We landed in Bombay (Mumbai)

---

After 27 hrs on planes we arrived in Mumbai (Bombay) at 03:30 AM and met our driver, Amin, who gave us an amazing tour of Mumbai.

A city with a population somewhere between 15 and 20 million on an island about the size of Montreal Island.

As soon as you arrive in Bombay you notice the smell of the city. Here is an excerpt from a book called Shantaram where the authour, Gregory David Roberts, describes that smell that I cannot describe any better than this:

"The first thing I noticed about Bombay, on that first day, was the smell of the different air. I could smell it before I saw or heard anything of India, even as I walked along the umbilical corridor that connected the plane to the airport. I was excited and delighted by it, in that first Bombay minute ... . I know now that it's the sweet, sweating smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it's the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. It's the smell of gods, demons, empires and civilisations in resurrection and decay. It's the blue-skin smell of the sea, no matter where you are in the Island City, and the blood-metal smell of machines. It smells of the stir and sleep and waste of sixty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. It smells of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of the crucial failures and loves that produce our courage. It smells of ten thousand restaurants, 5000 temples, shrines, churches, and mosques, and of a 100 bazaars devoted exclusively to perfumes, spices, incense, and freshly cut flowers. .l.. "

---