We arrived in Mumbai in the late evening on Saturday 20 October. On the train we were fortunate to meet a really nice girl who helped us get off at the right stop and explained how best get to our accomodation (we had managed to arrange a CouchSurfing host in Mumbai which we were quite looking forward to.) After a bit of searching we managed to find Anil's place where we grabbed a quick shower and then, since he wasn't home yet, walked down the street to find some food. There was another festival on the go which we got to watch, with hundreds of people dancing around in big cirlces hitting sticks together. We had a delicious meal of Paneer Masala, some potato thing and butter naan's... mmm! Anil still wasn't home when we got back so we went to bed.

Sunday we were up early and, after meeting Anil and chatting for a while, we got a plan together for the rest of the day. He took us to a nearby local spot for some traditional Indian breakfast foods, and then had to go off to do some work. We caught a train into the main "touristy" area of the city, where we got to see the once impressive but now poorly maintained Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Queen Victoria Station), the High Court (which happened to have an exhibition on at the time) and some of the old, colonial buildings of the University of Mumbai. We then made our way accross to Chowpatty Beach and took a long walk up along Marine Drive (which is like a really long Seapoint Prominade in Cape Town) where we had a late lunch. Afterwards we stopped at a popular kulfi shop to get some delicious kulfi (Indian ice cream) which we ate on the nearby beach. Then it was back onto the train and, after a quick stop at the Gateway to India, we met Anil for drinks at Leopolds, the most popular tourist bar in Mumbai. A bit hesitantly, we tried some Paan (a whole bunch of spices and seeds and syrupy stuff wrapped in a leaf) on the way back to Anil's apartment, where we chatted a bit before heading off to bed.

Monday we caught the train back into the city to do some more sightseeing. We visited the Gateway to India again to get a better look during the day, before heading off to a nearby train station to watch the facinating dabawallas go about their daily delivieries. Even though most are illiterate, each day they will deliver over 200 000 meals all over the city with almost no mistakes. The craziness barely lasts 30 minutes so, after a quick bite to eat, we caught a train to see the Dhobi Ghat - a vast open-air "neighbourhood" where up to 5000 people work each day washing huge amounts of laundry. Even though its supposed to be free to walk around, we were constantly hounded by people wanting to charge a "viewing fee" or "guide fee" so we soon left to go back to Anil's. He was still out so the two of us went down the street for a quick local dinner and a trip to the internet cafe to do some admin. The internet was down in the area so we called it a night and, after saying our farewells to Anil back at his place (he had a really early flight the next morning for work), we went to bed.

Tuesday was our last day in India so we were up pretty early. We grabbed a quick coffee and finally managed to get some admin done :-) After a quick lunch at our now-regular local restaurant, we rushed back to the apartment to shower and finish packing. We caught the train back towards town, and after eventually finding an auto that would take us to the airport, we settled in for our last crazy ride. When we arrived at the terminal, we bought a few snacks with our last few rupees and said our final farewell to India. We killed a few hours in the airport on our stopover in Doha, before boarding our plane to Munich for the start of our European leg!

As we were driving to the airport, we refelcted on how overwhelmed we felt emerging from Mumbai airport just two months earlier. Now, as we sat there crammed in the back of a rickety auto, dodging and weaving our way between traffic and animals amongst the whirl of colours and cacophony of sounds, we weren't really phased at all. It may be easy to harp on about the sometimes backwardness of India, but it is certainly a very interesting and unique place that will leave you with some amazing memories.