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Published: April 4th 2011
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Smell
It was a bit too much for poor angelo already. Friday (day 1.)
Well here we are, finally landed in Mumbai for the start of our big adventure! The flight felt quite short however as usual at immigration/customs the officer was confused by Angelo and kept asking him questions before finally letting him through. After collecting our baggage we booked a pre-paid taxi in the airport (which I recommend, as this prevents some of the locals ripping you off) and we got into it. Took around 2 hours to get to the hotel, half of this time was spent by our taxi driver trying to find out where our hotel was! One local got in and tried telling us our hotel had closed and that we should go to another, despite the fact we had showed him our booking confirmation!
Mumbai traffic is crazy and when I say crazy I mean we must have almost died 30 times just today. I will put up a video of what it is like to be in an Indian taxi. So our first thoughts on Mumbai? as much as it is a beautiful city (in its own way) it is also a very smelly city! But we like what we have seen so
Chowpatty Beach
Quite a really nice beach far. Just been out for an Indian which was fairly average and quite expensive by Indian standards.
Saturday (day 2) - We overslept today. Really overslept. So when we got up it was time to find somewhere to watch the cricket. We walked for around 1 hour before being told go to this/that place before we came to Universal Café which had more of a Mexican feel to it rather than Indian. We sat down and got our beers before the game started. The bar eventually filled out with avid Indian supporters. They are the most passionate of fans we’ve ever seen. They are cricket equivalent of Barcelona’s football fans. Angelo was donning his Sri Lanka shirt and was getting some funny looks from the locals. We watched the second half of the game in our hotel room and ordered some room service, and Angelo sulked as Sri Lanka lost!
Sunday (day 3)
The next day we had arranged for a local Taxi driver, Raju, to pick us up and show us the sights. He drove us round and we saw the Gateway of India, Gandhi’s house, dhobi gnat where they do all the washing in Mumbai and
took the ferry to Elephanta Island to see the Temple caves (this is where Angelo got chased by a small cow, both on the way in and on the way out paha was the funniest thing that has happened so far). We also stopped off at a temple. We found out Raju is from Varanasi, where we will be visiting in 3-4 weeks. He is also going home to visit family around the same time so we plan to call him so that he can show us around! Looking forward to this, we found Raju to be much more honest than the Taxi drivers we read about before coming away, and an Atheist which was interesting! He dropped us at a little restaurant which he said was ‘good, clean and cheap’ before saying our goodbyes, and it was indeed ‘good, clean and cheap’ and was a really nice little place down a back street called Prahats (i think). Food was nice and owner very friendly. Unfortunately Debbie had too much Sun and we left quickly to back to the hotel for a lie down.
Monday (Day 4) - Again we got up late. We nipped down to the bank
and took some money out for the following days. Visited the markets where they are selling fruit & veg, silk, spices, meat and animals - we bought some cashew nuts for our train journey tonight. We also visited St Thomas Cathedral, apparently the oldest British building in Mumbai which was nice. The rest of the day was spent wondering round, in and out of coffee shops and looking for somewhere to get on the net! which is this 'ere internet cafe we are sitting in now. Tonight we are off to Goa on a 12 hour overnight train - quite excited about getting on an Indian train!
Missing you all!
Deb & Ang
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