A Bombay Mix

I'm in Bombay/Mumbai at the World Social Forum. Delegates are beginnng to trickle in, but over 75,000 have registered, so it's going to be huge! This is my first time beyond Europe and the Middle East, and there is an explosion of experiences - sight, sounds and especially smells, that any visitor to India will be familiar with. I've just been wandering around the conferene grounds acclimatising and meeting people. The most fun was swinging on vines with some kids! So much great stuff is happening here, that I'm finding myself quadruple booked for most of the three seminar slots each day. I though Baghdad traffic was crazy - but Bombay can certainly compete for chaos on a grand scale - no roadblocks or tanks though, thank goodness. I find the WSF experience partiularly intriguing because it's the first time I've been to a stand alone civil society summit. Normally there are counter summits at IMF, WTO and G8 events, but this is unique in being internally driven (although the name is a counter to the World Economic Forum in Davos). In fact, bizarrely enough, there is actually a kind of counter summit to the WSF, called "Mumbai Resistane" (they've managed to graffiti half the city) which I understand is a really far left alternative. Can't type much more on this dodgy keyboard. One exciting thing to report, I'm having breakfast in a few days with a Nobel Prize winning economist. He's a bit of a personal hero, and I'm very embarrased because both sets of cloths i brought are already caked in grime!