check out her site http://rakheeghelani.com/, she is a wealth of knowledge. And in all that time, where I don’t mind telling you I ate like an absolute pig, I never got sick once. Truth be told, I may have even put on one or 4 kilo’s. Time to start getting in shape for summer…

I ate South Indian, North Indian, Bengali, Goan, Rajasthani, and one day I had food described as “North West Frontier Food“. As epic as that was, perhaps the best thing I ate was at a street vendor who made a daal that I can still taste. For the princely sum of 35 rupees (62.7 of your Australian cents my friend) you got a bowl of this heavenly daal with 2 pieces of freshly baked hot naan. Soooooooo goooooooooooooooood! I followed that up with a trip to the street barber, my man Bablu, who was like a samurai with a razor, and for 30 rupees I got a shave and a face massage with rose scented oils.

As far as work was concerned, it was fantastic. I was working at a Sports Medicine / Orthopaedics Hospital in Mumbai. The head surgeon there is a bit of a legend in India because he operated on their most famous cricketer, Sachin Tendulkar. So people came from all over India to see him and get his opinion and apart from being a wizard of a surgeon (I watched him perform an arthroscopy in 8 minutes one time!), he was a wonderfully generous and benevolent man who worked extremely long hours and always made time for everyone.

I would help consult on borderline cases – someone that might need surgery but hopefully wouldn’t, and see if we could fix them up. Sometimes this was a lost cause but at other times we had great success. I was working alongside a couple of really talented physiotherapists and some Australian students who were doing a month long placement there as part of their course. As you would expect I took every chance I could get to act like a wise old Osteopath and dribble on about what I do and how I do it.

After work I was fortunate enough to get a few days off and so I visited Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur. This makes me a total cliche as they are the most touristy places anyone can go, but with good reason. They are all great cities and I have to say that the Taj Mahal is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. If you get the chance to go there in your lifetime I can’t recommend it highly enough. As usual, I was incredibly lucky as when I was driving to the Taj it was during a torrential downpour, but as I arrived the clouds parted and the sun came out, making for a truly memorable experience.

I’m told it rained non-stop while I was away. #sorrynotsorry. Should be fine now that I’m back. Hope you’re all well and I look forward to catching up next time you’re in.

Chris