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The alarm woke us today at 3am and boy didn't we half feel it.... We were heading for an early morning flight to Mumbai. Our auto rickshaw driver was waiting for us downstairs asleep in the hotel lobby and in a poor attempt of fake sleeping to highlight the early hour... wasted on us! we were feeling it already. He then started again with the fare and how stingy we were being... He was constantly looking at more money from us, giving us his pity stories. We were told how much a fair price was and we were paying over that anyway so we stuck to our guns and paid the price we initially agreed. We arrived at the airport and he started again. This time Laura was majorly miffed and told him that he should be grateful as we paid way over the price and if he didn't like it then tough. I was tempted to give another hundred but she had that look in her eye so I ignored him and walked away lol. We found the terminal and got through check-in with no fuss... Laura located a WH Smith and she reacted like our euromillions numbers come up. She hadn't seen any magazines since leaving home so grabbed and bought a cosmopolitan magazine for £1.14.... This was supposedly a bargain but I would not know. She also grabbed a couple of snickers and we paid.
We then headed for a cup of tea, most of which ended up down my front... this was a good start to the day! The flight with air india express was comfortable although we got moved to seats next to the emergency exit and were then given detailed instructions on how to open it in an emergency by the stewardess... Did not fill me with great confidence and hopefully we wouldn't be tested on it... Luckily no such drill occurred and we landed in a misty Mumbai passing over the sprawling slums (used in slum-dog millionaire). We were both tired and Laura was less than impressed with the parenting behind as she had some kid kicking her chair the whole way.... however on leaving the plane on one of the air stewardesses had written down all the places to visit in Mumbai (she was from there) and we thought that was so sweet... we had only asked how much a taxi would be to our hotel.
We left the plane and got through arrivals and headed to the pre-paid taxi rank. We then had an hour drive south through the suburbs of Mumbai and it was obvious how economically diverse this city is, you go from slums to skyscrapers in an instant and the Indian people seemed to have a much more western look about them we have not been accustomed to.
We arrived at our hotel and were allowed to check in early, the room was quite small ...in fact I have seen bigger prison cells haha, but the bed was comfortable and had air conditioning so we had few complaints. We rested for the morning as we were both shattered ...sorted our laundry, watched telly and wrote postcards. At about lunchtime we took a walk to Chowpatty Beach where we lunched in quite an expensive little restaurant but the food was good. We had pizza and some nibbles and Laura had a huge iced tea which was yum.
We walked around and headed back to the hotel... It was sooooo hot. We enquired about sending from stuff home at the post office but found out it would cost over £20 to send 2.3kgs..... seemed a bit pricey to us so we opted not to got for it..... our instincts had homed into the tourist premium by now! You can tell as their eyes light up when they see you. We managed to get some sleep in the afternoon and headed out in the evening to get some food. It proved pretty fruitless and Laura got some bad vibes about the restaurants so we decided to go to the supermarket and have crisp sandwiches with a weird chilli and cheese spread....true traveller style. We settled down for night with our books and chilled, ready for our early start tomorrow sight seeing....
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Mum Hey in Mumbai for your last few days a fascinating city just watched a tv documentary..its Monsoon time here enjoy the sun xx