Expat Archives - Rakhee Ghelani

White Night Melbourne 2016

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White Night is the Melbourne edition of an all night event, where the arts (in all its forms) takes over the CBD for 12 hours. While Paris was the first city to instigate its own White Night, my home town has made it its own. The first Melbourne White Night was in 2013, so I’ve never had…

Getting Beach Ready

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Before heading off on my rather last-minute sailing jaunt in Turkey I had to deal with the big issue of how to get myself a bikini body or at the very least beach ready in less than two weeks. Experience has taught me that no matter how many grapefruits I ate I was never going…

Peace, Love & Mung Beans: Should You Believe that Travel Blog About India

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I’m pretty sure this post isn’t going to win me some friends in the travel blogging space, but something happened yesterday that just infuriated me so much I felt the need to write about it. I put a photo on my personal (private) FB page and one of my “friends” (although not now as I’ve…

Expats Behaving Badly

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Something happened this week that made me so mad I felt compelled to write about it. Of all the things that annoy me about living in India, the thing that makes me most upset is when I see someone with means exploit someone without. In this instance it’s an Australian expat in India. The income…

Dating the Indian Woman

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A few regular readers have asked me recently why I haven’t written much about dating or Indian men lately. Truth be told, there really isn’t much to tell. I haven’t dated for a long time, and am actually quite happy that way. I do still have some interesting experiences trying to understand men here, but…

Happy Anniversary to Me : 2 Years Living in Bombay

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This week I celebrated two years of living in Bombay. To be honest, I never really believed that I would stay here that long, but now Bombay does feel like home. I have close friends here, established networks and am eking out an existence here. In many ways I am comfortable here in Mumbai, but…

The Big Fat Indian Wedding

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It had to happen, I just can’t believe it took me so long. Before you get too excited, no I didn’t get married. This is so much better! I dressed up in sarees, wore plenty of bling and partied away without the inevitable stress that comes with being a member of the wedding party. I had…

Dubai the City of Glamour: United Arab Emirates

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After a little hiatus, I am getting back into writing about a different location a week I have visited. This week it’s the United Arab Emirates, and more specifically Dubai. Dubai has a special place in my heart, I spent about 6 months there on a rotating fly in fly out arrangement about ten years…

The Day India Nearly Broke My Spirit

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I finally had that day where India nearly broke my spirit. It’s the end of monsoon, which means the air is thick with moisture and oh so very hot. Not the kind of weather where you want to be shuffled around from one government department to another, made to wait around cramped offices or having…

Back to Reality

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It has now been about a month since I returned to India, after a rather long visit to Australia. When I got on the flight to Mumbai I was feeling really excited about coming back home. It even surprised me when I started calling Mumbai home, but for now, that is exactly what it is…

Returning Home: Melbourne

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The day I landed in Melbourne was only 3 weeks shy of the two year anniversary of me leaving. I was really looking forward to my visit home, it had been a long time. There was a bit of nervous anticipation as I prepared to go back, I felt like so much about me had…

Melbourne: The Things I Have Missed

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I have been visiting Melbourne, which is home, for the past few weeks. I still have a couple of weeks to go before returning to Mumbai, but as I sit here on a cold, rainy day I am thinking of all the things that I have really missed here. Some that I knew I was…

Climate Change: From Mumbai to Melbourne

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Through Mumbai’s sweltering, suffocating Summer, I have spent many a day fantasising about rolling around in ice cold snow or being rugged up in layers of winter woolies. I have literally had dreams about it. So I was very excited about the prospect of escaping the sauna that is a Mumbai monsoon and spending some…

Bollywood: Where Heroes Can Be Villains

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There is an interesting thing I have observed in Indian culture, if someone is admired, lauded or dare I say worshipped, for some reason they seem to be above the law. They can do as much wrong as they want, but very few seem to care. Worse still, if you are poor, then your life…

Potluck Me: Starting a Business in India

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One of things I have always said that I love about India is that anything seems possible. Two years ago when I was leaving my job in a bank, if someone had told me I would be earning a living as a freelance consultant and writer, and setting up a couple of start-up businesses of…

Home: St Kilda

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I have travelled to 48 countries in the world, and consider myself a seasoned traveller. However so far my blog has only touched on my adventures of the past two years. So I have decided to challenge myself to relive the other places I have been and share with you the great, the harrowing, the…

Tiffins Galore: My Visit to Spice Box Tiffin Service

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As part of my day spent with the dabbawalas, I visited Spice Box who cook, pack and send off over 500 tiffin meals a day to hungry office workers all over Bombay. They use the dabbawalas to make the deliveries, and therefore have to have all their tiffins packed and ready to go before 10am in…

Theft on Indian Railways

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Yes, as you can tell by the title, theft on Indian Railways really does happen unfortunately. I travelled Indian Railways through most of my backpacking journeys across India, and in 9 months never had anything stolen nor felt unsafe. That is until a recent trip, which has now left me with a rather bad taste…

Keeping the Poor Down: India’s Growth Strategy

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I really struggle with seeing the poverty in India, and I have posted before about my struggles with poverty, charity, apathy towards the poor and my observations of some of the middle class. I have come to the conclusion that here in India it is not in the interests of anyone with power or money…

Mumbai versus Delhi: Where Would You Choose to Live?

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Delhi has recently been given a rather bad time in the media, particularly as a city for women (or perhaps more appropriately not for women). With this in the back of my mind, I now find myself pondering whether it is a city I could choose to live in. I went to Delhi last week…

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