When we got downstairs for breakfast, the woman behind the counter asked us how many people were having buffet breakfast, i.e. we would have looked silly refusing and having a la carte! It made it feel a bit more of a normal Christmas as I piled my plate high with (and stuffed in to loo roll wraps) pannetone and smoked salmon on bread, alongside cheddar cheese, bagels, oat and bran cinnamon muffins, chocolate and banana pastries, stuffed paratha, idli and yoghu...

We woke up at 8.30 but being in a hostel means a lot more of a sociable breakfast, so it took us a while to get to a point in the conversation with Christian from Austria doing a similar route to us where we could excuse ourselves to get ready. The hostel owner wasn't around when we wanted to check out which further delayed us. We got a tuk-tuk to the Hyatt Regency- the posh hotel that Jane had booked for us as Alice's Xmas pressie. We needed a credit card s...

We got to Mumbai at 7am, and got a tuk-tuk to the hostel (we were excited as the directions specified it was near McDonalds and Mahesh Lunch Home; somewhere recommended in the Lonely Planet) but we had to get driven to the dorm as it was in a different place. We tried to find a nearby café for breakfast, but we gambled a bit by having a masala dosa and coffee from a street stall-we're still ok at time of writing. Since we weren't supposed to check in unt...

We spent the gap in between our buses eating food that wasn't Nutella buns/crisps/ biscuits/ other coach friendly items. First we went to a restaurant that had an interesting table top designs- ours had a ludo board- which we found whilst trying to find the mysterious Thomas Cook we had seen signs for- we wanted to see if we could store our luggage there. We restrained away from the pizza and had a toasted sandwich. Then we walked around to find another place w...

We had to get up to leave for the train station at 6.30. Trains either seem to stay at the station for ages or not stay very long at all so we got on any carriage, not wanting to miss it. Going down a busy carriage with huge rucksacks weren't fun! We managed to get seats (and rope in a man's help to put our bags on the overhead rack). There were some Christian boys who had guitars who wanted us to play/sing Christmas songs with them. The chocolate and cashew nu...