Mumbai

Our first Indian rail journey started with an obligatory delay of 1.5hrs - giving us more time to sample the tasty samosas on sale, washed down with Chai. When our train finally arrived we were the only white faces in the carriage feeding the curiosity of the rest of the passengers, this didn't detract from the whole experience though as we were able to escape the surrounding hustle and bustle by retreating to our upper bunks for a lengthy game of scrabble and an ok sleep / rest. Before we knew it it was morning and our train was pulling into the out-of-town station where we had to transfer to a surburban train to get into central Mumbai - Chris randomly decided to upgrade himself to 1st class leaving me in the crowded 2nd class carriage surrounded by tonnes of smelly Indian men, I was wondering if Chris had even got on the same train as me! We were reunited on the platform in Mumbai centre, Chris completely unaware he had been in 1st class and equally puzzled as to the where abouts of Georgie during the 30mins journey. (1st class means you get a padded seat rather than wooden bench - so quite an easy mistake to make). Turns out Mumbai is not the place for budget travellers, after over an hour of searching we ended up paying double the normal price for a real grotty windowless box room - this aided us in our decision to only spend two days in the city. This turned out to be a good plan as for all Mumbai is a nice city with big grand buildings, fancy architecture and relatively litter free streets (not to mention cow free!) we've seen this all before and as we are not yet in the market for shopping, it leaves little else to do to fill our time. This said we did make the most our limited time seeing all the sights and even catching a latest Bollywood release - 'Dohl' - we can recommend if anyone fancies renting it out! Then you can tell us what it was all about as it was all in Hindi with no subtitles! We also got our first taste of alcohol in over a month in a rather posh sports bar - Beer never tasted so good! Our 2nd evening was a real mixture, firstly enjoying a really fancy meal - not the location but the fact it was served with over 10 different curry dishes to try along with the normal accompanying rice, chapati & poppodum....a real feast taking over an hour to eat, and also included fruit salad desert for the 48 pence price tag! From here it was over to the super crowded train station for our 2nd sleeper train in 3 nights, half of Mumbai seemed to be on the move or least trying to get a kip on the floor of the train station - a sight if ever there was! This train journey bound for Goa was a litttle more civilised than the last as our 6 bunk open compartment was all fellow travellers so at least there was some good conversation.
Another mediocre sleep not helped by the odd rain shower splattering us through the open windows and the cockroaches crawling over our faces - the sucker on the bottom bunk (Chris) gets the worse deal. We were awoken around 6am by a barrage of train staff selling everything from tea/coffee to samosas, omlette sandwiches, masala dosa and many more alien Indian snacks/meals. This continued till gone 10am, making for the longest breakfast ever - if you can't beat them join them! It wasn't long till our tain pulled into a tiny rural station, our stop for our first Goan beach adventure. Let the good times begin......

The comfort zone.

Wow, a proper city skyline.

The overhyped Chowpatty Beach.

Mumbai Central by night.