Sarah - each day on our way to the bus stop we pass a row of shops. One of them is a woman selling pens, trinkets and other items, as well as offering "mehinde" - a form of skin design done with a henna mixture. I decide to get my foot "done" and the shopkeeper fetches her 12 year old daughter. I'm seated on a stool with my foot on a low wooden stool and the girl takes a silver foil cone and snips the end off it. She squeezes some henna out (it's brown and rather runny!) and then starts to make a design starting on my ankle and covering my foot (see photo). The process took about half an hour, but the next step was to let it dry. Whilst I wait the shopkeeper and I chat. Her name is Miriam and she has four children. She tells me that she opens the shop at 10am and works until 10pm. Then she goes home (round the corner) and prepares tomorrow's schol lunches for the three younger children, going to bed around midnight. We have a cup of tea (I've learned that "lal chai" is Hindi for black tea which is what I drink here.) We then spend some time having a Hindi lesson, much to the amusement of Miriam and the neighbouring shopkeepers. I did learn another useful phrase - "Mujhe nahi cahie!" - I don't want it, and "Jao!" - Go AWAY....Another 30 mninutes pass and the henna is dry. I realise that I have on some sandals that, if I put on, would spoil the artwork. Hmm - what to do? The only solution is to walk back to the hotel with one shoe on and the other one off. The locals think this is very funny - some Western woman hopping along the street with what looks like mud on one foot and a sandal on the other. Luckily the hotel is not far away. When I get back to our room I realise that the henna is starting to come off in little mouse-dropping size lumps, all over the carpet. Clive fetches some newspaper and I gradually rub off the henna, to reveal the design underneath. A good alternative to having a tattoo as it fades after a couple of weeks and no pain!

In the evening we take the bus to Sharon and Andrew's place at Malabar Hill. Sharon and friends have arranged to learn a Bollywood dance routine to perform at a Christmas function, and we've been invited along. The house we go to makes even Sharon's place look small - the room we're dancing in is the dining room. There are ten of us, plus the dining table, and there's still plenty of room! Clive's the only bloke, but that doesn't faze him! We're learning a routine, and the instruction method is somewhat different from Ceroc. There are about 20 moves, and the instructor briefly walks through each group of four before going straight into the music. By the time you've got into the second group of four, you've forgotten the first four! Still, it's good fun and we'll try and remember it for a demo back in NZ! After the lesson Sarah and I do a Ceroc demo, although we weren't at our best. What we didn't realise was that Clive was coming down with a bout of the dreaded Dehli belly.