Namaste to Mumbai, translated, Welcome to Mumbai. We arrived at the domestic airport and booked a taxi to our hotel. On the way to the taxi rank, we popped into the supermarket to buy some water. I have to mention that supermarket because it stocked so many English food brands, I was just walking around like a kid at Christmas shouting out all the product names. It was all junkie food bits off course but just to see familiar brands. I think the weirdest thing I saw in there, was that the freezers were full with Iceland packaged goods!! I don't know if I've now been away to long but I will never take Sainsbury's for granted again. After a traffic jammed journey to the Regent Hotel in South Mumbai, we settled in the room but didn't have long until we had to be back out the door again. Just enough time to shower and get in a cab to head to 'Bandra' which is North Mumbai. That night we met up with Pottsy's (our LOCOG buddies) brother and wife, who lives in Mumbai. Pottsy had put us in touch a couple of days ago and luckily we managed to catch Olly before he flew out of the country on business. We made a bit of a mistake in choosing the cab option over the train though, normally at home, cab would be quicker but not in this mad overcrowded city. Arriving at their flat, 90 minutes late, we couldn't apologise more, Olly had even had a little drive around looking for us because they were worried. We felt awful so got ourselves to the restaurant quick time. Olly and his wife, Etta, had guessed that we'd probably already had enough of Indian food and that we might want a change of scene for our taste buds so they introduced us to the Metro Pizza Mumbai. The girls said its a known pizza name back home and they have a few branches around London. Shows I need to experience different restaurants more when I'm back and move away from the Pizza Express voucher codes. I hope Metro menus are the same as they're here though, because we ordered a metre long pizza for the table, yes, that's right, a metre long pizza! I would like to say it lasted longer then five minutes but it definitely got vacuumed up quickly and we even ordered another normal pizza afterwards. It was really nice to sit with Olly and Etta and talk about their travelling experiences and how they've found living in Mumbai: and off course, lovely to chat about our memories of the 2012 Games, working with Pottsy and sharing our travel stories. A gone midnight finish in the end, latest night we'd had in a while!!

The next morning we had an early start because Etta had kindly set us up with her friend, Ishrad, who lives in a slum community in Mumbai, he was taking us on a tour of the biggest slums - in fact, where Slum Dog Millionaire was filmed. Ishrad had lived in the there most of his life so he was the perfect person to take us around and give us an insight into the lifestyle and working industries. Firstly he took us to a main road and explained a little about where we were and how his father moved here, when he was alone at the age of 8 years old to start a new life. Imagine moving away when you were 8 years old to fend for yourself? Ishrad asked us where we thought all these hundreds of people were coming from... looking clueless, he directed our attention towards a small black doorway and said, places like that. Heading in, he warned us to watch our heads and be careful where we trod. I felt like I was back in a version of the Vietnamese war tunnels again. My eyes had to adjust to the darkness, as I focused on the cracks of sunlight shining through the doorways leading into the different homes. We were brushing past people as we created alleyway traffic, they knew the in's and out's of these paths but it was so alien to us that we were going slower then most, including Ishrad who was scooting off ahead. There was light at the end of the tunnel, as they say. We stood there for a few minutes trying to gather a realisation of what we had just seen. Ishrad asked how many houses we thought we just walked past, I guessed 50 but he said approximately 300. Unbelievable. Next he took us to see how money is made in the slums. He showed us shop areas that were used for different industry purposes, such as; recycling plastic and cardboard, melting metals down, making clothes, creating leathers, producing colour dyes/soaps and selling off poultry. Theres estimated to be an annual turnover of $3 million dollars in the slums through these various industries, and apparently it's known that the slums are even home to a few millionaires. We went through a few more small alleyways, their Iiving conditions were so small and the amount of people that were squeezed into the tiny rooms were unthinkable - that goes for the work spaces too. I don't know what kind of picture I've just painted for you but I hope it's not a bad one because these people are pretty incredible. One of the biggest things I learnt from visiting the slums were that, some people were choosing to live here because they liked to! They have one of the best communities in the world, they have systems for everything, they help each other and they all know each other. Its incredible that with so little resource available to them, they have this knowledge on how to reuse almost everything; for example using an ingredient in elephant poo as an adhesive for recycling cupboard - no idea how they worked that out but its all about not wasting anything. People make the most of all spaces too, we saw men standing on the tin roofs, using them as work areas for drying clothes and recyclable materials. It was a strange emotional place to be, I zoned out at one point and just looked around me at kids playing in the pile of rubbish, pretending to build houses. It made me think how much I take it all for granted and how guilty that made me feel, which made me cry a little but then I thought about how happy everyone was that we met. Ishrad even said that this wasn't a bad place to live and it's a lot safer and nicer then people think before they come here. Which is true. There's a lot we didn't see so my opinion is only of the small fraction I saw but it defiantly changed my perspective on the Indian slums. Something tells me that the South American slums are quite different to these but it made me want to go and see!

The amount we had sweated that morning, it could've filled buckets. It was new levels of needing a shower, my skin was noticeably dirty and I even threw my T-shirt away afterwards because I couldn't bear to look at the dirt and dust stains on it. That afternoon, we did a complete switch from the mornings activities and went jewellery shopping. Liv wanted to buy some gold bits and apparently the price of gold has dropped recently so Mumbai was a good place to go shopping. I wasn't shopping, partly due to money but mainly because it didn't really feel right after what we had seen this morning. After a big late lunch and alot of aimlessly wondering the shops, I opted out and went home for a lay down, the night didn't differ much after that point. We spent a night in the hotel room, basically having a slumber party sleepover and messing around, thought we may as well make the most of the room seen as were spending a small £20 a night on it. It might not seem alot but were used to paying £6 a night so this was a big hit to our purses.

The next morning we woke to breakfast in bed, I know, lavish right but when we checked into the hotel, they said we can get the complimentary breakfast served in our room, free of charge so we had to take advantage of that. In the weeks leading up to being in Mumbai, we said we wanted to take part in a Bollywood dance class, so after breakfast we researched and researched and made a lot of phone calls but it was really difficult to find a class for that afternoon because it was Sunday, holy day - meaning most places are closed. Kate finally managed to track down a class and we booked ourselves in for 6pm. By the time we finally kicked our butts out the hotel, it was at least 1pm so we decided to pay a visit to a few local markets. Which really weren't very good unless you were looking for tupperware, kids clothing or tshirts with Bob Marley's face on it. By this point we was all a little bit hungry again so headed to a cute bakery, that had the most amazing sandwiches, quiches and brownies. After our taste of Italian the night before last, it made us yearn for another few meals that weren't Indian inspired. Plus figured we needed the carbs to keep up our energy for the dance class? Earlier in the day we had drove past the biggest gathering of book stalls on the side of the street so went for a roam around their collection and to be honest it was a book corner, uncountable amount of books. I'm in desperate search of an Indonesia Lonely Planet book so I can plan my time there once the girls leave but sadly this was the one book they didn't stock. Grrr. Next onto the dance class, it was a funny experience, we arrived at a kids classroom (little confused) but apparently this is where the classes (for all ages) were held. There were three kids (around age 10) and another lady (about age 25) then us; a group of four giggly, sweaty, unfit, white British girls. We just had to think of it as exercise and something we'll look back on in fits of laughter, because that's exactly what it was, hilarious fun. I have no rhythm, fact, I knew that already but putting me in a dance class was something else. We've got a video of it so you'll all see soon enough. Luckily none of us four had twinkle toes and were all messing up the routines. As I said bit of fun. In the cab back, we spotted some big filming lights on the side of the street and could hear booming music. We shouted "stop, stop" to the cab man, he screeched on the brakes in a baffled state and we leaped out. Turns out they were filming for a Indian car advert, we asked the security man if we could join the dancing crowds that were being filmed. He radioed his boss and we were in!!! Some Indian guys befriended us and clued us up on the happenings, we basically had to dance when we were told to. Easy, seen as we had just finished a dance class. After a couple of shots, they started to change up the film set, and it was taking a while so we decided to head back near the hotel. We was going to go home to shower but it was already getting late and we had an early flight to catch the next morning so we decided to grab a drink in a bar and then head for dinner. We had spotted a Pizza Express near our hotel and the girls had talked me into going, even though it was overpriced (well, it was more then I would normally spend on a meal while travelling, but it was the same as home prices). I wasn't very hungry so opted for a salad, it was so lovely, although it did come with dough sticks so the healthy factor was ruined. After food, we went back to the hotel, showered and packed up our stuff.

I think we managed around 3 hours sleep before we received the hotel receptions 2.30am wake up call. They brought us some tea and coffee but I think drinking 3 cups of coffee in the space of 20 minutes was a little excessive for me, I was literally jumping on the beds by the time we had left because I was ready on time so I was being annoying to the others. I thought getting them out the door was a big challenge but the biggest hotel challenge was yet to come. We had to pay the bill. It's always a nightmare as I'm sure I've previously mentioned but this was something else. The reception man was unbelievably uneducated in the maths department, clearing hadn't had any customer training and definitely didn't practice the saying 'the customer is always right'. We worked out who owed what regarding the odd bits on the bill then worked out the room cost between the four of us, but he couldn't understand what we meant, no matter how many times we wrote it down and how many times he counted the pile of money we had given him. He ended up shouting at us, snatching the money out of our hands and generally being extremely rude. We needed to leave for our flight so ended up overpaying because he refused to give us change when he couldn't understand our sums. We were honestly arguing with him for 30 minutes, he was an embarrassment to the hotel. Liv took pride in writing them a bad Tripadvisor review while we were at the airport. After another effort of us trying to teach Indians how to que, we got through check in and basically straight on the transfer bus to the plane. The flight was okay, bad food, turbulent and I was sitting in front of a family with two children, just what you want on a 6am flight! Nelen and I had a reshuffle of seats though and managed to get three for us to share. Liv and Kate had the same. Yay! Shame it wasn't longer so we could've slept a bit more though. Next part of the journey was a taxi to the train station, over an hour long agonising, sweaty journey stuck in traffic in a tight car. We arrived with hardly any money between us so we had to get cash out. There was an option of four different cash machines; one was out of service, the other three just decided to only like certain people because it would only work for one of us but not the others. Liv's card wasn't accepted at all but between us we had enough money to buy the train tickets to Varkala. Phew. The train wasn't due for another 90 minutes so we sat tight and worked out dates for our other destinations in India, the train was then delayed another hour. We were sweating dirt on the platform by this point, you can imagine what the stations, looked and spelt like. Off course we took it in our stride, as always and just laughed at the little things that happened. We luckily managed to get some seats together (as they were unreserved), played some cards, read our books and melted into the leather filthy seats with two broken fans; it was enough to make us want to hang our tongues out of our mouths like dogs. There were also some serious stomach grumbles coming from our carriage because we hadn't eaten since the questionable fruit salad on the flight so when the train stopped at another station, I hopped out to buy us snacks. Some Indian fool pushed straight in front of me, ordered his stuff and jumped on the train as it started moving off. I hadn't paid for my stuff and didn't have time to sort it out so had to ditch it all and grab onto the railing of the train door and climb on, as it was leaving the platform. Nelen had rushed to the door to see if I had got on. Thank god the trains don't actually have doors, otherwise I would've been screwed. Nelen had more luck at the next station so we shared a packet of biscuits and crisps. It was quite cool that there weren't any doors though, it meant that when the train was driving through the backwaters of the southern scenery, you could stand in the doorway and feel the wind on your body and see all the amazing views - don't worry mum, I wasn't standing on the edge! I was safe. There were two Indian guys sitting in our carriage and we only said the odd word to each other throughout the journey but apparently they kept pulling out box from underneath their seat and looking into it, Nelen asked what it was and turned out it was an orphan baby chipmunk. It was quite a strange thing to be travelling with but still a very cute chipmunk. Anyway nearly five hours later we arrived in Varkala!!