Three three-week trips in 2008. First trip -- culture shock, horror, sadness and a little homesickness. I'm a pampered American. I wasn't prepared. The second and third trips I had a couple of really good traveling companions which made things much better. We spent a couple of nights at Matheran, which was one of the most surreal experiences of my relatively sheltered life. You get dropped off at the bottom and then start hiking up. Boys with horses offer rides up for a fee. A horse-drawn cart makes its way up and down and you can hop on that for a fee too. Once you're up there, there is a "hotel", a couple of "restaurants", some "shops" and access to several vistas. From the drop off point on, no one we encountered spoke English. There were lots of things going on up there (of the WTF variety) including unexpected sitar music followed by India's answer to Wayne Newton (with a great sound system) belting out some Indian tunes late at night in the courtyard of the hotel. Lots if people came out and watched and started dancing...the sound of sitar and thumb cymbals reached a fevered crescendo at one point with bright blue flashing lights strobing out and for a second, I thought I was tripping. There was a horse stampede, encounters with trained monkey thieves and a bunch of other things that made me realize I wasn't in Kansas anymore. I LOVED that trip, but not until we were down from the hill and looking at it in the rear view mirror. I rambled like a moron. Sorry about that.