Arriving in Mumbai

Our arrival in Mumbai was calm and collected. Everyone rushed off the train when it arrived and we slowly followed suit and caught cabs to the hotel. 

Busy but not like Delhi, noisy but not like Delhi; just fun. Lots of green, open spaces, skyscrapers and people dressed less traditionally than Delhi. The piles of rubbish are not here, in fact if it were not for the dust it would be pretty clean. There are walkways over traffic all over the place giving pedestrians a safe and fumeless way to move around. 

Our hotel rooms were not ready so we went for breakfast. This time local food in the shape of dosa; thin crepe like bread wrapped around a filling. Mine tomato and damn good. A nice change. 

Yay hotel rooms ready we had a couple of hours to relax, shower and sleep. No where near long enough but a short free time is better than no free time and that shower was badly needed. 

Next minute it was lunch time. After a short cab ride we were at a Parsi restaurant. Parsi are adherents of the zoroastrian religion and worship fire. I visited a number of their temples in Iran. Baggy ordered for us; a chicken curry, mutton mince, bread rolls and eggs/mince shaped into balls and fried. All very tasty and a nice change from what we have been having. At Baggy’s insistence I finished it off with a rose jelly which sadly distracted from the delicious flavours of the curries but was refreshingly good. 

Time for a break. We had a window of about 2 hours for a break. This trip is insanely full on. Not like the usual Intrepid trips and I am missing the chance to just go wandering and people watch. I cant wait to get to Varanassi on my own. 

The break was quickly over and we jumped on a train to the beach that is not a beach. I mean its called a beach but there is no sand and the water comes right up the the retaining wall that is made if massive chunks of concrete. There is a nice promenade though with lots of lovely old art deco buildings so we wandered along there for a bit until I was desperate for a drink. I spied a hotel with a deck over looking the sea. Within a few minutes we had crossed the road and planted ourselves, cold drinks in hand, to watch the sunset. The air here is still not the greatest so nothing is particularly clear but it was a pretty site. 

Moving on and another train later we arrive at another beach. This time one with sand. Families were out sitting on the beach, playing with the kids and generally having fun. It was lovely to see. 

Further down the beach is the nightly food market where we tried a number of new flavours and textures. It was nice to have something other than a curry or dahl. 

There was one thing that was totally weird; a leaf on which was placed coconut, rose jam, some spices and then something flamable, which was then lit. The flaming thing was then poked in your mouth. I refused the flaming bit, a new plastic dental plate was not on my list of things to do whilst here. But even tho having a massive mouthful of almost indigestible food shoved in my mouth at once was revolting. The texture was awful, the flavour almost as bad. I wanted to spit it out. 

On that note we made our way back to our hotel. Another day done.