Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Mumbai

Our flight to Mumbai felt like luxury, compared to the trains and buses we had travelled in previously.  
We arrived at 3:30pm and thought we would have time to walk around in the late afternoon and find some dinner. Little did we know it would take two hours just to get to our hotel from the airport and then by the time we checked in it was nearly 6pm so we ended up not exploring any parts of Mumbai and having dinner in the hotel restaurant. The two hours travel time from the airport is 'normal', as in there was no accidents or other hold ups.  Just the heavy amount of traffic in Mumbai makes the journey time so long. I have to remember 18.4 million people live in the city. Of that figure, 40% live in slums. That's more than the entire population of New Zealand living in slums. We read that some people who live in the slums actually have white collar city jobs and choose to continue to live in the slums with their families.
In Mumbai we found there wasn't too much to see and do.  It is known for its British influence in its architecture so we followed a walking guide from the lonely planet and walked to the main buildings/sites. The photo below is of the CST - a train station!!
This is us at India Gateway - built to commemorate the visit of Prince George (I think he was King by the time it was finished):

Our biggest achievement for the day was finding a bar that was able to play the All Blacks game for us.  We walked for ages looking for the Sports Bar, and eventually asked somewhere it was and they said it had closed down.  We were gutted so went back to a lonely planet recommended cafe that we had walked past. At Leopalds we asked them if they knew of anywhere that might play the rugby and they said they had loads of channels upstairs and to take a look. Bingo! We hit the jack pot. At the end of the day we ended up at the beach side which wasn't overly nice so we taxied back to our hotel for another rooftop dinner.  
Our second day saw us take a boat from India gateway and head out to Elephanta Island to see the caves.  The boat trip took an hour each way and was so damn boring.  We were navigating our way through the moored up ships in the boat channel.  I was counting to see how many life jackets there were on board as the boat was a heap of shit.  The locals were loving being on a boat and acted as though it was Christmas. Once we got to the Island it didn't take Nath and I too long to look through the caves.  I don't think it was worth having to endure the boat for.   However, they are a UNESCO heritage site and perhaps I am not giving them enough credit. They were created between AD 450 - 750 and contain India's most impressive temple carving.
 



After arriving back on the mainland we had lunch at McDonalds (needed some western food!) then headed to a Mexican restaurant advertising 999 Rs (£10) cocktails - all you can drink between 3:30-7:30. Too good an offer to turn down. While they weren't the best cocktails ever made, they were drinkable and gave us something to do for the afternoon.  We ended up having Mexican for dinner before crashing out for the night.  
The next day we had our flight to Goa, where we are now, so I will write a blog in a few days to let you know what we've been up to in Goa. I a nut shell the view from our window looks like this (not ideal when you're at the beach):


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