Malcolm's India Trip: Mumbai

It was time to say Goodbye to Bangalore for stage 3 in Mumbai. Unlike Chennai, the airport was much busier and it was here that I lost it with people line cutting. Having waited 20 minutes in the right line, someone who had queued in the wrong line then thought he could jump in ahead of me with the justification he had already queued up. I hate confrontation but I did enjoy responding to his reasoning of "I'm not a bloody idiot" with "you are if you queue in wrong place". In the end not wanting to listen to his shouting any more, a manager took him away to another desk where he was processed and the desk agent apologised to me for serving him instead of me. C'est la vie!

The flight was OK although I was fortunate not to get the seat where the monitor had been ripped out. This was a fairly short flight, more like a commuter journey.

This is my hotel in Mumbai, the Holiday Inn Express which is listed as being at the Airport but was in fact more than 30 minutes away. I subsequently found out that it is very close to the other terminal and my local taxi driver didn't seem to know about a new elevated express way that could get you between terminals in under 5 minutes, choosing instead to take me through the crowded city streets instead, which to be honest I didn't mind.

Again being a transit day I had no parks to do so decided to go sightseeing and would catch a metro than a mainline train down to the southern end of the city. The metro costs 40p a journey and is elevated over the city. I couldn't help but think it was building a vertical class system with the poor at street level and the richer literally above them.

I rode the metro to it's Eastern terminus Ghatkopar and boarded the mainline to CST (short for Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus). Whilst I had no issue with the metro system which uses the plastic token system seen all over the world I did have some difficulty hearing the ticket agent at Ghatkopar as he was sat quite far from the window and we weren't tuned into each other's accent. Fortunately the person behind me in the queue helped out I assume so that he could get on his way too. This wasn't a common event as I had no reoccurrence of this. The 30 minute train journey cost me £2 and that was for the 1st class carriage :)

At this point I encountered probably my favourite bit of the trip. The mainline trains in Mumbai have no doors and you can lean out whilst the train is running. This freedom was great, and reminded me of the open Routemaster buses we had in London where as kids we'd run after them and jump in or try to gauge how best to jump off them before they came to a stop. Being able to do this as an adult was great and as I got more and more confident I was leaning out more, swinging out and at one point hanging off the little finger rail that ran along the outside of the train. I wish we could remove the doors off the trains in London, for a start it'd stop the arrogant folk forcing their way into an already crowded train as they'd be most likely to fall out. I also now know why dogs stick their heads out of car windows on motorways, because it's fun!

After an exhilarating journey I arrived at CST, which used to be know as "Victoria Station". It's a stunning building and has UNESCO status. I'd check it out more on the way back. For now I wanted to continue heading south from the station.

This to me is how I imagined India to be. Very busy narrow streets and lots going on. Chennai I'd deemed to be "Temple City", Bangalore was easily "IT City", and Mumbai I was labelling "Real India City".

As I headed further south I started to come across some amazing buildings.

This one looked very majestic, perhaps on account on it being called The Majestic House.

These definitely had a colonial touch to them.

I could tell I was getting close to something popular as the security presence was being ramped up.

This is The Gateway of Mumbai, a stunning arched construction that used to be the first thing that peeps travelling to Indian would see, hence the name.

The Taj Hotel nearby is another stunning building.

Behind the Gateway is the dock at which the boats would land. Now there are a number of docks from where you can take boat trips out to places like the Elephanta Island nearby, which is another UNESCO site with cave shrines similar to what I'd seen in Chennai. Unfortunately I got here after 2pm and the last boats had already headed out for the day.

So I spent the time I would have spent on the boat just hanging out and enjoying the view.

It's funny how when you pull together a "must-do" list for a holiday you often have something really stupid included and a real Banyan Tree was one for this trip.

Why a Banyan Tree? Because I spent ages trying to get past that damn room in Jet Set Willy as a kid. (warning, turn your sound down before clicking play unless you want to be driven insane)

Given the value of the Rupee vs the Pound I'm surprised anyone can afford a Bentley here in Mumbai.

This used to be Prince of Wales Museum, but it has also been rebranded as the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, which probably scores you more points in Scrabble if you can get a board big enough to fit it on.

Inside the museum they had an amazing range of pieces and a nice history of the Indian Gods. However there was a lot of construction going on inside and quite a lot of the musuem was closed, but I still had a good time with the rooms that were open.

A collection of Assassins Creed style knife blades.

Another amazing ivory carving.

The natural history bit of the museum was open allowing me to get up close to the dead and stuffed creatures.

More cool buildings.

An attempt to recycle waste in the city but wouldn't wet waste eventually dry out in the heat?

This is the antithesis of crazy paving, logical paving. MC Escher would be happy here.

That's some air-conditioning insulation. It looks like venting fungus on the wall.

A street wedding reception being pulled together.

A really nice mural. Just a shame it had been allowed to decay a bit.

The CST building is stunning and well deserving of its UNESCO status. It only took 10 years to build being constructed in the 1860s. Chhatrapati Shivaji after who the station was renamed was the founder of the Maratha Empire.

A really old routemaster bus, so you can hang out of these too.

The station is the busiest in India but was surprisingly OK every time I went to it, and I did hit a rush hour. Shinjuku in Tokyo is still the busiest station that I've ever experienced.

The idea of this is alien to me and something I had to research a bit more when I got back. When weddings take place the bride's family is expected to pay a large sum of money to the groom's family which is called a dowry and the pressure in having to pay makes parents choose not to keep young girl with a scary stat that 1 in 4 of all girls born will not live beyond the age of 15.