How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Mumbai.

After my last post I discover that check out for my hotel was at 8am the next morning. With my train not leaving till 11pm, it meant I had another whole day in Mumbai, 'Next stop Goa' would have to wait a bit.
Its been an eventfull day and half. After finding out check out times I went back to my room with every intention of reading my book on the balcony and having an early night. Well I've never been good at sticking to a plan. My evening involved going on a beer hunt (failed) with a male Aussie escort (not that kind of escort, silly) and finding a Scotsman talking to an air conditioning unit, it was fun if not a little strange.

I managed to get up in time for checkout and went for breakfast. Walked along the seafront to Chowpatti beach and back. Remembered to get my camera out for the first time, so I actually have some pictorial evidence that I'm in India, they'll be online as soon as I find an internet cafe that'll let me do that. Was bored and decided to go and watch them play cricket at Oval Madian. Amazingly there was no one playing, apparently it was too early in the morning and here was me thinking they played 24hours a day. So completely bored and with nothing better to do I went to the pub.

After a couple of hours wasted decided to splash out and go and explore Elephanta Island (disappointingly inaccurate name). Unfortunatley whilst there the inevital finally happed and I was mugged. Okay, so a monkey stole a bottle of coke out my rucksack. In my head that still counts. The island has 5 Hindu cave temples to walk round. The sculptures are pretty impressive but I expected the cave complex to be bigger. I have high hopes of visiting Ellora later which is better apparently. I whiled away a good half hour trying to get a picture of the huge Birds of prey all around Mumbai, they fly really close but seem to know when you are trying to take a picture. Ended up taking pictures of cows instead. There was a really cute baby/small one that then decided to follow me down the jetty.

Spent the next four hours in CST train station waiting for my train. I had confirmed my booking and got on the train. It came as a bit of a shock when I discovered that I had to share my sleeper berth with someone else. The poor man looked petrified, even at my offer of him having the pillow. Eventually he was allocated a berth somewhere else and I got some sleep. The trains are awesome. It was so much fun trying to sleep on a train. I love the trains here. I was feeling brave when I got to Goa and got an Auto Rickshaw for the half hour journey to my hotel. I pretty much spent the whole time convinced I was going to die and trying to work out the best way to position my bag as to pad me in a crash. Anyhow now I'm here in one piece, I'm wearing the smallest clothes I own, have just got back from the beach and am gonna go to the pub for some lunch.