Mumbai to Navsari, meet the family

Trip Start Feb 24, 2010
1
5
30
Trip End Sep 06, 2010


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Flag of India  , Maharashtra,
Sunday, February 28, 2010

We're sat on the trfain from Mumbai to Navsari, to meet Kal's folks.  Today we had a long walk around Mumbai around the bits that seemed so scary last night but today all the things that were teriffyingly alien were all of a sudden easily brushed off with a friendly smile and a cheery hello.  One slum dog A lot of people were readying themselves for Holi festival tomorrow, people continued to build the bonfires on the beach which were perilously tall and thin but there was also glittery bunting all over.  We had some food in the little food square which was cooked fresh in fron of us on a huge concave griddle pan.  Our whole meal including 1L water and a fresh cooked cob of corn came to less than £1 for both of us.

After that we decided to save some money and head back to the hotel to collect our bags.  We hired a rickshaw to take us to the train station and it seemed fairly uneventful although maybe I'm just falling too easily into this way of life.  We got to the train station with about 40 minutes to spare which was intentional but boy did we need it.  The local trains were absolute bedlam, people were hangng out of the doors as it pulled to the stand, jumping off well before it came to a halt but even worse, people were jumping on before people had got off, the train would grind to a slow halt and rest for about 10 seconds before slowly pulling away again.  The whole process took about 2 minutes which was plenty of time.  We found the correct platform fairly easily but we spent the next 30 minutes watching all the trains as they came in to try and work out what to do and which carriage was first class.  When the train puled in though we just panicked and jumped on the first carriage and walked all the way down the train till we found 1st class AC seater.  We needent have bothered as this train actually came to a halt for a good 2 minutes, I suppose because it is the long distance Raani (Queen) Express.  We will shortly have completed the 220 KM ad have to get all our luggage off in one piece, luckily the lady next to Kal is getting off inNavsari also so hopefully she'l give us a bit of warning.  Oh, we got a meal on here for 20p although that was just fo one person without drinks - hopefully we'll have a meal with Kal's folks when we meet up with them.

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