India, finally! The one place we always knew we wanted to travel. We arrived in Mumbai on the 3rd February at 4.30AM. Straight into a local taxi, modeled on an 1950s Fiat, I don't think I have ever been in a car that old before, it was a bit like being in a film. The cars run on gas so seem less polluting. Our driver was nodding off, we could see his eyes (which had very long lashes) in the large rear view mirror and they were definitely closing, Jesus! Lee started to talk to him even though he didn't speak English and then we sung in an awkward English fashion. I don't think any of this helped but we made it to our hotel whole. No early check in but luckily we met a great Swiss couple who were fresh too, so we sat and chatted to them about our travels and plans for a few hours.

After a long sleep we left the shelter of the hotel and entered into the real world, both a little nervous. If you are interested in the country, India is exactly how you expect it to be but only experiencing it will give you some understanding of it. Your senses are instantly hyped and it is a place of extreme positive and negative differences that are sometimes hard to understand or accept that people accept them. These are some of our experiences and observations. Walking along the streets in Mumbai you smell incense, then food, then drains, then dog sh*t and then more food, etc etc. The traffic is noisy and people are on the horn a lot, the dated cars help to reduce the sound a little but there is a lot of traffic and pollution. The streets are dirty and in some places the rubbish smells are overwhelming. At one of the train stations I saw a little boy having a poo, but go near a station with a cigarette and more than one person will tell you that it is not allowed. The train stations are pretty confusing and often systems are bureaucratic, you have to learn that things work differently here. There are loads of people and lots of them are staring at you. Although the stares are direct it is not intimidation and you have to get used to it, Indian people just like to have a good look, but it is a little hard to get used to. We are now in a few family photos, usually a man (grandpa!) would edge near holding a baby, then you would turn around and they are right next to you saying 'we make picture ok' and in the next breath the whole family is there, snap, day out meeting foreign people. There is a strong sense of pride in the work that people do, you often see taxi drivers on the streets washing their cars in the morning, the bus drivers have clean and well pressed uniforms. People in these professions don't seem to be moaning. Women are wearing saris and salwar kameezes of bright colours and patterns, most opting for this over western alternatives, they look beautiful and well dressed every day. It is hot, but maybe not as hot in Mumbai as we worried it would be. People want to come and talk to you and meet you. The first night we met a young couple and they took us out and bought us dinner. The next night Lee was out getting a take-away (the best chicken tikka wraps) and met two more guys who asked if he would have coffee with them. On the street people approach you and ask where you are from, what you do and what you think of India. Generally Lee is approached by other men but then we all talk together to an extent. On the train to Kerala (more to come) we met Mr and Mrs Java who practically adopted us for the journey, fed us homemade food they had brought with them, taught us some Hindi and invited us back to theirs for dinner before we go. The food is amazing and there is so much to choose from and learn about. It is quite easy to get a dodgy belly! Finally we are learning to do the Indian head wiggle, which everyone does and it seems to mean 'thank you', 'yes', 'its ok', 'hello', 'goodbye' and all manner of positive affirmations, greetings or farewells.

In Mumbai we visited the Prince of Wales Museum which had a wealth of old artifacts and arts. We are slowly learning about Hindu gods but there are a lot of them. We walked around looking at the buildings and architecture, a mix of Gothic, Victorian, art deco, and modern. The Taj Mahal hotel is amazing to see. We drank and ate in Leopolds, Mumbai's oldest cafe and along with the Taj, the location of two of the terrorist attacks in November 2008. We saw a huge dhobi ghat where much of the city's washing is done daily and visited a famous mosque.

Our highlight was to take an organised trip into the Dharavi slum; as Mumbai's largest it is home to 1 million people who live in 1.7 sq KMs and is featured in Slumdog Millionaire. Some are concerned about the voyeuristic nature of these tours but for us three main things sold it - 1) the tour is run by a NGO who put a huge proportion of the profits back into the community, 2) 55% of the Mumbai population live in slums so it is real life for over half of Mumbaikans, 3) absolutely no photography. Given the positive ethics of the tour company, we felt it was almost disrespectful not to go - much of the population lives there and their environment and lives account for a large proportion of what the city is about and if you go and see old grand buildings and museums then you sound go here too to learn about all aspects of life. Such is what traveling is about.

We were very impressed with the tour and would recommend to anyone who is taking a trip to Mumbai. Instantly voyeuristic doubts went, we were being stared at, not the other way around, but again I felt a strong sense that we were welcomed. We started the tour by learning about the various micro industries that operate in the slum. Huge is plastic recycling. The people here collect plastic from all over the city, clean it, chip it, melt it, colour it and produce new pellets to make new products. A visit to the roof tops showed how many houses had plastic in various forms, piled on top - bottles, chairs, wheel hubs. Other industries we saw were: fabric printing and dying, oil and paint can cleaning and refurbing, poppadom making, metal works, basket weaving, leather goods production, wood work production of Hindu temples by Muslim people and pottery production. There are over 10,000 businesses and the annual turnover of the slum is thought to top 665 million US dollars. Plans are ongoing to redevelop the slums but people are seriously concerned about their livelihoods since the new developments would not include space for these industries (being residential only), with that many businesses which create that many jobs you can see why people are scared, many are in opposition.

I find it hard to do justice to the slum in text, to explain what it looked and felt like and how we felt, whatever I explain here will not give a full sense of the difference for us. It is so dense, the industrial sector is noisy and filthy and full of people and products and animals. Health and safety looks almost non-existent but we are told that people don't mind, that they have not experienced the difference. Moving into the residential area you enter tiny alleyways, no sun can get down there so it is cool, which is good. You walk over open drains, there are nowhere near enough toilets. The buildings in this slum are all concrete, two story. There are no 'shacks' (which surprised us) and the houses vary in size from very small to small, by our expectations. There was a large main road, selling all manner of 'normal' things. The word slum does not really evoke images that are parallel with the experience of visiting this place, it is a city within a city. A lot of the houses have water and electricity but only for a short period of time each day. There are white collar workers that live in the slum and chose to stay there, in the neighbourhood they grew up in, even though they could likely afford to live elsewhere. They may even be renting out an apartment in the city but choosing to live in Dharavi. People seemed very happy, there seemed to be a good general sense of well-being and pride, despite the fact that people are living in very constrained conditions. We did not see a tense or angry face. We met loads of children who Lee swung about a lot, they were all really sweet and mostly not too shy. A rat ran over Lee's foot and left a nice big wet mark, mmmm. As you walk through the tiny alleyways you can smell cooking and get small glimpses inside the houses and into the lives of the inhabitants and just as quickly as you are enclosed, you are out in the open, maybe in a playing area, full of children and rubbish.

At the end of the trip we walked back to the train station with our guide who took us to a stall to have some food called Pani Puri. These are like egg-shaped hollow poppadoms which are then filled with a daal like sauce and herbs and onions. They have to go in the mouth in one, or you make a mess and the local people giggle. There was also a sweet version that was dry. Really lovely. Lee said if someone had said to him that he would eat street food in an Indian slum before we left he would have said it was unlikely. But the myths were broken down on this trip and we didn't get sick or robbed or hassled but welcomed and educated. People living here are poor, there is no doubt about that, but they have their needs met more than others (e.g. the street sleepers - who cannot afford a roof to live under, but live on the streets and go to work) and they are working hard to maintain their livelihoods there and they are happy.

Four days later we were on the train ready to take our first long distance journey, 36 hours down to the state of Kerala in the south. We met Mr and Mrs Java straight away who looked after us as I said, within an hour they had fed us an invited us back to their home. But we also met loads of other people, more friendly than you can imagine, we were fed three times and given many business cards (well Lee was). The train was comfy enough but really basic with no where else to go and sit so we slept and ate a lot. We got off at 4.30 AM (again) in Kochi and were shocked when the guys at our hotel said of course we could check in, and we went straight to sleep.