After travelling almost 1000km south, I emerged almost next to the huge Dharavi slum area, the one featured in the film Slum Dog Millionaire. I got a glimpse of life there on the way past in the taxi, but it looks like many areas that I saw in North India. This is not typical Mumbai though. On my journey through the North I was wondering when I would see any evidence of India's recent economic boom. I saw no evidence at all until I arrived here.

This is a very different India to the one I've seen so far, and no doubt very different to the city you'd have seen if you'd come here a decade or two back. The streets are clean, there are new cars on them, and many modern buildings span the skyline, particularly along the coast road. It's a very cosmopolitan city with a wide variety of food on offer - even steak! And on the coast road you can see couples with their arms around one another - behaviour that is usually frowned upon in India.

Historically, Bombay was a series of islands, but land reclamation started by the Portuguese and continued by the British means that 60% of the city now sits on what was once the sea. On my walk from the Gateway of India on the southernmost tip along Marine Drive (which is one of those reclaimed areas), I met a student walking to Chowpatty Beach from his afternoon lecture at the university. He was telling me that the food at the university canteen is second to none, and that Mumbai is buzzing with nightclubs. I passed some of the old colonial buildings earlier, including the University of Mumbai, which rivals any building of its kind in England. Sitting on the beach watching the sun go down, it seems to me that it is probably a good time to be a student in this city.

The prices here though are not too far behind a European city. It's several orders of magnitude above my usual budget, so I must move on. Time for a bit of relaxation. I will take a train to Goa in the morning.

Posted from Goa, 14th January 2011.