First impressions

---

I'm now in Amritsar after a fairly straightforward, if rather long, journey. Everything went according to plan in the transport section, just a minor problem in the accommodation section!

My flight from Birmingham to Mumbai required a change of flights in Munich which necessitated an overnight stay there. I had booked ahead and had a place in a hostel quite near the Hauptbahnhof. There was a slight problem at Munich airport when my rucksack did not appear on the conveyor and everybody else from my flight had collected theirs and gone. A trip to the lost luggage counter and a half hour wait finally produced it - no explanation though as to why it got lost. Anyway because of this delay I was left with just a few minutes to catch the last bus into the city centre.

There is a bus service that runs every twenty minutes but the 9pm service was the last of the day. The journey takes about 45 minutes and a bought a return ticket for 17 euros since I had to return the next morning. I stayed at the 4you hostel which was only 5 minutes away from the bus stop by the Hauptbahnhof. The hostel was fine and included byreakfast which was handy. The next morning I caught the bus back to the airport and the Mumbai flight left about 30 minutes behind schedule.

We actually arrived over Mumbai 30 minutes early so the pilot must have had his foot down (or is it throttle in?) howver we had to park in the air for half an hour and park on the taxi path for another half hour before we could deplane so that wiped out the time saved in the flight. No problems leaving Mumbai airport - there are fixed-price pre-paid taxis. My quote was for 800 rupeees (about 10 pounds sterling) which i thought was quite expensive and way above what the guidebook had suggested, but at midnight when you're worried about getting the hotel before they re-let your room, you just have to take it. My teaxi ride back to a train station about the same distance the next morning only cost 350 reupees though!

Anyway, we arrived at the hotel at about 1:30am. My driver didn't speak a word of English and also clearly had very little idea where Lamington Road was, even though on the map it had seemed like quite a main street in the main centre of Mumbai. We ended up having to ask for directions 5 times but we eventually go there. Getting into the hotel was the next problem though. It occupied the top floor of 5-storey building. There was an illuminated sign outside with the name of the hotel and a sign at the bottom of the stairs saying it was on the top floor. There was a lift but it doesn't work after midnight and the stairs were totally dark in places. I eventually got to the top floor - there had been no sign since the bottom and at the top was just an unsined door, no window or anything. I banged on the door but no reply so I walked back down again thinking I would have to try and find somewhere else (I had booked and paid for thsi hotel on the Internet some weeks earlier). Despite the hour there were a few guys around and after I had explained my problem they went back up to the top of the stairs and managed to get someone to come and open the door - it was the hotel! Next problem though - they were not expecting me and had no communication about my booking from the agency I had booked through (Called Agoda so I suggest you avoid using it!). They also initaially said they had no spare rooms but eventually decided that they did have one and I could have it.

i wasn't too tired despite it by then being 2am as India is 4 and a half hours ahead of the UK so really it was only like 9:30. I manged to haver a decent night's sleep and when I got up and went back to the reception, they had contacted Agoda and confirmed my reservation and that I had paid so everything turned out OK in the end. After some breakfast over the road I wondered along to a taxi rank where half a dozen taxis were looking for business. I needed to get to a station called Bandra Terminus which was where my train to Amritsar was due to leave from. The tax journey took about 45 minutes and I was there in plenty of time.

I had booked an air-conditioned sleeper berth as the journey time from Mumbai to Amritsar is 32 hours. On Indian overnight trains, a list of names and berth numbers is pasted onto the outside of the train carriage next to the door of each carraige. After asking help from someone on the platform, I was directed to the front of the train and though I found plenty of carriages with reservation lists, I couldn't see my name. In fact I had been directed wrongly and much further towards the rear I eventually found my name on the list. I had bought a 15-day IndiaRail pass whilst in the UK and had booked my 4 planned overnight trainsin 2nd class air-conditioned sleeper carriages (Indian trains have about 5 different classes). The carriage was divided into compartments of 4 berths (2 above, 2 below) and I was sharing with an Indian family, a couple with a young child.

The journey was pretty uneventful but a fascinating introduction to Indian life (if you ignore the hotel problem the previous night). The train stopped at about 30 stations on its journey and the main thing that struck me was the vast number of people everywhere. Every station we stopped at was crowded with people standing, sitting and sleeping, selling things and occasionally begging. Whenever we passed through a level crossing, there were long queues of traffic in both directions. We stopped at one signal whilst my carriage was on the level crossing. Many of the pedestrians who were waiting to cross the tracks simply climbed up into our carriage and out through the opposite door rather than wait for the train to move!



So here I am in Amritsar - in a few minutes I am going along to the golden temple (it's about 9:15pm as I write this) since there is a ceremony each evening when the Sikh holy book is carried from its daytime location back into its storage place. Hopefully I will be able to write about that in my next blog.

---