Mmmumbai

Our last night in Doha was allright, quite quiet we went to the old souqe which was interesting, ate some lamb liver and kidneys drank extremely sweet tea and smoked some apple flavoured waterpipe. The day after was rather grey, so we tried to kill the hours we had as best we could before flying to Mumbai. Allthough the plane arrived 45 minutes early we didn't arrive until around half past three in the morning. We found an airport "security guard" who told us there was no idea going into Colaba (The most popular area of Mumbai for tourists) so late at night and told us to take a taxi to a nearby hotel instead. We followed his advice and of course we had been had, but were to tired to care. The Hotel was almost the same price as the one in Qatar allthough the differences couldn't be more obvious, rotting walls, staff sleeping in the staircases, fair enough the small room had a colour T.V, but the only colour it could show was red! We tried to fall asleep but as the hotel was situated right next to a railroad crossing this became quite hard. Eventually we got some shut-eye and in the morning decided to make our way to Colaba by commuters train. A friendly local helped us find our way and even payed for our rickshaw as we didn't have any small change for the driver. We took a rickshaw to the train station and stood in queue for about thirty minutes to buy a ticket, meanwhile small children flocked around us nealing and touching our feet, begging for money, getting shooed of by other indians in the line. Finally we got our ticket and got on the train, it was jam packed with people, first we almost got onto the women's carriage, but finally squeezed into a men's wagon, it turned out to be first class allthough it couldn't have disguised itself any better. At the next station we were thrown off and had to run to another carriage, jumping on with our backpacks whilst the train had started moving. When the train stopped at Churchgate Station we took a taxi which took us to Colaba. Mumbai really has it's contrasts and coming here from a well off country like Qatar make the contrasts even stronger. Entire families sleep on the side of the highway, dogs run around everywhere, beggars are grabbing at you constantly and every now and then a cow shows up out of nowhere, all of this mixed with shantytowns and english colonial buildings which look to have been airlifted straight out of London. Since the terrorist attacks a month ago, security has apparently tightened up, armed guards walk the streets and metal detectors guard all the main tourist areas. After a lot of walking and haggling we found a room at the Hotel Regal Plaza (Sound fancy?.. it really isn't!) right down the road from the popular tourist hangout "The Leopold Cafe" (one of the main targets for the terrorists during last months attacks.) We had a nice Tikka Masala for lunch today and a few Kingfisher beers, which tasted amazingly good after spending two days in the dry city Doha. We haven't decided how long we're staying in the city before heading for the beaches of Goa south of Mumbai but I will write when I know more. Now I think it's time for some more Kingfishers, tata for now!