I have never heard as many car horns in my life as I have in 2 days in Mumbai. Drivers, cyclists and pedestrians engage in a constant game of nerves. Red lights are just ornamentation. It's hot, noisy, bustling... I'm glad we came but I'm exhausted and happy to move on (to relaxing Bangkok!)...
We landed in Mumbai at 3am Thursday and we're here for 50 hours, wheels down to wheels up. The flight continued on to Hong Kong without us but everyone else seemed to decide that the only thing worse than a night flight is a night flight with a stop-off, so almost everyone got off. I wasn't sorry to see it go - the Cathay seats feel like a kidney-punch.
Made it to our hotel for 5am in a rather rickety taxi, and persuaded them to give us a room for a few hours until ours was ready. We have now left luxury behind. My doze was interrupted at 7am by a man making a lot of noise with a musical instrument (we were on the first floor). Eventually I was curious enough to have a look. It turned out to be a marching band - 100 men in white uniforms. I hadn't even booked an alarm call.
Up and at 'em by 1030 for a ferry to Elephanta Island. We quickly found the Gateway to India but - disaster - a big sign said the ferryport was closed today and tomorrow. It turned out that we were just in time to get the last ferry out before a naval exercise. One of my "tourist beware" things is people telling you that whatever you want to visit is closed and you'd be better off visiting something else that they can recommend, so it was a touch ironic to have people telling us that the thing we wanted was actually open.
The ferry had good views of the Gateway and, especially, its neighbour and ours, the Taj Mahal Hotel, something like 375 days after 2008's violence. There are still soldiers and metal detectors, and the most thorough bag searches and airport security I've ever seen.
The island was a good choice - it's a hot day but a lovely sea breeze on our 1 hour voyage. The island is famous for two things - caves with very old and impressive carvings (sadly a bit shot up by Portuguese soldiers who used them as a shooting range) and lots of monkeys.
We also ventured our first bit of Indian food - veggie only, which as you'd expect annoys me but better safe than sorry, less than 3 quid incl drinks - looking out over the bay, and bought a marble hand-carved elephant, very intricate, for less than 2 quid, on an island with a captive audience. Finally some good news for the finances after UAE, unless Lilly goes shopping crazy in the next 36 hours (made more likely by the prices to date!).
A taxi to the famous railway station - not bad - and our trademark too-much-walking-in-hot weather gives us the lay of the land, and by 430 we're ready for a drink at the Intercontinental's rooftop bar. Sadly it's not ready for us so we have juice and a cracking muffin in the lounge (cheap by swanky hotel standards) where we see that Sehwag has gone run crazy against Sri Lanka... And it's in Mumbai. The waiters, being Indian, love their cricket, and tell me it's just down the road - 50 metres away. If we go first thing tomorrow, Sehwag's close to 300, if he carries on like this he could even get 400 in the first hour, Tendulkar's next in... I popped over to the stadium but the ticket office has just closed. Back to the hotel and Lilly's on the roof now, enjoying the sunset.
India is a great place to buy books. They have special Indian subcontinent editions of English publishers' books: Lilly got a copy of Wolf Hall, not yet out in paperback back home, for three pounds. I got what is almost certainly a pirate copy of Superfreakonomics (also not yet a paperback) from a street vendor for just over a pound. I wonder if there's a chapter that relates to this...
Dinner - we manage to track down a recommended restaurant, Khyber, and agonise for a while about whether to eat meat. Jag has sternly warned us against it. But I've been vegetarian for over 18 hours and I've had enough. The kesar chicken is fantastic (and you all know how often I say that about food).
Back to our hotel and a much nicer room for an early night - shame about the kitchen noise. Will we get up in time for the Test tomorrow? Stay tuned...
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