Mumbai (29th-30th Jan)

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We were pleasantly surprised by Mumbai. We’d been warned that it was very chaotic and dirty but in fact the areas we saw (Coloba) were actually quite Western, well laid out and with some interesting architecture. It was also a lot warmer and humid than it had been, which made a nice change, although I’m sure it won’t be long before we’re complaining of being too hot (in true British style!).

Due to the late arrival of our train, we only had one day in Mumbai, but you could easily spend a couple of days there. We stayed at Bentley’s Hotel, and luckily booked our room in advance as it was very popular. Our room was pretty large and clean but quite expensive, though that’s Mumbai for you.

Having slept most of the time on the train, we were up at the crack of dawn with our principle objective of the day being to send the infamous elephant home! So we headed straight for a DHL office. For the guys at Kahna, it actually weighed in at just over 17kg, but this added up to a more than hefty bill to send it home (nearly double what we paid for it)! Oh well, we think we’ve learnt our lesson…..for the time being!

After wishing the elephant farewell we then got Dani’s camera repaired, gorged ourselves on McDonalds (we hadn’t eaten for 2 days!) and then updated our blog. We indulged ourselves further in the afternoon with a trip to a very luxurious cinema to watch ‘Blood Diamond’….it puts Staines to shame! The film was excellent and we munched our way through a couple of boxes of popcorn, which was also very good!

In the evening the luxury continued and we dined at Sachin Tandulkar’s restaurant. The décor was really modern with lots of cricket memorabilia and photos. The food was exceptional, both Indian and Continental and the service was impeccable…we felt quite ashamed sitting there in our shorts and flip flops!!

All in all, a pretty awesome day, if somewhat expensive.

The following morning it was time to leave for Goa….

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