Mumbai, India

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After nearly missing the plane due to traffic on the M25, we boarded our 9 hour flight from Gatwick to Mumbai, arriving at 12.30am local time. We begrudgingly gave a porter 5 quid for carrying our bags less than 10 metres to a taxi and made it safely to our hostel 'Travellers Inn' after a lengthy drive past all the slums and stray dogs in the road.

Our first proper day in Mumbai began by being woken up to breakfast in bed - omelette, toast, banana and coffee. We ventured out of the hostel but I was quite nervous to go past the end of the road, since everything looked so different and chaotic and I thought for sure we would get lost. We got our bearings of the area, stopped for a drink to get out of the sun, and headed for Chowpatty beach. It was really nice walking along the wall by the sea and we even had a paddle in the murky water before getting our first curry (chana masala). Mumbai was a lot nicer than I thought it would be, everyone seemed very friendly, and it wasn't as dirty or smelly as people had made out (except for by the slums). I didn't even get stared at half as much as I thought I would which was a relief.

We went back to the hostel with intentions of booking a train ticket to Goa but instead fell asleep for 4 hours, probably from all of the heat and jet-lag. We awoke to find that my friend Pratik from Mumbai had tried calling the hotel four times and eventually we were ready for him to come pick us up. We went for a really tasty dinner that was too hot for me and then he drove us round on a night tour of Mumbai. He showed us the army and navy district Navy Nagar, where he had worked, another coast of Mumbai, and my favourite was the Banganga tank, which is this pool of clean fresh water that Pratik said nobody knew where the water truly comes from. It is believed that a god struck an arrow (Ban) into the stone to make the water flow continuously, and it is one of the oldest attractions in Mumbai, although I would not have liked to be there alone at night.

The next day the hostel staff told us that the trains to Goa were fully booked but they found us a night-bus that we could take that evening. We walked down to Colaba area, which has lots of stalls and then to the Gateway of India, from where we caught an hour-long boat to Elephanta Island (nope no Elephants, it got its name from the Portuguese explorers in the 17th century who found an elephant sculpture on the island but later dropped it in the sea after trying to take it home - it's now in Mumbai). We paired up with a German couple to get a guide to take us round the Hindu cave temples of Shiva, which are thought to have been carved between the 5th and 8th centuries. Even though there was a lot of damage to the carvings by the Portuguese, these were really spectacular to see, as well as the crowds of monkeys trying to steal people's food and drinks. On our way back down the 120 steps from the caves, we stopped off for a really tasty Goan fish curry, when our guide warned us against getting a night-bus to Goa, as 2 days before a driver was drunk and crashed the bus off a cliff, killing everyone. We did not want to hear this as we had already bought our tickets and wanted to get to Goa ASAP so we hoped that our driver would be safer, especially considering what had happened. We got the boat back to Mumbai and after frantically searching for the right street and bus we were finally on our way to Goa.

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Photos

Walk to Chowpatty Beach