Mon 3rd Sept.

Goats seen: 4
Curries: 0
Beers: 0
Rip offs: 2
Cows: 0
Pizza: 2 (very tasty!)

Arrived with assistant to the pre arranged taxi to be helped by second guy who insisted in receiving British sterling for his troubles (speaking to us).

Taxi to hotel took us through the whole cacophony of Mumbai beeping streets, including 'shanty' towns galore. It reminds us of Salford combined with the chaos of London street but with far more animals and people walking nonchalantly in the road. It seems necessary to beep at every opportunity especially if there's any other transportation in about 100 yards (therefore constant!).

Our first task was to buy a train ticket to Goa, which was no easy task. We spent around 1/2 hour searching for the non existent counter 52 as stated in 'the book'*. Just before giving up, some guy from the train station offered help, and after the morning's rip off experience we were a little dubious, but went along with it. The cost of the tickets seemed expensive, so he suggested a bus and took us to some touts outside. After reading from 'the book' that they offer luxurious buses, then when you turn up they've swopped it for an ol' banger! So, we decided not to take them up on the offer and instead buy the AC sleeper train (slightly more expensive). He went back into the station leaving us in the street to let us cook with our decision not to follow our money in with him. We had a sneaky suspision we were never going to see him again...but he turned up with the ticket after 15mins.

Tues 4th Sept.

Monkeys seen: many
Curries: 2 (very tasty!)
Beers: 2 (Kingfisher - which tastes much better than UK's version)
Rip offs: 0
Cows: 1
Offers to be extras in a Bollywood movie: 1
Dhal and rice: 1

Today we decided to see the sites of Mumbai, as there isn't any (apart from the Gateway to India) we went to an island off Mumbai. This place called Elephanta Island (because it use to have an Elephant statue on it's coast) had loads of caves where people once lived 2 thousand years ago. The journey there was extremely slow on a old smelly rusty boat. The place was hot (as is everywhere), full of people trying to sell you stuff, pesky monkeys and dogs, but the caves were impressive.

Wed 5th Sept.

Curries: 2 (very tasty!)
MacDonalds veggie burgers: 2
Offers to be extras in a Bollywood movie: another 1

Packed and left the hotel (but left luggage in hotel) in hunt to become an extra in a Bollywood movie (well, mainly me vik) which was offered but had to turn it down as we would be in Goa. In an effort to kill time before our train at 11pm we went to the Price of Wales Museum (not called that anymore but can't spell it's real name).

We were wasting more time looking around when the heavens opened (again!) and we had to run back to the hotel to change and collect our bags. A taxi was flagged for us and we arrived at the train station with another 2 1/2 hours to kill, which we did by clearing up the sun lotion that had spilled out from Vik's bag much to the amusement of the locals. The rest of the time was spent fending off the continous flow of porters offering to carry our bags (for a fee) to the platform.

The train arrived on time and we eventually found what we thought was our carriage (but wasn't) and which perhaps wasn't as luxurious as we had imagined for a sleeper train. An almost sleepless night followed on the way to Goa which lasted a staggering 16 hours.

* The Lonely Planet