Well its day 4 in Mumbai and i dont think i have had 10 hours sleep yet which gives you an idea how this trip has started out. Queuing up at Heathrow airport for 2 hours just to check in and get searched was the start of a very long day. Anyway finally made it onto the plane and the TV sets didnt work in any of the back seats so i couldnt watch any films so tried to have a sleep but emded up next to the loudest baby who seemed to cry for 9 hours. Anyway 9 hours later i touched down at Mumbai airport and anyone that has been to Mumbai airport will know what im talking about so not even gonna go into it lets just say it took me 3 hours to get out. Now getting onto the taxi drivers in Mumbai basically there are no rules on the road and you just beep your horn as much as you can 1 hour later and nearly losing my bag out the window i arrived at the one and only Pals hostel. Anyone who thinks they have been to a bad hotel or hostel think again Pals hostel will beat it in everyway possible. I arrived at reception and checked in and everything seemed fine one of the workers even offered to take my bag up to my room so he put my backpack on and headed up the stairs he got up the first flight of stairs and then tripped and landed back at the bottom now normally this would of been funny but i was just hoping he hadnt broke anything in my bag.

I was quite optimistic about my room from the pictures on the internet but as you can see from the pictures i have taken never trust the internet and this is meant to be there deluxe room. I was greeted with stains up the wall didnt even try and work out what these stains actually were, a bucket for a bath and my air conditioning unit looked like it had seen better days. So at this stage i wasnt in the best of moods but i thought i might aswell go out and see what Mumbai had to offer I was lucky enough to bump into the only other English person i have seen since i got to Mumbai and he was staying at my hostel and had arrived a few hours after me. Anyway we decided to go into town and get some dinner and see the sights, we found one restaurant that looked ok and ordered a sandwich then we noticed we had a visitor on the other table a big rat see most of the time a giant rat would have put me off my food but as I hadnt eaten in a day no rat was gonna put me off the sandwich was quite nice only 20p, so we had that then went to explore some more. If anyone has been to Mumbai they will know what im talking bout with the poverty in the city until u have been u cant begin to imagine how bad it is. I came out here thinking i had seen most things in London and on TV but it doesnt even come close to what you see in Mumbai. Young kids begging and following you down the street and hundreds of people sleeping rough and the smell is just nasty.

Anyway we carried on walking for about an hour and got talking to two Bangladeshy guys who were also travelling round Mumbai thankfully for us they spoke Hindi and English and we spent the rest of the evening with them going from bar to bar, its funny when your a tourist there is a special price for you normally 10 times over the normal price you learn to barter out here kinda got it down to a fine art even after a few hours. Me and Dan went into one bar and got chatted up by 6 beautiful Indian girls i think they became more interested when we told them we played for the England cricket team and we were just here on holiday for a few days lol one thing to remember is dont lie in India about cricket the lie was going so well until some Indian guys came in and the girls introuced us as England cricket stars, anyway we made our excuses about being in the under 19's and left but we still managed to get a hug and kiss for our troubles. We got a taxi home and he managed to get lost a 30 minute taxi ride turned into 2 hours now i know your all thinking why didnt you realise an hour in that he was taking so long the only words the taxi drivers know are yes my friend so answering that after everything we thought he knew where he was.

Day 2

Now day 2 was no where near eventful as day 1, me and Dan did the tour of Mumbai on a bus 9 hours with no A/C big mistake the tour was amazing seein some beautiful sights but with no A/C when its pushing 40 degrees not the best idea we have had. In the evening we went for dinner at this restauraunt/bar we decided to stay on for the night as the locals did karoke. They asked if we wanted to join in and Dan nominated me to sing as he had a bad throat apparently lol Now me singing at the best of times is challenging enough i had 10 songs to choose from all Hindi fortunatly for me i knew one of the songs for any of u that know it the main song from the film Fanaa. Luckily for me and probably everyone else in the bar a girl offered to sing with me now we were no Kylie and Jason but we had our own unique sound going on but everyone seemed to love it and we got free drinks for the rest of the night.

Me and Dan have decided to leave Mumbai on thursday and head down to Delhi 16 hours on a coach but it does have A/C so not alot else to say about Mumbai really so will let you know how Delhi compares when we get there see you then!!!!!!!!!!!

p.s wanna say happy birthday to my Nan