On the move again
Trip Start
Jul 07, 2008
1
62
229
Trip End
May 27, 2010
Mumbai (Bombay),
Maharashtra,
India
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Bentley's Hotel, Colaba, Mumbai
Cloudy, hot and humid
Today we were interviewed by French TV at CST station. We were looking for the central bus station trying to work out an alternative to the ferry service which clearly isn't running at the moment and probably won't in the near future. We thought there was a tourist information desk at the railway station but there wasn't, all we found were touts wanting to sell us luxury air conditioned bus services to Goa. Having listened to the usual tout claims, 'the train station is closing in 10 minutes' and 'there's no bus or train to Murud you must come with me and book a private car' we went to sit on a bench to consider our options.
At this point the French crew came towards us and asked us if we would like to say a few words about our trip and whether we had been affected by the terrorist attacks. Dave said all the right things and went on at length about the Indian government now seeming to be in control etc, so no, we weren't overly worried. Then we realised we had been stitched up like a kipper 'so, what do you think now you have seen the bullet hole in the wall behind you'. We looked at each other, then at the bullet hole, then back at each other ........ 'mmm' I said 'didn't notice that'. But then we gave them the little bit of the story that was interesting and they got a bit excited when we told them we were due to take the train on the night in question but changed our plans, 'we could have been one of the unlucky ones' I said, dramatically.
There are TV crews crawling all over the city now, yesterday we could get down to The Gateway of India, today they have the road blocked off again because it seems as if there are even MORE press vans down there. I went to the internet cafe yesterday to post my blog and the place was full of press people filing stories with mobile phones going off all over the place. I was very surprised they were using an internet cafe, I would have thought people in that line of work wouldn't rely on local services but bring their own. Luckily this particular internet cafe is well set up and has good, fast connections unlike many others in India (so I've been told) so how can they rely on other people for telecommunications when this is their livelihood?
Turned out, we had to go the Bombay Central Bus Station on the 66 bus. There we discovered that someone HAD actually heard of Murud and indeed there was a bus, several in fact, that would be going there tomorrow. The one we have chosen to take is the 1130 which gets us to Murud at 1730. We will phone ahead tonight to book accommodation so that we know we are sorted. When the bikes are all packed up they are easier to transport than if they are not, however, carrying them and the panniers any distance is crippling so we will have to take taxis to and from the bus stations. It kind of goes against the grain for us, we really hate relying on other people for transport but needs must as they say. From Murud we begin cycling.
We are heading out on a little shopping trip later to try and buy some cough medicine for me as I'm hacking away like I'm on 60 a day at the moment. We need salt and oral hydration sachets as we are going to be sweating buckets when we start cycling and therefore losing lots of salt which we'll need to replenish otherwise it can lead to all kinds of urinary and kidney problems.
We've found a posh cafe that has a wifi zone, so I'll go along there later to do some money stuff on the laptop. I really don't like the idea of doing any financial transactions in an internet cafe and is the main reason for having the laptop in the first place.
We met our first con man today (Dave spotted it before I did). As we were coming out of the cafe he was there with his apologies for the attacks and how terrible he felt that we might not feel welcome in his country etc., etc. Then wanted to know where we were going and would we let him take us to our destination, he was going that way anyway. He spoke very good English, with a slight American twang and was dressed in a very dapper way but there was just something about him that made us both a bit wary. Anyway, we made our excuses and left but these people are very good at what they do and if you are just a little bit green behind the ears they can take you by surprise because the really good ones know how to play the long game. They look to engage you over a long period of time, then bang, they hit you with it.
We know this because it happened to us in Egypt. I won't go into detail but after at least 3 hours, talking over a meal and a long walk, we got to the nub of his problem. One of his children needed a blood transfusion and anything, ANYTHING, that we could give him would help. Without even blinking Dave put one hand on the guy's shoulder, shook his hand with the other and with the straightest and most sympathetic face I've ever seen said 'we would help you if we could but we have absolutely no money now, not even a pound. We are waiting for money to be transferred from the UK, if we could help you we would'. With that we left. Hah, I thought, you didn't get US that time!
Sounds like we are very cynical, we're not, it's called self preservation. In fact, we both feel very calm in India which has surprised us a little because we didn't feel at all calm in Morocco. Give us another few weeks maybe we'll feel differently :)
Laters
Postscript - the wifi zone turned out to be a very posh bar where I paid 3 times the going rate for a lime soda and then couldn't connect to the network - personally, I think it's a con to get people in there. So I'm back in the internet cafe dithering about doing finances ;(
