India - Bombay

We headed off from peaceful Udaipur in the direction of Mumbai - the big city of India, spliting the journey at a city called Baroda. Once again the state of the road was a pleasant surprise. It was a beautiful tarmac motorway most of the way,lined with stone work and marble stalls. We are very tempted to buy a slab of marble while we're here to make a coffee table out of as it's so readily available and probably very cheap. Baroda however was not so pleasant! Described as a cultured, harmonious university town, it is in fact a pretty dirty, smelly and unfriendly place. You don't seem to be able to get away from the beggars and children constantly tugging and pulling at you to get some money. We had a bit of a hunt for a reasonable clean hotel, which was also difficult to come by. We ended up in the aptly named Swastic Hotel with Nazi symbols everywhere! We were greeted by stares, not a smile to be seen which is not our general experience of India so far, and very brash, un-trusting hotel staff. We decided only to stay for one night, but when we discovered wireless internet in our room we were so exited, and stayed two nights spending all day on the web only venturing out to eat!! Brilliant!

Our drive to Mumbai was to be the final long drive in our van until New Zealand, as the plan is to stay in Mumbai and sort out our visas for NZ and arrange the shipping of our van, get our medicals etc. Quite a daunting task. To be honest we were not really looking forward to Mumbai as we were expecting another smelly, dirty, hectic and very expensive city, where we knew we were probably going to have to stay for at least two weeks. On the other hand it was quite exiting because we knew this was one step closer to getting to New Zealand which is getting more exciting by the day.

The road this time, despite suposedly being the best in India and lined with toll booths, let down its reputation! It took us 10 hours to get to Mumbai which we expected to be just a short hop. It was a very pretty drive though, through quite a rural and very green, hilly part of India. We stopped off for lunch in a roadside "Dhaba" which is always quite a fun experience. The menu is quite often in Hindi and we really have no idea what we are ordering - we just pick things at random and see what we get! The great thing is Rhona is feeling much better these days and is managing to eat curries and other spices quite regularly now - phew!

Entering Mumbai felt sort of like entering Glasgow - on a very big scale! We crossed the bridge onto Mumbai island, marking the edge of the urban sprawl, and then passed a sign saying 'Mumbai 53km'! The highways into the city are brilliant and not too crowded which is the most common problem in Indian cities. High rises both fancy and completely decrepid line the sky and we were very exited to see the sea for the first time in ages! Rickshaws are banned in the centre of Mumbai and are replaced by hundreds of black and yellow taxi cabs. Red buses, almost like London buses are also numerous. Its crazy to say, but in one of the biggest and busiest cities in the world there is a real sense of peacfullness. Modern shops and coffee houses can be found everywhere, which can be a refreshing taste of home when needed. We have found the hustlers and sellers a lot less pushy and in fact people generaly leave you alone after you say no once. The people are very friendly, and will make pleasant chit chat whithout ending with "Look at my shop". We have spent our evenings so far miandering along the sea front, enjoying the atmosphere whith hundreds of locals, while horses and carts decorated brightly speed along the sea road.

Our first day here was a Sunday. We got up quite early and made our way to the train station for our first Indian railway experience. Because Sunday's are quiet we decided we'd try traveling second class, (20p return for both of us), which on a week day would normaly be packed tighter than sardines. The trains here are super efficient and leave so regularly you never need to hang around waiting. We jamp aboard the ancient carriage and sat ourselves on the metal bench seats. It was great fun. We love the way everyone just hangs out of the open doors when the train is moving even if there are loads of spare seats! Our stop was about 30 mins away where we had arranged to go to the church that our church in Hastings is closely involved with. We felt so completely at home at once there! We were greeted by so many people as we walked throught the door and the service was so lively and passionate! We spent the afternoon with the pastor Franco and his wife and children which was really special and we would really love to return again.

We spent the next day traveling across town for a meeting with the shipping agents, which was very sucessful. Everything is under control in that department, and shipping our van should now be relatively easy. The day after we had our medicals performed which we need for our visa applications. That was fine and we should be getting our certificates in a few days time. At one point we were approached by a man on the street, and asked to be extras in a Bollywood movie in the making, which we thought would be a fantastic laugh, however it was a full 12 hour day and happened to clash with our medicals! Bummer!

Its also pretty amazing how, though highly illegal, we get offered marijuana and coke, almost as often as taxi's! And that the red light distict is listed as "must-see", "women at work for so many years!", tourist attraction by taxi drivers along with all the other temple's and historic sights.
Our map of Mumbai isn't very good, and we've managed to get lost the couple of times we weren't using a taxi or train. The best was when we ended up in the middle of a large bazaar market! It took us ages to push our way out of it again through throngs of people. It was great to see though, and we didn't have the hassle of trying to walk past all those stalls without buying anything!

Following that, we got a bit of bad news, in that we've found out that once we've submitted our application for visa's they take between three and twelve weeks to be processed! This changes our plan once again, and could possibly make things very tight for Simon getting to NZ in time for his course starting, not to mention being in India without our passports for all that time. So.. we are not completely certain what our next plan is, but we will probably be in India for another four weeks and possibly will visit the south as originally planned, whilst waiting for our visas. Our van can only be shipped once we leave India (something to do with customs), and so we will still have our transport. The shipping agents can make instant arrangement to put the van in its container and seal it for sending as soon as we have our plane tickets to NZ.

We decided to do a bit more sightseeing around Mumbai to take our minds off the complications, and took a small passenger ferry to 'Elephenta Island' about an hours boat ride away. There aren't actually any elephants there but some ancient caves and temples carved into the cliff face. It felt like we were in an Indiana Jones movie, walking into these huge rock-cut pillared caves. They were truly enormous, and had huge carvings of various gods and other creatures all over the inside walls. Quite spectacular. We also walked up to the top of the hill where they had two huge old war-time cannons to protect the harbour. They were joined together by long underground passages and rooms, and if we had thought to bring a torch then we probably could have made it from one to the other (about 200m apart)!

We have now decided that it is not a good idea to submit our visa applications in India, it seems to be possible to do it after we arrive in New Zealand on visitors visas, where we can be a lot more relaxed about it. So with that decided, we are now going ahead and putting the van on the next available ship, and flying the relatively short hop across to Singapore. We have had another meeting with our shipping agents, and have booked our flights for Thursday the 31st July, and the van will be departing on 3rd of August. We'll still spend a couple of weeks relaxing around Singapore, and going to a stunning island off the coast of Malaysia, before catching a plane from Singapore on the long haul down to Auckland. we'll wait until then to update the blog further, so unless we run into some complications, the next time you hear from us we should be in New Zealand and mission accomplished! Here's hoping!