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We had intended to get an overnight train from Goa to Mumbai but even though we booked it 2 weeks in advance there were no oventight trains available so we ended up on the 11 hour day train. This wasn't as bad as we envisaged and we actually had a snooze on our beds for most of the journey. Arriving into Mumbai at about 10 at night we were really glad that we'd pre booked a hotel right next to the station which we could walk to without having to negotiate with dodgy Tuk Tuk drivers. The hotel didn't turn out to be the best, infested with cockroaches, but for the price and the location we decided to stay for our duration in Mumbai.
The following day we had a few errands to run like sending our souvenirs home. It turned out Indian post offices are quite an experience. You have to take your post to a Parcel Wallah on the street who neatly parcels it all up for you, then go back to the post office and queue for long distance delivery, which I might add cost nearly as much as the stuff we were sending. After the fun at the post office we checked out Crawford Market where Heather did some fine cartering for some shampoo (you have to barter for everything in India) and then wandered through to some animal stalls selling a selection of chicks, mice, rabbits, dogs, piranhas and parrots. In the afternoon we decided we'd go to Elephant Island which has temple caves carved into the hillside (unfortunately there are no elephants on the island and the name actually comes from a statue of an elephant that is no longer there either). The caves however are really impressive with seperate chambers and religious carvings bored out from the hillside, the likes of which we'd never seen before. We left Elephant Island, two model elephants heavier, on the last boat back which much to our annoyance dropped us 5km from where we got on. To make matters worse the main road was right next to a slum area and as we started to walk down it we were mobbed by a plethora of Indian street kids who nicked my sunglasses right from under my nose (thieving gits). We spent the rest of the evening having a few cheeky beers in a sports bar showing the United game and laughing over the adolescent thieves from earlier and also feeling thankful that I'd put my SLR camera back in my bag just before getting off the boat...
On our second day in Mumbai and our last day in India we decided to spend the day in the more affluent area of Mumbai near the man made beach called Chowpatty Beach. On route to the station we took a slight detour through KamaraNehru Park where hundreds of kids were playing cricket (you really got a feel for the passion this country has for the sport). We arrived at Chowpatty beach but finding very little to do there, even the Hanging Gardens that we'd noticed on the map turned out to be a disappointment. The journey was made worth while by visiting the Ghandi museum which is in the house where Ghandi stayed and worked whilst in Mumbai. The museum has possesions of Ghanid and letters he wrote to Roosevelt and even Hitler pleading with him not to start the war!!! The museum also had a great chronology of Ghandis life through little models. Momentous scenes of his life were depicted like him burning foreign clothing in the hope that India would become self sufficient and provide its own produce. The whole museum was one of the best we've ever been to and provoked quite strong emotions when reading about how Ghandi was murdered, he simply put his hands together and prayed for his killer...
Our last day ended on an even bigger high as we spent the evening in an Indian cinema watching the newest Bollywood film "Dirty Picture." The whole film was in Hindi but it didn't matter as the plot was really easy to follow. The highlight for us was the experience of being in an Indian cinema as the whole audience was cheering and laughing and yelling all the way through. We found it even more hillarious when there were some raunchy scenes and all the Indians jeered and wolf whistled (blue movies are clearly not that common here).
Much later that same evening (actually 4 the next morning) we flew out of India, having spent the night in the airport avoiding having to pay for another hotel, to Bangkok in Thailand!!!
And so begins the next part of our adventure....
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