Day 30 – arriving in Mumbai

As our time in Hampi ended we were slightly trepidatious for the 17 hour train we had booked to Mumbai. After a last lunch at our accommodation, we were a bit twitchy as our rickshaw driver was 20 minutes late to pick us up and we still needed to get out cash at an ATM to pay our hosts, which is not always the easiest to do in India! Krishna (from the sunrise tour) zoomed through the town, hurtling over speed bumps and whizzing between herds of cows. We made it with a few minutes to spare, found our carriage and sat down in a slightly sweaty state. Of course, the train didn’t set off on time and we sat at the platform for a further 30 minutes…

For the first four hours we had the carriage to ourselves and stretched out on a bunk each, reading our books and watching the never-ending corn fields pass by. At dinner time we were joined by a young couple and their baby who were very sweet but stressed out as their baby cried and cried with his poor parents taking him in and out of the carriage. We felt a bit bad that they were doing this for our benefit but by 10pm he finally settled down and we all climbed into our bunks for the remainder of our journey. Can’t say it was our best night of sleep and for once our train arrived on time… at 5am! We were hoping it would be more like 7am but bleary eyed and with aching backs we found ourselves standing on the platform with no plan and on about 5 hours sleep between us.

Mumbai’s impressive railway station (by day)

The sensible thing to do would have been to check into one of the station’s retiring rooms and get another few hours kip, but our brains weren’t fully functioning at that moment. Instead, we checked our large backpacks into the luggage lockers and jumped in a taxi to India Gate, Mumbai’s biggest attraction with the idea it would be quiet time to visit. After five minutes in the taxi, we arrived and got out, finally realising the sun wasn’t up for another 90 minutes and India Gate wasn’t accessible or lit up until then…

After googling ‘what to do in Mumbai at 5am’ didn’t throw up any good suggestions, we started wandering along the road and eventually came to the Taj Mahal Palace (not to be confused with the Taj Mahal), a famous hotel that has hosted many famous guests, is the location of many a Bollywood film and was tragically the main target of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. Rowan’s eyes lit up, “I bet their café will be open for a coffee”. Sure, it was something we had been planning to do but not in our current state, we looked a bit of a wreck in our train sleeping clothes, unwashed and greasy. I was more hesitant but as we had committed to being awake, we needed to find somewhere to hang out at least till sunrise. We traipsed through the airport style security and through the extremely grand foyer where they were setting up a very elaborate flower arrangement and finally into the café that was open for drinks only. We each bought an eye wateringly expensive coffee (it wasn’t even very good!) and watched the hotel workers get ready for the day and hatched a plan for our first day in Mumbai.

After we had eked out our coffee for as long as possible, we left the hotel to watch the sunrise over India Gate, along with the hundreds of pigeons who are attracted by corn to feature in tourist photos. We wandered through some of the back streets, it was a Sunday so a gentler introduction to Mumbai. We then sought out our second coffees and brekkie in a more affordable joint, collected our bags and dropped them off in our accommodation.

Powering on (not allowed to check into our room until the afternoon) we headed to Mumbai’s biggest museum ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya’ (a bit of a mouthful!). We walked around the cool rooms with archaeological, textile and painting collections and around its gardens. We then went around the modern art gallery and through Mumbai’s street art market where we bought some painted postcards.

We liked that cats had staked their claim to Mumbai, rather than the usual street dog-fests we’d encountered so far. They were very street-wise, much more so than us. They were kind enough to pose for some portraits.

We were finally able to check into our accommodation, and gratefully shower and collapse in bed for a couple of hours. We were a few floors above a barbershop who had some pretty outlandish advertising…

After a rest back at our accommodation, we headed back out to the now bustling streets grabbing beers and dinner before heading back for a well needed sleep!

Day 31 – Mumbai

After a good night’s sleep, we decided a walk along Mumbai’s sunset boulevard would be a nice way to start the day. Not so clever was our decision to walk there! Mumbai is not a very pedestrian friendly city as we found out walking along a four-lane road where both sides of pavement were currently completely dug up, we weaved in and out of Mumbai’s morning traffic until we eventually made it, slightly frazzled from the blaring horns and concentrating on not getting run over.

Cooled by some ice coffees we enjoyed the walk along the sea front, seeing more of the business district of Mumbai and across towards Bandra (apparently where all the Bollywood stars live).

In the evening, we walked down the stretch of Colaba Market which was insanely busy but fun to see everyone out in the evening haggling with the stallholders. We treated ourselves to some cocktails and a meal in a fancier restaurant and had some great paneer tikka and black dal before heading back for the night.

Day 32 – Mumbai

We checked out of our accommodation, storing our bags so we could go off to visit Elephanta Caves before leaving Mumbai.  We grabbed some vada pav from a nearby street food vendor for brekkie (sadly this may come back to haunt us….) with some masala chai and got a taxi down to the port. The caves are an hour boat ride away from India Gate and we hopped on the first boat leaving for the day watching all the enormous cargo ships leaving the port.

This may go badly…

We got off the boat and scampered along to try and see the caves before they got too busy. The caves contain huge stone sculptures cut out from the rock, some up to 7 metres, of Hindu gods and icons. They were incredibly impressive, particularly because of their huge scale and the fact they were completed 550 AD. After going round the caves, we sat in the shade watching the monkeys hang out and groom each other before heading back to the mainland on the boat.

We grabbed our bags and headed off to our next stop, Udaipur. Spoiler alert, this is where the street food comes back to haunt us… can’t wait to re-live those memories!