Blog Date: 15-07-2013

Been away for a week and I feel India. It feels like it enters you through your skin. You breathe, taste, smell, feel, drink, see and hear India. There is no escape! Indians are everywhere (oh wait that actually makes sense). They stuff the trains until they hang out of the doors and if it’s really full then they just sit on the roof. The Indian adventure has begun.

In Mumbai the weathter kind of felt a bit like Holland (so much rain) except it was nice and warm but raining pretty much all day. So I decided not to make big plans today. Got a little bit worried that everything would wash away and there might be no roads back. (just not used to these massive rainshowers) I only limited myself by exploring the streets and visiting a museum. Also nice. Walked past the Gateway of India where some confusion arose among the Indians. They thought I just left the hotel where all the famous stars from all over the world stay. (Taj Mahal Palace Mumbai) So got bombarded with cameras and a lot of people started asking if they could take a picture me… China all over again.

Below is a photo of the gateway of India. After about 20 minutes of taking photos with random people I had the chance for this photo 🙂 yes the Birkenstocks (flip flops) are sooooo ugly but there is a reason why I took these with me (nobody with steal them lol)

Saturday evening at 11.00 I would board my first Indian train with some other backpackers. We did have to check out early in the morning, which means that we have no place to withdraw to when crazy India gets a bit to much. I wasn’t looking forward to this because I had no idea what to do. After walking for about 5 km with full luggage to the train station to go through the most illogical system ever. Left the backpack there in a guarded storage room and hope that it will still be there 10 hours later. So only had to carry around the daypack the rest of day.
First had breakfast at the Macdonald (yes I know), where you can’t buy a hamburger because no cow is eaten here. Then started walking hoping to encounter nice things. Eventually I ended up at a school where they were playing football outside. Some barefoot, some with socks in their sandals. From the moment I got spotted there, all the little kids started showing off with tricks and there was little attention for the rest of the football match. I watched the whole football match since I didn’t really have anything better to do.

Then walked on past the Flora Fountain and the University of Mumbai. When we were walking back a bit afterwards, it suddenly started to rain very hard. Quickly found some shelter but it didn’t looked like it was going to rain any less hard… I looked where we actually were and it turned out that we were standing in front of a cinema. Since the train wasn’t going to leave for another few hours we watched a Bollywood movie in Hindi. Couldn’t really follow it and the movie didn’t make any sense to me but was really funny anyway!! On the way back we bought some cookies in a back street, suddenly a cow is peeing in front of you. Very normal here..

After a few hours wandering around we boarded the train. We bought 3rd class train tickets just to see how that is. I have to say, it’s not ideal, but it can be done. I did lay in bed for about 10 hours, so the time went quite quickly. The rest of the backpackers were very nice so that kind of helps to. After the first train experience here we finally arrived in Goa.

We’ve heard that the weather in Goa would be even worse and that there are even chances of tsunami. But we wanted to go there anyway. The weather was great for us. Sometimes there are some tropical showers, but I didn’t mind! Here I recovered for a bit from everything in the last few days and actually didn’t do anything special here in Goa. Tomorrow morning at 6 o’clock I’ll leave again by train to Hampi with some other backpackers.