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Published: December 3rd 2007
(Matt) Hello everyone, our first blog entry, hurray - I've been wanting to write that for ages! More entries to follow shortly, pending the availability of electricity and finding an internet cafe that will let us upload photos.
Mumbai Our first experience of Mumbai was a huge truck hurtling towards the passenger side of our taxi (admittedly our driver was trying to cross three lines of traffic in the wrong direction!). The taxi journey from the airport was like being in the live version of Wacky Races. People, animals, overloaded hand carts and hybrid motor vehicles cut each other up in a kind of weird race. My favourite sight was a young boy sitting on top of a speeding articulated lorry!
I don't think anything can prepare you for Mumbai, especially not an eight hour overnight flight, five and a half hours time difference and a mad taxi ride. As someone described it to me before we left, it's like having your senses turned up to maximum. We were dropped off at the train station - Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus) early afternoon. Apparently it is one of the busiest stations in Asia and it feels like it too. Loads of people were staring at us and we were like tourists on the London Underground (we kept getting in the way and banging into things, which didn't help the whole staring thing). Most people sit on the floor on the concourse area, porters pull huge overloaded hand carts, we saw a big rat on a platform and there was an overwhelming smell that I don't like to think about even now.
After about half an hour of being completely overwhelmed we decided to head for the Gateway of India which is on the waterfront South Mumbai. It's a really good place where everyone just hangs out. Someone tried to sell us a chicken lollipop, which I'm thinking might be a drumstick? Although it looked like mashed up chicken on a stick, in view of the fact it was kept in a box in burning heat we gave it a miss!
We also went on a 3 hour boat trip to Elephanta Island which was really good, they had loads of statues in caves (it was described a bit differently and better in the guide book) it reminded me of tomb raider. We saw a monkey attack a tourist for a bottle of fanta, I've never seen a monkey attack so that was quite cool (not for tourist obviously).
We went back to the train station and we had an all you can eat curry in a really good local cafe/restaurant. Needless to say, one day in and we're exhausted. Next step - Overnight train to Goa.
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Ben
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Hello
Hi Matt 'n' Cack Hope you're having fun. Ben x