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MUMBAI(BOMBAY)
Day 1:
Ahhhh India! The land of curry, Bollywood and extreme noises. India is really in your face. After landing in the early morning, we went for a drive around Mumbai for an hour with a taxi driver, who didn't know where our hostel was, WE finally found it at 3 a clock in the morning.
Next day we decided to take it slow. The lack of sleep and energy was to noticeable in the body (and in the moods). We decided to take a quick breakfast and then sleep it of. We went for a walk down to the harbor in the afternoon to see the gateway of India. A beautiful building looking like that roundabout in Paris lying by the very filthy water. This was a present for King Georg II. Around the big monument, is a square full of people and we noticed pretty early, that we were the only whites around. It didn't take more than a couple of minutes, before the first strangers approached and wanted to take a picture with us.
Right next to Gateway of India is Taj Mahal Palace - a old hotel, which were the first hotel in India to employ women, and freedom fighters lived there for free during the uprising against Great Britain. There was attack by terrorist in 2008, where the outside of the building was burned and some people died during a shootout inside. The building was later fully restored and finished in 2010.
Suddenly it was time for out first real indian meal. ''One tandoori chicken and one chicken biryani, please'' we ordered in a small restaurant in the Colaba district. Still on bottled water though, we don't want to upset our stomachs.
Day 2:
Breakfast at our hostel turned out to be butter, jam and french toast. In tasty india this was kind of an upset, but never the less, it was free.
We had already planned to go to Elephanta Island - the island of Shiva. We got up in the morning, ate our free toast and went for the walk to Gateway of India, where the boats to the island where supposed to sail. Walking in Mumbai as a newbie is quite disturbing, every road crossing is a fight for your life, because it doesn't matter if the light is green or red, the cars drive anyway. This is a good training for your senses and quite fun, when you get the hang of it.
We paid 180 rupee (20 kr) for the boat trip. We didn't know why we would expect less, but the water is extremely muddy and full of trash. We didn't really mind, because we used the time with counting shoes floating around, but the fact is, that water around this city do really look like s***. And it becomes more clear, when you see the harbor a couple of hundred meters out. It starts disappearing into the city fog another 500 meters and the city is no longer visible through the heavy smog.
Elephanta are an island with a lot of caves built in mountains. The Buddhists started building the caves around year 600 AD and was since then finished by the Hindus. On the way to the caves, is 1 billion stairs (maybe exaggerating a bit) with little shops on each side the whole way up. We bought a guidebook along the way, this is a cheap way to avoid going to a place and just look at stone without knowing what the heck is going on. Some of the sculptures were broken after some portuguese soldiers fired shots into the caves to test the echo (yeah right, typical portuguese explaination).
Well anyway, we ended up seeing some stones and a monkey attack a tourist.
Back in Mumbai city - we went to the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India. The museum lies in a big beautiful building with a great garden. Inside was not that amazing, and we were both pretty exhausted, so after a few looks in the excibition halls, we went back to our hotel. Rickard passed out as soon as he hit the bed. Well nothing lasts forever, and we were woken up by people hitting on random materials outside and making loud noises, or as they call it in India, music. We rushed up and out. In the street we were met by a train of drummers and a car with speakers pumping right behind them. We guessed there was some celebration going on, we didn't know why - but we'll drink to that, so we went to a bar.
Day 3:
We checked out from the hotel in the morning and went for the train station to buy some tickets to the afternoon train. While waiting for the train, we went to the famous Crawford Market. They have all the usually stuff, like clothes, shoes and random electronics, but they also have dogs, cats and endangered animals, in form of birds, lizards which they are selling there too.
We didn't want to spend a lot of time in mumbai, because it is quite expensive, so we headed for Nashik. 3 and a half hour train ride north of Mumbai, which of course became 4 hour. We met a friendly guy on the train, who explained us how to book the trains online ourself (instead of getting ripped of by some ''tourist office'').
We sat in a open cabin (sleepers cabin, witch is the cheapest way to travel by train) with a lot of strangers packed in together, who all found it very amusing, that we were westerners and had no idea what was going on. There is a lot of sellers and beggars walking around, and in the beginning we thought all asked for our tickets. But we never thought, that we would see two transvestites going around the train clapping their hands loudly in peoples faces. They clapped and starred at us, we starred back, they clapped again and we still looked like question marks. Say what now? We asked if they wanted to see our tickets (strangely no one asked us to show tickets during the whole ride) but they just wanted 10 rupees, which they didn't get.
NEXT STOP - NASHIK
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