We're heading south...
And our first stop after the "Golden Triangle" is Mumbai. The sleeper train from Jaipur was great, we went first class and had our own berth (see below). We even managed to pre-order some food online to our train, which we were becoming less and less confident would actually arrive as the 9p.m. delivery time approached, but the glorious sight of the delivery man boarding with two trays of veg thali meant we could stop worrying about a potential dinner of peanuts, pringles and oreos. No complaints on anything else, except for a man very proudly called Dr. Sanjay (he mentioned that he was Dr. Sanjay 4-5 times in the 30 seconds we spent with him), who insisted he had one of the beds in our berth, before realising he was in the room next to us. Cheers Dr. Sanjay. Some shut eye and we had arrived in Mumbai.
Our hostel, Backpacker Panda Colaba, is another hostel on the "we would recommend" list, great common area and located in Colaba, south Mumbai, which is one of the nicest areas of the city. Mumbai itself at first struck us as a very different city to that of Delhi (or anywhere in north India we'd visited) - a lot more green, beautiful architecture, and a bit more organisation in the midst of the chaos.
After dropping our bags off in the hostel, we ventured out with the intention of visiting Cafe Leopold, however, our route was redirected after we got chatting roadside with a well dressed, polite local man. He gave us his number, said we now had a friend in Mumbai, and to get in touch with him if we had any questions. Grand. Actually no, not grand, as he now wanted to go for a cup of chai with us in a nearby cafe. Alarm bells going off in Stu's head, and nothing of the sort going off in Dani's, as Dani accepts the offer, and not wanting to be rude, we head off on our adventure with this newfound friend (Jeet). Long story short, it turns out that our friend Jeet was a follower of Osho, a cult we were familiar with thanks to the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country. If you haven't seen it, give it a watch, and you'll see as to why we had to reluctantly decline Jeet's offer to join said cult.
After escaping our abduction, we finally did make it to Cafe Leopold, to meet another familiar face - Fionnuala! A friend of ours going years back, we happened to be travelling at the same time halfway across the world. We made our way to India Gate, and just across from it the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, two impressive structures on Mumbai's coastline. We also got more pictures taken with Indian people - our blog seems to have really taken off here, which is great. Didn't expect it to happen so fast.
A beer tower in the highly recommend Colaba Social, followed by a night in at the hostel with a few drinking games with a great gang led to some sore heads the next morning.
With an early start the next morning, we powered through to go on the Mumbai walking tour organised by our hostel. This walking tour was insane, we learned of the lunchbox delivery system that fuels the workers in the city (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala)
And made our way through the slum of Dharavi (of Slumdog Millionaire fame) - finishing up the tour with a great lunch in one of the slum houses..
Our final day in Mumbai was a little more chilled after visiting so much of the city the day before. We had one final visit to the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, as we didn't go in to it on Day 1. Luxury would be an understatement, and quite the contrast to the slum we had visited the day prior. We then had a somewhat disappointing journey to Sassoon Dock Fish Market (mentioned on other blogs due to the street art that was hardly there. The smell didn't help much either)
The girls wanted to get a henna tattoo before we left, pictured below:
We got one more sunset in at the Queen's Necklace with our good friend K.G., before a traditional Indian dinner (ate with our hands) to round off the day, and we had to prepare for our journey to Goa.
A train was booked, with us having a 70%+ chance of getting a seat, but that didn't quite go to plan. We'll discuss the nightmare of us getting to Goa in the next blog post, it's still a bit too raw for now. We have 6 nights booked in Goa, so will be taking it handy by the beach for the next while. We'll get an update up hopefully just before we leave Goa, and fill you in on what it has to offer.
Big love, Dani & Stu.
Currently Listening to:
And our first stop after the "Golden Triangle" is Mumbai. The sleeper train from Jaipur was great, we went first class and had our own berth (see below). We even managed to pre-order some food online to our train, which we were becoming less and less confident would actually arrive as the 9p.m. delivery time approached, but the glorious sight of the delivery man boarding with two trays of veg thali meant we could stop worrying about a potential dinner of peanuts, pringles and oreos. No complaints on anything else, except for a man very proudly called Dr. Sanjay (he mentioned that he was Dr. Sanjay 4-5 times in the 30 seconds we spent with him), who insisted he had one of the beds in our berth, before realising he was in the room next to us. Cheers Dr. Sanjay. Some shut eye and we had arrived in Mumbai.
After dropping our bags off in the hostel, we ventured out with the intention of visiting Cafe Leopold, however, our route was redirected after we got chatting roadside with a well dressed, polite local man. He gave us his number, said we now had a friend in Mumbai, and to get in touch with him if we had any questions. Grand. Actually no, not grand, as he now wanted to go for a cup of chai with us in a nearby cafe. Alarm bells going off in Stu's head, and nothing of the sort going off in Dani's, as Dani accepts the offer, and not wanting to be rude, we head off on our adventure with this newfound friend (Jeet). Long story short, it turns out that our friend Jeet was a follower of Osho, a cult we were familiar with thanks to the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country. If you haven't seen it, give it a watch, and you'll see as to why we had to reluctantly decline Jeet's offer to join said cult.
After escaping our abduction, we finally did make it to Cafe Leopold, to meet another familiar face - Fionnuala! A friend of ours going years back, we happened to be travelling at the same time halfway across the world. We made our way to India Gate, and just across from it the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, two impressive structures on Mumbai's coastline. We also got more pictures taken with Indian people - our blog seems to have really taken off here, which is great. Didn't expect it to happen so fast.
A beer tower in the highly recommend Colaba Social, followed by a night in at the hostel with a few drinking games with a great gang led to some sore heads the next morning.
With an early start the next morning, we powered through to go on the Mumbai walking tour organised by our hostel. This walking tour was insane, we learned of the lunchbox delivery system that fuels the workers in the city (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala)
Visited the largest manual laundry in the world....
And made our way through the slum of Dharavi (of Slumdog Millionaire fame) - finishing up the tour with a great lunch in one of the slum houses..
We got one more sunset in at the Queen's Necklace with our good friend K.G., before a traditional Indian dinner (ate with our hands) to round off the day, and we had to prepare for our journey to Goa.
A train was booked, with us having a 70%+ chance of getting a seat, but that didn't quite go to plan. We'll discuss the nightmare of us getting to Goa in the next blog post, it's still a bit too raw for now. We have 6 nights booked in Goa, so will be taking it handy by the beach for the next while. We'll get an update up hopefully just before we leave Goa, and fill you in on what it has to offer.
Big love, Dani & Stu.
Currently Listening to:
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