Some photos of Mumbai

Above: Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) - The train station

Above: Cricket pitch tender

Above: Dyeing fabric

Above: Street food mixture of puffed rice, chopped nut, onions and

 tomatoes and - of course - chillies.

Above: 'hot hot samosa' ' Rs 12 (c. 10p!)

Above: Two out of millions of stray cats

Chewing Paan

Outside every restaurant in Mumbai, and probably India, there is a man selling 'paan'. These are 'betel' leaves with various fillings, some tobacco, some sweet, and are chewed in the side of ones mouth after a meal. They supposedly freshen the breath and aid digestion but mostly result in a lot of spitting. I chose to try a sweet paan. The paan wallah was filling betel leaves with lime paste, tobacco, nuts and spices, filling, folding and wrapping in a second leaf at a rate of about one every five seconds.

A request for a sweet one was obviously unusual and he took his time over it, taking down jars of sweets, chutney and nuts from the shellf above his head until there was much more than a mouthful on the leaf in front of him.

 He then folded the whole thing up into 'bite-sized' parcel and handed it to me with a grin.
I managed to bite off half of it, stuck it in the side of my mouth and wondered how long I was supposed to chew it for before I could spit it out. It tasted like soap and really nasty cough syrup and was full un-chewable bits which seemed a lot like rocks. It created a lot of juice, which explained all the spitting. The paan wallah told me to "keep chewing for many hours", and just spit out the excess juice. After a couple of minutes I'd had enough and spat the whole lot out into the gutter, despite the cries of protest from the audience which had gathered. Although only 30 rupees (about 20 pence) it was not an experince I planned to repeat.

Getting On With It

 After flopping on my bed I decided to snap out it, the journey hadn't been that bad, I was here, I had part two of my arrival plan (shower, walk, find water) and needed to just get on with it. 'Getting on with it' seems to be a theme in Mumbai (but then again so does not getting on with it, people are either very busy or doing nothing) It was definitely the trick to crossing the road, which I realised after waiting for quite a while for a nice long gap in the cars, motorbikes, taxis and tuktuks without much luck. I also learnt quickly that using the pavements was useless, pavements were for sitting on, sleeping on - this was the not getting on with it bit - or for setting up shop. I walked in the gutter like everyone else and hoped I wasn't going go get hit by a car (apparently unlike everyone else, who don't seem to care).

I walked around the block first just to orientate myself and found it was already much cooler than when I had arrived. I then headed to Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus, the main train station and a UNESCO world heritage site due to it's 'Victorian Italianate Gothic Revival architecture and traditional Mhugal buildings' (wikipedia). Unfortunately I missed all this as I managed to walk down the wrong road and ended up at the end of a very very long and deserted platform, underneath a very sad little 'Welcome to CST' sign and no discernible architecture what so ever, Gothic or otherwise. So I walked down the platform and eventually spotted the 'Mhugal buildings' and the hundreds of people pouring into it, but somehow not pouring out. I made my way straight through the building a out into the day light on the other side to get a look at the station, which was difficult for two reasons. First the pavement outside the station was filled with people, animals, stalls and more people. The second being that if you do manage to find a space it doesn't last for long before you're pushed out of the way. So sorry, there are no pictures, I will try again tomorrow from the other side of the road. I then decided to make my way back to the hostel, hoping I could find it. It was just round the corner as was a bank and a cafe where I stocked up on bottled water. I went back to my room, washed my filthy feet and fell asleep.

Arriving in Mumbai

After months and months of planning and counting down the weeks to go before I left, my day of departure still managed to creep up on me. It was a bit of a shock when I was left at the security gate of the airport and it hit me that after all those months of planning I was actually going to have to get on a plane and fly for eight hours to a country I've been to only once before as a sheparded school girl and to a city I've never been to before. I will admit I felt a bit sick. It is very confusing feeling anxious about something and excited at the same time. The flight was uneventful, I had three seats to myself so I managed to get some sleep.

I had a clear plan of what I had to do when I arrived in Mumbai; get some cash, find the pre-pay taxi rank and get to my hostel. Unfortunately none of this went very smoothly. My passport was looked at by security for a very long time and with much discussion from the people at security, then I was called back to have it looked at a second time - not hugely reassuring. Then there wasn't any cash in any of the ATMs in the airport, so I changed some dollars instead. This which was not a problem but another bump in my cunning and well researched plan specifically designed to make arriving stress free (something I suppose im going to have to get used to). So I got to the taxi rank and gave them the address of my hostel and they gave me a little pink chit and directed me outside, upon which the little pink chit was immediately taken from me and myself and my bag were bundled into a taxi. A few minutes into the journey it occured to me that this could be any random man with a van and not the one I had paid for at the airport, but it did have the same number on the side of it as on the chit, so if it was a scam it was a very organised one.

After driving for about 90 minutes we pulled up in what was pretty much the middle of the road and the driver announced "here". I looked around but I couldn't see the hostel or, as the second line of it's address claims, the cafe which it is 'behind'*. So I told the driver my address again and stayed where I was. When he realised I wasn't getting out he asked a passer-by for directions, then drove for another minute or so before stopping in the middle of the road again and announcing "here". This entire process was repeated several times until we actually found the hostel and my lugged by bag up the stairs to reception. Thankfully they knew who I was and my room was ready. It was 3 hours since I had gotten of the plane and 16 hours since I had left home and I was exhausted. I really hoped this whole travelling thing was going to get easier.

*The address of my hostel is 'The Traveller's Inn, 26 Adi Marzban Path, behind Cafe Universal, Fort, Mumbai', unfortunately no one seems to have heard of Cafe Universal, making it rather useless as an address.

Tentative Itinerary

When people ask me where I'm going on my travels I just say 'everywhere'. This is not helpful and also not true. I tend to say this because the list of countries I want to visit is rather long (around 18). Below is a tentative itinerary which is subject to change. By that I mean that it will change, probably when I realise that it is not so easy to simply 'pop into' Burma. Sorry - Myanmar.

24th Feb: Fly to Mumbai, India.

x2 months in India and x2 weeks in Nepal

17th May: Fly from Delhi to Bangkok, Thailand.

17th-31st May - Diving off of Koh Tao, Thailand
June & July: Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos
August & Sept: x2 weeks in Myanmar/Burma then the Philippines and maybe Indonesia and Malaysia.

1st October: Fly from Bangkok to Auckland, New Zealand with a change over in Sydney, Aus.

1st November: Fly from Auckland to Santiago, Chile

Travel through Chile, Bolivia and Peru

20th December: Fly from Lima, Peru back to the UK with a change over in Madrid.