Mumbai, India

As we were landing in Mumbai, India I managed to get a few photos from the plane window of the slums right next to the airport. (If you haven't you should see Slumdog Millionaire, I didn't see it until after we had left Mumbai but it has so many things in it that we either saw or experienced, like beggars, the train, tampered bottled water...). The temperature when we landed was 37 degrees Celsius! We found out a few days later that back home in Northern Alberta it was -37 degrees Celsius! We really enjoyed the warm weather and sunshine! Anyways, so we got a prepaid taxi to take us to our accommodations, the Seventh-day Adventist School guest house/rooms near the YMCA.

This taxi was a tiny yellow and black car with leopard print upholstered seats that looked like it was from the 1950s and you had to slouch in the back seat to not hit your head on the roof. These taxis are everywhere in Mumbai and most of India it seemed! Modern western looking cars were the minority.

The traffic there is crazy! Its literally a free-for-all, the only rule of the road is about which side to drive on! Three lanes of traffic become four and one ignores the lines on the road, if you can even see them! I saw a car labelled driving school but I bet the only thing they teach is how to best jockey for position! That's really what the driving is like. Lots of scooters, motorbikes and rickshaws and these mini taxis. A few 'western' vehicles like we are used to. Lots of dents and scrapes on vehicles, missing side mirrors (or even folded in to protect them and to squeeze through tight spaces) but I am surprised we haven't yet seen a fender bender. Also without a horn one couldn't drive. On bumpers people have painted signs like "OK PLEASE HORN". The horn acts as signal device and warning for overtaking (passing). Plus the drivers arm sticking out the window pointing and occasionally hitting/tapping cars to let them know they are right next to them or to signal where they want to go! And don't waste your time looking for crosswalks or lights for pedestrians! Everyone weaves through the vehicles and dodges traffic! Vehicles have the right-of-way! And when stopped in traffic, beggars would come up to the open window to beg; we had to ignore them and eventually they would go away. We had been warned not to give to beggars because you don't know if they are genuine or who's getting that money. Plus you would attract a crowd and never get away.

Another thing peculiar to India were long queues (lines)! After paying for our room (very minimal amount compared to a hotel here) we went off to buy train tickets! Thankfully the train station (BCT) was close, within walking distance but unfortunately after waiting in line for about an hour, in the "Ladies Only Please" line (one of these compared to like 8-10 lines for men) we were told that we would have to go to the down town train station for our ticket to New Delhi! At least we were able to buy our tickets to Pune for the next morning, 2nd class no AC. We did make it to the other station (CSTM or formerly Victoria Station) just before closing and bought some tourist tickets to Delhi, via the Rajdhani Express, 2nd (II) class AC (2 tier bunks vs. 3 with more crowding and no AC) for the 16 hour trip, about 1400km.

During all this running around we bought some bottled water at the train station of a brand that had been recommended to us. However after we had left and started opening the bottles something seemed fishy, they opened too easily and we weren't sure that they had "cracked" open like expected. To be safe we discarded the water. Later we observed young men fishing bottles out of the garbage cans in the train station and refilling them with tap water! After that we crushed our bottles for disposal like requested on the bottles!