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MUMBAI
It is difficult to start to write about Mumbai, I knew what to expect but still......
We had 2 long flights behind us, one from Miami to London where we spent 12 hours and met up with my parents whom we gave our winter clothes (thx lieverds! We love you!) and than 9,5 hours to Mumbai so we didn't get much sleep. The flight with Jet air was superb. We flew a Boeing 777 which had a lot of leg room, very comfortable chairs, great food and an on-board entertainment system so our first meeting with India was luxurious, but that all soon changed.
From the airport we took prepaid taxi to make sure we wouldn't be ripped of to much the second we arrived in India😊 With us in a Suzuki Alto and our bags on top of it we started our trip through Mumbai. Soon we found out that the traffic in India is not what you are used to.
For starters it seems that the horn of all Indian cars is attached to the accelerator, brake, indicator and the steering wheel, because whenever one of these attributes is moved the horn goes of. The other thing
is that although there are lines on the road nobody seems to care much about that, they rather drive on the lines than between them and whenever there is SOME place along side the road that it will quickly turn in to an extra lane and there is usually not more than 2mm space between two vehicles, rickshas and tuktuks alike, if there would be more space than that something would try to fill that place up, in other words CHAOS.
During the Taxi ride we said nothing to each other but in awe we stared out of the window at all the things we saw. Of course we had an idea what to expect but what we saw was worse than that. Of course the amount of people, this is not so strange because, greater Mumbai houses over 16mil. people and the area around it which is roughly the size of The Netherlands holds about 120mil. people. But the shocking thing was that they were just sitting and sleeping everywhere and everywhere was litter and dirt. Some people were laying in the middle of the street with all the others just walking around them. We had never seen
so much poverty in one place before. The huge amount of waste lying around also caused all kinds of aromas to pass under our noses realizing that would probably be what we would be smelling during our time in India 😊 It was all a bit of a shock taken that we just arrived from Miami Beach with all it glamor to Mumbai with so many poor people literately lying around.
Although we thought we did we didn't book the best hotels, paying more we now found out doesn't always mean a better hotel. It seams like that most people in that neighborhood are homeless and were sleeping in every possible corner on the streets. The room did have a AC but when turned on it made the noise of a chainsaw😊
We were expecting this all a little bit in Mumbai so we had planes only to stay there one night so we only had the first day (we arrived early in the morning) and a part of the second day. As soon as we settled our stuff in our hotel room we headed out to explore this wonderful city. We wanted to be adventures so we decided
to take the local train to a more interesting part of the city. After some hustle we managed to purchase 2 tickets for the train at the cost of 12 Rupees (30 Euro cent) after which our task was to find a matching train. Stations and trains are over crowded in India, during rush hour a train that is meant to carry 1800 passengers than holds 7500 so even finding a place to stand is hard, but rush hour was over so the train was only twice as full as it is suppose to be and we managed to acquire a nice little standing place for our selves. Now everywhere we went the People would stare at us so also in the train, why they do that we don't know, we are not exactly the first foreigners they have seen but they would keep staring the only way to make them stop was to stare back, but didn't stop all of them😊. After first getting of at the wrong station and having to wait for the next train we arrived at our chosen stop. Here we needed to purchase train tickets to our next destination. What we didn't know was
that it was a national holiday at that time in India resulting for us in no train tickets, so we had to book a bus ticket at some strange little place and hope that the bus would show up the other day (later we figured out that it was the first time we really got screwed)
There was not much to see around the central train station so we took a taxi to a more vibrant place. We had our selves dropped of at the “beach” but unfortunately this part of the beach consisted out of big block of concrete so we could only look at the water (I am not sure if you would want to go in any way). After we got something to eat (we didn't have the nerve yet to try something local) we went to explore the place a little. In the mean time Dari's foot started to hurt and was swollen but for now she decided to push on (my hero). We went on to look at Mumbai university which looks very traditional Indian and we watched some guys training their cricket skills, because if there is anything important to an Indian it is
cricked so you see it everywhere, played by young kids and old timers alike. After a couple of hours of walking Dari's feet were hurting really bad and started to look like to balloons, 24 hours without sleep, a huge time different and the climate change are just not healthy for you. We still had to get back to the hotel by train (Dari insisted, my little hero) and on the train it only got worse and worse. I got some Indian dude to give up his seat to her but that putted her far away from the exit. We were warned that 3 stops before you have to get of the train you got to make your way to the exit. Even when the train is still in motion the people are already jumping of and on the train and they don't care who they hit or hurt. Lucky for us we had some guy helping us telling the others that Dari was not going to be able to move that fast and they made some space for us to safely get of the train. By now the pain in Dari's feet was almost unbearable but she still refused
to give up and wanted to walk back to the hotel. Although it was only 500 or 600 hundred meters it seemed to take for ever and I really started be worried. Finally we got to the hotel where Dari dropped on the bad with fever and a lot of pain.
The next morning it was a little better but her feet still looked like little balloons and she was still in pain. We quickly made our way to where the bus was suppose to pick us up so that we could leave this city. I don't know rather it was because we were really really tired, or because of Dari' feet or maybe we were just in all the bad places but we just got the bad vibes in this city. Don't get me wrong I am not complaining but we really didn't feel good in this place, but we consider our selves lucky that we were able to visit this place!!!
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marcel
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twins!!
aloha aloha.....miami beach looks awesome guys.beach,sun and palmtrees,what more do ya need right,lol..joost this question is for you..lots of cool pictures but iam missing something here;) TWINS!!and please don t let me explain to you what that means,dude!! hahaha....cause that would be very disapointing..;;D NJOY your staying in INDIA......wear suncream,muahahahahaha!!ik zeg saluty alibampati als tie niet hangt dan staat tie gassie....laterzzzzz