Had a bit of a panic leaving Pune when an enterprising autorickshaw driver almost convinced us that our bus was leaving from another town and not from Pune station…luckily we’ve been here long enough now that we decided to check first… Only about 1 hour late (not bad for Indian transport by all accounts!), the bus was a ‘luxury’ coach with TV! We experienced our first Bollywood movie, which was surprisingly easy to follow consid...

Our first India Rail journey (from Mumbai to Pune) went pretty smoothly, even taking into account a small incident with a porter demanding 150 rupees (about 2 quid) for ‘helping’ (he was about 5 foot tall) Nige to lift his backpack onto the luggage rack… it was actually good it happened though, as the other passengers then explained how much to tip (10 rupees per bag – so it turned out that the 5 rupees we offered him was perhaps a little ...

In Mumbai now (although after training ourselves to use the new name, it appears no-one here does so we're calling it Mumbai and the locals are calling it Bombay!). This place is a massive culture shock - there's crowds and stalls on every street with people touting, taxis beeping, deformed beggars and so many tiny little homeless children begging you to buy them rice - which we've now discovered they give back to the shop for resale and get a commission for each...