The Indian Adventure Begins

What a crazy first few hours to the Indian stretch of the trip!!! My brother and I arrived in Mumbai, India from Dubai, UAE at about 4am yesterday morning (March 5th) only to be confronted with a few problems that we managed to get out of fairly quickly...The first one was when we picked up our baggage from baggage claim, we found that the bag that I had just bought in Dubai had been opened from one side...Nothing was stolen!!! It is still a mystery but we do not believe that it just ripped open...It was right on the hem and a clean rip, so our suspicion is that it was cut open by someone who handles the bags when they come off of the plane...I got another bag today that seems to be a little stronger, so we shall see...They're not expensive so if worst comes to worst then I just buy yet another one... Hahahaha!!! I bought another one in the first place because it got to be annoying having to unpack everything to get to my things that were placed at the bottom of the bag... The second adventure also happened at the airport at about 5am when no one was there to pick us up! I had an e-mail confirmation from someone from the hotel that said that someone would be waiting at the airport with my name on a placard to pick us up so I was not too worried... Well, that was not the case!!!! We had to take out money from the ATM but neither of our cards worked so luckily I had some US Dollars that I exchanged at the airport at the Currency Exchange window and we paid for our taxi at the Prepaid Taxi window so we wouldn't get ripped off from the actual taxi drive!!! Then we eventually made it to our hotel that is overlooking the water and right down the street from the Gates of India...Upon arrival, the Indian desk agent was half asleep and woke up to tell us that our room wasn't ready yet and to go upstairs to the eating area to have a cup of coffee...Of course we did not want coffee at that hour and the only thing that we wanted was SLEEP!!! We went upstairs to the eating area anyway and came downstairs around 15 minutes later when our room was ready...It was great to get some sleep until we were woken up at about 9:30am to some banging from the outside that sounded like they were trying to break down the wall. It turned out to be construction but we couldn't handle it anymore so we asked to get a room change which we did... We moved to the exact opposite end of the hallway (still overlooking the water) where we had some peace and quiet and slept until about 12 noon....That is how the Indian Adventure has begun in a nutshell... Quite a wild beginning, but things have gotten LOTS better and assume will continue to get better!!!! :)