Whats that smell?? (Beginnings in Bombay)

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After 1 fantastic month in Africa we set off nervous and excited for our 2 months in India. No more tour groups, trucks or guides to ease us through this phase.

We landed in mumbai, our minds full of recent stories we had heard about how crazy the city is and taxi drivers trying to rip you off and touts trying to trick you. But after exchanging some money and getting a prepaid rickshaw to our hotel..... It was actually quite fine.

We did notice on the way to the hotel that nearly every truck has the slogan "ok horn please". This trend was to continue throughout the rest of India, and we soon found out that all drivers take this literally and use their horns excessively.

Mumbai is one of the most expensive places accommodation wise in India - we ended up in a room that cost about 30$. Extortion!

After a good nights rest, we walked around the city and saw some very curious signs around town, still not sure what to make of them, have a look for yourselves! We also stopped by the high court, no photos allowed unfortunately but it was interesting to see the comings and goings. And one of our favourite Indian things so far is the numerous holy cows all over the road - they are allowed to roam where ever they wish and act as if they own the place, stopping traffic everywhere you look. Not to mention relieving themselves any where they want!

We took in a trip to Elephanta Island, which impressed us greatly. Hard to do after nearly a year of travel. The island has a series of cave temples, with images of Shiva carved into the rocks. We took a boat out there from the Gateway of India, an iconic landmark in Mumbai beside the impressive and extremely expensive Taj Hotel.

Another thing we have loved in our first few days of India have been the fantastic vegetarian restaurants - we've both gone Vegetarian for a while to try and escape the delhi belly, and also cos it's just easier as most restaurants are vegetarian.

To get out of Mumbai, we had to sort out our train tickets to our next destination - Udaipur. We nearly paid double for train tickets, as Carol let some lady at the train station escort us outside to a travel agent - Carol really is an amateur at this travelling thing... 😊

All in all a very nice 4 days to start to our 2 months in big bad India

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Photos

Gateway of India
And the Taj hotel in the background

Comments

[Tom and Frances]

India
Great to see the start of your India trip - can't wait to see how it develops.