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Unfortunately we both picked up dodgy stomachs on the last morning in Goa which is still effecting us a little bit now, wasn't the best timing before we left as we arrived in Mumbai at 5pm. If you think rush hour traffic in London might be bad, you should have seen 18 million people trying to commute! It just doesn't work! We later researched that the population in India is 1.2 billion compared with something the size of North America where population is 345 million. The concentration of people occupying one space is overwhelming, more so in Mumbai than we've seen so far. Mumbai shares the same unfriendly large city characteristics of London, in previous places locals would look at us with inquisition and smile when we looked back, most locals in Mumbai have an unfriendly stare and we can't say we're sorry to see the back of it. That being said we still had a great time there, the original hotel we had booked turned out to be largely a s*** hole! As we were both feeling horrendous from the bout of Delhi belly we promptly left, found an Internet cafe and booked ourselves into the radison to recover which was quite lavish but a bargain compared to uk prices. We hired another driver for the day after we were feeling better who took us to see, amongst other things, the gateway of India, Ghandi's house and the Royal Taj Mahal palace hotel which we popped into for a look around. As most of the residents were white European we fitted right in! We stopped in the square that is overlooked by the hotel for a couple of photos that our guide kindly took, only to be surrounded by locals taking photos of us, very bizarre!
Mumbai is also where the previous rule of the British is most prevalent. Hospitals, universities, rail infrastructure, huge magnificent buildings, all built by the British and all still standing A security guard at the station shook my hand, bowed and thanked me when he learnt we were English, very humbling.
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