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Trip Start Feb 27, 2006 Trip End Mar 29, 2006 Next
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  Mumbai, India
Tuesday, February 28, 2006

I always find starting my travelogue so hard as I'm now a week into travelling across India and there is so much to tell and describe and I just know that words will not do it justice. I'm back in this colourful country which makes me feel alive, infuriated, passionate, sad and mesmerised all at the same time. I'll write more later about how to survive the madness that is India.... I'm in industrial city of Bhopal at the moment, having had a hot and tiring day but at least I hustled my way to getting a train ticket for Wednesday's travel (using the 'women's queue' - much shorter), got the right bus to my countryside destination for the day, walked up a big hill in blistering heat to see some Buddhist ruins, ignored lots of stares back in the city and made it back to the hot but tranquil hotel without getting run over, bumping into an oncoming animal, or falling in a pot hole or over a pile of rubbish!

My journey so far has taken me from Mumbai on the coast into the fairly rural and tribal state of Madhya Pradesh - this time I'm getting away from the tourist trail and working my way in a kind of 'n' shape from coast to coast - finishig in Calcutta at the end of the month. In 7 days I've only encountered two westerners in total - a couple travelling for a year - and very few Indian people in this region speak English (at least the ones I'm meeting on public transport and in the streets) - so it's been challenging but interesting.

My arrival in Mumbai was trouble free - having had a relaxing BA flight on a half empty plane where I 'upgraded' myself (no-one challenged me!) to Traveller Plus and three movies later we were touching down in the home of Bollywood. Not that you'd know it, travelling through the streets at 1am for an hour past slums and rows of sleeping bodies on the side of the road. The familiar smells of Mumbai greeted me - a mix of burning tarmac, open sewers, spices, incense and taxi fumes. I checked into a different hotel this time in the Fort area rather than the upmarket Colaba area I was in last year. My room was acceptable and I pretended to sleep the rest of the night, until the phone rang at 8.30am when the laundry man wanted to know if I needed any washing doing - so predictable - you are NEVER alone in India, even in your hotel room!

The rest of the day was spent sorting out train tickets for later in the trip (with a billion people in India, the trains get booked up very far in advance and the system is terribly bureaucratic and confusing as so many classes). I actually cheated on this booking as it was for a long trip and the 2 tier AC carriage I wanted was fully booked, so I leveraged the 'foreign tourist quota' counter for which there is also a queue about 300 people shorter than the normal queue!

By 7pm on the day I'd arrived in India, I was already on an previously booked overnight train (this time in sleeper class - 74 people in one carriage on 3-tier bunks all the way along) to Ujain. Of course being the only Westerner (and woman travelling alone), there were lots of curious stares, especially as I cautiously chained my very small bag (cabin size) to my upper berth (although most Indians do chain their bag up but underneath the seat). The hawkers and train staff went up and down the dusty carriages shouting their wares all through the evening. 'Coffeecoffeeccoffee....', 'Paperpaperpaperpaper....' Chaichaichaichai...' and so on with every conceivable thing on sale. Hungry travellers either took out their tiffin box or bought a ready made tray which once demolished they uncermoniously threw out of the window. The 12 hour journey on a so called Express train stopped several times for long periods at stations along the way, but for 4 pounds, it was a great way to travel. At least the British did something good for India!

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