Mumbai. Where the streets are paved

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Literally. It's a very weird feeling to go from being in cities where the roads are no more than just strips of tarmac and dust, to one which feels very westernised in it's design. The road layout typifies this. Tarmac roads, cambered into drainage gutters and flanked by pavements. I've never been so happy to see a pavement! No more risking your life by walking down the side of the road!

Mumbai is a city on the move. Constantly. It;'s 17 million (registered) inhabitants never seem to sleep, shops open until midnight, hundreds of bars and late night cafes. Its very un-Indian! I loved it, and not because of what it isn't. It feels like the India in motion that I was expecting to see a long time before we got to Mumbai.
We arrived late at night on a train from Ahmedabad into a different station than we had expected, also a lot further from the district we were aiming for, Colaba. After some heavy haggling with a taxi driver ( there aren't any tuk-tuks allowed in South Mumbai) we found our hotel building which in fact contained two hotels. We ended up taking the second one as ours was a lot pricier than we'd read.. The India
Guest House was more of a collection of cubicles than a guest house and we did our best to get sleep with the excitement of the next day keeping us awake!
We arose, and decided to go and get breakfast to work out our plan of action. Whilst sitting over a cup of coffee and a muffin and a cd of american hip-hop covers from 1998-2004 (hilarious at 10am!!) we decided to sort out the vitals first, a train ticket to Goa for a few days time and a ticket for the IPL cricket match on Monday. This was to be a bit more challenging than we had anticipated as the heat isn't so bad, but the humidity doesn't help you stay particularly dry and by the time we got to the station we weren't pretty sights! The station itself, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus or CST, is a masterpiece of Victorian Gothic architecture designed by a Brit (woop!) in the 19th Century and is now the busiest railway station in Asia.

It is massive!! This is just the front entrance of the waiting room!! Inside the station are masses of people all trying to get onto their trains by waiting around the platform to see if there have been any cancellations. The Indian Railway ticket system is very complex. There is the normal 'sell all the seats on the train', but this happens weeks in advance. Then there is a reserve list which those people on it can claim the cancelled seats. Then there is a waiting list to get on the reserve list! On top of that some tickets are held back until 48 hours before the train departs creating extra mayhem at the booking office! Anyway we got our tickets with no trouble as foreigners have their own quota of tickets (on some trains, not all..).
We then went in search of the Wankhede Stadium (don't laugh! :p) to get our tickets for the game on Monday afternoon. We got there eventually after I had taken us round in a big circle.. we couldn't wait for Monday to come! I have watched loads of IPL games on tv since we've been here and the atmosphere always looks amazing!! Needless to say it was! We had a bit of trouble at security as we couldn't take our cameras in which was a pain, we think it was something to do with the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008. But after a hasty round trip to the hotel we made it having only missed 2 balls of the first over. The noise when we walked out into our seating area was SO LOUD! It sent a rush up our spines and a smile beamed across our faces. Our seats came laden with goodies, Mumbai Indian flags (oh we'd both bought an Indians shirt too which we were obviously wearing), inflatable cricket bats and the infamous 4/6 sign to wave about! We had the best time there, one of my most memorable experiences and these are the reason why I came on this trip! :D
The rest of our time in Mumbai included a 1 hour boat ride out to Elephanta Island Caves which was cool (despite the fact we got on the wrong boat originally and went on a leisurely cruise of the harbour ha!). Watching the locals playing cricket at the Oval Maiden park right in the centre of the city, and getting drunk in a sports bar and then waking up everyone in the 'hotel' but we didn't care as they were noisy the whole of the rest of the time! 😊
Our overnight train to Goa was straight after the cricket so we were in good spirits and were excited to get to the beach!! We weren't disppointed...

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