Mumbai Magic

The thin red curtain to my bedroom was flung open by one of the train porters at half 7. I assumed that we were nearing our destination. Either that or I had been snoring too loud. But no. it seemed like everyone else was also being woken in readiness for the terminal station. We collected our things and jumped off the train that had unfortunately got in on-time. It meant that we had an early morning dash to the hotel and a potential few-hour wait before we could check-in, but we had little else to do so we set off for the taxi rank.

The bloke who got was an absolute idiot. He couldn’t find the hotel but that might be because the directions from Booking.com weren’t great either. But when we did eventually get there we were quite pleased. It was way out in the sticks and away from all the touristy areas, but the astronomical prices they can charge in Mumbai meant that we had struggled to find anywhere good near the south, where all the good stuff is. We took a seat while they made up the room and thankfully we were in there by about 9:00am.

James (pretend) reading the Indian Times

After a snooze and a quick scout of the area we jumped in a taxi and headed south to see the Gateway to India. We knew we were close when we spotted a few more Westerners hanging around the place, and then it was confirmed by the presence of a Pizza Express. Sure enough, a little further down the road, there it was. And what a sight it is. Standing proudly at the harbour front it is similar to the India Gate in Delhi but with more people around it as there is not so much space to mingle through the crowds. Almost opposite the Gateway is the Taj Hotel, which was the subject of the terrorist attack a few years ago. We didn’t even want to think about how much it would cost to stay there considering the price we were paying to be out in the sticks!

Gateway To India

Our next port of call was one of the many market streets nearby, so we followed the map and found it straight off. It wasn’t the most amazing street market that we have been to in our travels, but we managed to pick up a few items after some hard-bartering. Time was getting away from us so at that point we found another cab and bombed it back to the hotel. It isn’t too far to go from the hotel into the south and the view along the way is great. The streets seem so much calmer than Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, with a hefty dose of English colonial buildings along the way. I was already warming to Mumbai, and not just because the temperature was topping out at 30 degrees!

Some nice building in Mumbai...

To keep it simple (and clean!) we snuck down to the hotel restaurant for dinner and were surprised to find that it was an oriental restaurant. James still managed to get a curry though, and I went for the sizzling Japanese noodles, which were both pretty top-notch. Yes they were probably more expensive than we could have got somewhere else but it meant that we could get back to the room and see the end of the Spurs v Swansea match. And anyway, it’s our last few days and we have penny-pinched our way round the world so a couple of nice meals in the hotel restaurant has been well-earned I think!