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Published: July 19th 2015
We spent the one night in Delhi before saying our good byes to our two week travel buddies. We had a train booked from Delhi to Mumbai, this was an overnight train and lucky for us we'd splashed out on first class again!...why not!? for all of £25 pound each we had our own room and despite the steward asking for tips and trying to add on money we had a lovely sleep and were fully rested when we arrived into Mumbai the following morning.
We stopped in a decent room for a couple of night to take in the sights of Mumbai. Mumbai, to us was a totally different side to India. It was modern and ld say almost had a European feel to it. There was of course LOTS of traffic and LOTs of people, but thats the norm and we are used to all that now. We couldnt find much to eat in the form of local food and dived into a wanabe TGI fridays type of establishment. The food was OK, we want what we call 'normal food' now, and the European style was a bit too rich for us, we were entertained by people looking
at the bullet holes in the wall from when some terrorists had a rampage round the city and the restaurant was a target, eek!.
The next day we completed the Mystical Mumbai dharavi slum tour. To be honest this was the whole reason for the stop in Mumbai, we wanted to learn and experience life within the slums. We didnt want a tour which was about gawping at poor people and felt this tour would offer something a little different. It is run by a group of young guys who are from and live within the slum, who are studying at the local university and have started this business to fund their studies, employ local people and provide a mixed more in depth insight into the slum. The tour lasted about 2 hours and consisted of learning about the many businesses which operate in the slum. These included it being an enormous recycling plant (all recycled by hand), the materials are retrieved from the streets of Mumbai, brought back to the slum to be recycled and sorted and sold to companies for their products in China and even America. We also saw the huge laundries which are on site,
the pottery and tile business. We learnt about how the residents gain electricity (by taking off the main supply line) and saw that the homes were quite nice with televisions, running water and off course electricity. We were under no elusions that we were taken to (probably) the nicer side of the slum, but either way found it really interesting and thought what these 20 year old men were running (business wise) was really inspiring. That afternoon we headed over to the Ghandi museum and learnt about Ghandis life (which we followed up by watching Ben Kinglsey interpretation- much better than the museums ancient diarama!). Lunch consisted of what we thought would be a major dose of food poisning and turned out to be a lovely (very cheap) meal on the beach which was a pleasant surprise.
Our final day in Mumbai (so we thought) we got up early and jumper on our next over night train journey (this time in 3rd class - we were now hard core travellors). 3rd class involves staying in a coach which is like a big dorm with three story bunk beds. My only worry was due to some advice from a friend
We are ALL one
Ghandi Museum, Mumbaito watch out who is above you as her brother was wee'd on from a child in the bunk above, this was noted. Having got up super early we both set up for a nice sleep and thought we were on our way to Goa. After 4 hours on the train we were confused when the train stopped for a while and after an hour everyone seemed to be getting off - we did not have a clue what was going on ? we stuck by the idea that if we stayed on the train it would eventually get moving - after a while (and when we were the last on the train bar 2 people) we were resuced by an Indian couple (who turned out to be dentists) who kindly explained that there had been a train crash further up the tracks, meaning the train service was backed up and we needed to get off and make our way back to Mumbai to catch another train. Great! We had no idea where we were and no idea what to do, we hung around with this couple long enough so they would help us - this is a tried and
tested method, and again it, it worked a charm!. They very kindly booked our return tickets for us, helped us up onto a seat with some space for bags and we chatted to them all the way back to Mumbai. Once back in Mumbai we decided to go back to the hotel we had been stopping in to steal their internet (they had no rooms for rent) and figure out a plan of how to get to Goa in time for Kate (a friend from home) arriving the next afternoon. This proved super stressful and definitely ended in a row as well as many a curse towards India and life in general. There were no trains running and buses were full. This meant there were only planes left which equals = a major withdraw from our money bank. After much deliberation the plane was the chosen as the best option, we then booked an aiprort hotel as our flight was at stupid o clock the next morning. Double expense. We booked a hotel with a pool (may as well as difference in cost to a hotel without a pool was minute) in the hope of having a relaxing afternoon sunbathing.
This semi happened - If l ignored the hotel staff staring at me (and not being very inconspicuous about it), by shutting my eyes it was relaxing, but with eyes opening was slightly annoying and a bit comical watching someone 'water the plants' on the roof, whilst actually water over the hotel roof as he missed the plants for staring at me. Luckily my hunky western boyfriend came to sunbathe with me, which deterred the stares slightly!
The next morning, we had another early start with yet MORE complications for printing off tickets and getting to the right check in desk - WHY IS EVERYTHING SO HARD WHEN IT DOESNT NEED TO BE!!!!????...but we made it and we were en route to Goa.
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