We arrived at Mumbai's airport at 3am, and got an old fashioned taxi to the YWCA, where we stayed for our two nights in the city.
It was still dark as we drove to our hostel, people were asleep on nearly every pavement we passed. The buildings were old and dirty, and the various different smells of the city wafted into the cab as we drove along.

The hostel was great, we had a couple of hours kip in the lounge area, and had a nice, but very sweet and creamy cup of tea!
Once we were feeling a bit more with it, we headed out to explore our new surroundings. We were staying in the area, Colaba, which is the affluent part of town. The buildings were grand and the streets were busy.

We headed to the "Gateway of India" where lots of Indians were headed to Elephanta (a small island) for the day. We decided to carry on roaming the streets. We passed Crawford market and wandered around a street market selling Sari's and beautiful clothes and cloths.
We found a small cafe type restaurant full of locals and tried a few dishes, all were delicious! Love the mango lassies too! Fascinating to see how people manage to eat rice and curry type dishes with the fingers of one hand only! We also found the oval where men were playing cricket, although to be fair blokes were playing cricket everywhere we roamed! We saw kids on the streets, naked, scrubbing their dirty knees and throwing buckets of water over themselves to get clean.

Our second day in Mumbai we decided to take a tour, we stopped off at the open air laundry and the red light district, before reaching Mumbai's largest slum. We walked through the commercial area first, seeing different blokes doing various types of jobs, melting plastic, creating patterns on fabric, and treating leather ready to be sold on. The working conditions were poor, despite the millions of rupees each year that are produced from all their hard work.

The residential area was next, small alleys linked the different areas, and we were shown a typical 'slum house'. They are tiny, with a small space for the women of the house to wash in, the men washed outside; there was also a tiny area for the kitchen. On average the slum houses were circa 10m2 and slept up to 5 people. Despite these cramped and dirty living conditions, many people choose to live in the slums. A community is built up and people are happy there. As we passed through the narrow lanes, children said hello and one little girl welcomed us to India!! The slums aren't were the poor people live anymore, the poor sleep on the street.

The company we used for the tour gives back to the slum community by providing a community Centre, a kindergarten and lessons in English and computer skills.

That night we went to the movies! To see a Bollywood production! It was a new release and we enjoyed the dancing and singing and random storyline, which we managed to follow although it was in Hindi!

Next stop Udaipur!