Jammin thru India Day 14 - Juhu, Mumbai

A relaxing day at Arunoday Singh's place right on Juhu Beach. It was good to catch up with my old friend and find out how it's going for a new actor in Bollywood. Arunoday was into dramatics during school days and it's nice to see that he's pursued his passion.

I had a wonderful Live Chat on Yahoo! India in the afternoon and enjoyed replying to interesting questions about travel and life on the road. See the replay here.

Then it was time for some bike maintenance. sanDRina's carburetor started acting up in the last few days. Her float bowl was overflowing and she was running very rich (too much fuel in the fuel-air mixture). I couldn't get her to idle at the stop lights through Bombay's traffic. Bharat from the Madras Bulls Motorcycle Club put me in touch with a local Bullet rider and he told me that Anthony was the best bike mechanic in Bombay. 

Anthony stripped the carb down and found that the o-ring in the float needle valve was past its due date and was letting fuel flow past into the bowl. That little o-ring served me well over these past few years and it was sent to o-ring heaven A new o-ring was installed and voila, no more over-flowing float bowl but now sanDRina was running too lean at idle, since she was used to all that extra fuel coming in past the old o-ring, so Anthony put in a bigger pilot jet and now sanDRina's growling like a tiger.

Anthony also adjusted my loose shift lever with an interesting technique of widening the upper end of the bolt hole so that it would pinch tighter. I can see why he's revered by the bikers in Bombay. He comes from the Thrissur district in Kerala and has been a mechanic here for 35 years, initially working on old British bikes and then due to a lack of parts, switched to working on Royal Enfield Bullets.

Good to get greasy and meet the local mechanic :)

Watch the helmet-cam video of Jay's entry into Mumbai.

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TRAVEL NOTES

Mumbai, still known to old loyalists as Bombay, is India's largest metropolis and the country's financial nerve centre, besides being its entertainment hub. Here, Jay stayed with an actor friend at Juhu, an upmarket beach suburb popular with Bollywood stars. As with other large cities, Mumbai has many faces. Explore at least two of them:

Dhobi Ghat near the Mahalaxmi Race Course is where Mumbai's dirty laundry gets washed the old-fashioned way.
View slideshow: No dirty linen in Mumbai's Dhobi Ghat

A splash of paint turns the grey walls of Bandra, one of the city's oldest and most colourful suburbs, into a living, throbbing memoir of its heritage.
View slideshow: The WALL Project