Mumbai, 2 nights in Colaba

A guy with chairs piled high crossing the road

India or England?

Near the markets....

View from our room

Scary hooved creatures outside a boarded up temple building

Spent 2 nights in the Lawrence hotel in Colaba, described as "the best rock bottom deal in Mumbai" by the Rough Guide. Yes, it was clean with good service, in a good area of Mumbai at a cheaper rate than anywhere else, so can't complain about the view outside or the urine-dripping toilet seats in the shared bathrooms. All was tolerated!

Jo and I visited the National Gallery of Modern Art for a few hours and gazed at a mixture of European post-impressionist inspired art; it was interesting.

We gazed at the Taj Mahal Palace (now a fancy as hotel), and the Gateway across the square, where the British came and left from ceremoniously through this Indian version of the Arc de Triomphe (photos coming next installment). We then trapsed around fending off people offering us drugs, taxi rides or tours, or wanting to tell us how they got beaten up, robbed and left with nothing and could we please help. Hmmph.

Thank god we found a bar, with cheap jugs of ice-cold Kingfisher and "finger chips" (we have come to realise they are in fact a version of hot chips, not deep-fried fingers, sorry to disappoint), which gave us all the energy in the world to tackle the markets (fresh veg, all the cosmetic product in the world at ungodly cheap prices, and even Haribo gummi bears) and view the many, huge, disintegrating Victorian-esque buildings. (more photos also coming).

We checked out the Victoria station which is famous for being totally over-crowded, and eventually caught a bus (after an ordeal late at night at the train station in an attempt to book a train ticket for 6am the next morning) to Nashik (India's wine capital!!! -sorry Terry, didn't do any wine tours as they were out of our price range), and then further on to Aurangabad where we are for tonight.