On landing in delhi we made our way to the train station for our train to Mumbai. We werent looking forward to this journey as it was 15 hours on the train.

The train stations in India always seem a bit chaotic. There was an announcement to say our train was going to be 1 hour late (this is not unsual and no-one ever complains) so we did what the locals do and made ourselves comfortable sitting on the ground. Train stations are a great place to people watch (good job I enjoy doing it as it passed the time). It's a little strange what you see though, I saw a mother hold her little baby over the side of the platform to have a poo!

The train finally arrived after being 2 hours late, we boarded the train and had a problem.....we had no seats!!!. The travel agent we booked through didnt tell us our tickets were waitlisted (you call the train station 4 hours before to confirm if you have a seat). And so the nightmare train journey really began. The train was completely full so there was nowhere to put our backpacks while we tried to find a bed. 2 local guys tried to help us but one of them was in a higher class carriage than us and the conductor said we had to leave and couldnt stay in that carriage. We had been told from a few people that you can bribe the conductors...unfortunatly in this case trying to bribe 3 of them with money did not work. After about 2 hours the other guy said if we paid someone we could have his bed and share a bed....bearing in mind the beds are about 2.5 foot wide and maybe just over 4 foot long....needless to say me and anoushka got quite close that night and didnt have much sleep.

There were 6 beds in each compartment so in the morning there was 7 us trying to sit together (and all of the other people were men). We had a chat with a few of the men but It was a long slow morning watching the counrtyside pass by. We then had delays on the train and were very relieved to finally reach mumbai.

The journey from stepping on the plane in Nepal to arriving in Mumbai took about 32 hours, our longest and most uncomfortable journey yet. One I'm hoping isnt repeated. We stayed 2 nights in Mumbai then took a sleeper coach (which was full of cockroaches!) back to goa for a week of sun chilling out (think we deserved it after the trekking in Nepal and the long journey we had). I was sooooo pleased to be back in goa!