Michael Russell

Hi All,

So Mumbai, Gateway to India - Kate and I arrived midday in Mumbai airport, roughly 33C and the merking/jokers started from the off..overcharged for the cab, the driver going off to 'wash his face' to encourage us to go and purchase a bottle of water from the shop we had pulled up at, this was before we had enter left the airport car park!!

The journey from the airport to our hostel, the superbly named Hotel Volga II (surely the name of the hotel on the Starship Enterprise), was eventual to say the least... Indian drivers are best described as bad, no signaling and incessant honking. The journey also included slums on both sides of the street with adults/children squatting doing both sets of business on the side of the road.. add to this people sleeping on the side of the street and also on the central reservation. You can imagine the smell no doubt....

When we arrived at the hostel the cab driver tried to shoe us into another hostel, we casually strolled away from him and found our booked hostel, time for a nice relaxing nap we thought... the chap on the door apparently had no record of our booking and told us it was full up... then changed his mind and told us wait 30mins I will have a room. We were finally taken to the box (sorry room) and took whatever we were given really.

So Mumbai as a city, the Taj Mahal hotel is stunning, the Gateway to India lovely and the train station is a beautiful Victorian piece of architecture. Other than this Mumbai is rather charm less, I imagine Victorian London wouldn’t have been too dissimilar; hawkers and beggars and the personal hygiene of the cities inhabitants quite awful, spitting seems to be mandatory for both men and women in India!

Yesterday early morning we boarded the Konkan Railway to Goa and this was 12 hours of fun on an Indian sleeper train, it was pretty dirty but the views simply stunning.. I am currently in Arpora but looking to venture out to the old hippy beach in Northern Goa, Arambol.

I am having a slight technical hitch in uploading pics so I will try again in a couple of days.

All the Best, Get In! Game On!!