Climbing at Manori Beach, Mumbai

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Manori beach is separated from the urban sprawl of north Mumbai by about 200m of estuary and by about two decades of development.

The beach, reached via narrow village lanes that smelt of drying fish, was empty apart from a group of teenagers playing cricket when we arrived at about 9am. Maybe that's because it's quite difficult to get to - we had to take a train, then an autorickshaw, then a ferry then another rickshaw.

As we walked north along the beach a young man started following us, and he continued to do so as we scrambled around a rocky headland. It turned out he was both drunk and lost and had hoped we knew where we were going. Little did he realise we were trying to find a piece of rock on which to go climbing.

Unlike in the UK, where every crag is documented and crawling with climbers, we had only a rough idea of where to find the Manori rocks. But just past the first headland, about a kilometre north of the beach, we found a section of sea cliff that was high enough to be worthwhile and which had the raw scars of snapped holds.

Tom battled against the scrub to set up a top rope. The base of the rock was in shade but it was already 30 degrees in the sun, so we had drunk half the water before even attempting a climb. These were short - about eight metres - and easy enough (french 3/4) for us to manage with some newly-acquired Mumbai sprawl around our waists.

We did just four routes before we had run out of fluids and decided to leave. As we were walking out we found a more developed area, just after a wide gully and near a small detached pinnacle. The cliff here was about eight metres high and even had a few anchor bolts at the top (10-ish routes, probably up to 6a and a couple of blanker bits). Some of the rock seemed to have a crust of pebbles that came loose underfoot, but other parts were lovely.

We fully intend to return with more water - if only for the escape from Mumbai.

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