From Chennai we flew up to Bombay, or Mumbai as it is known now, the city of urine smells. It smelt like this all over and you can smell it as you are coming into land! Not so much rain as the other cities to wash it away, but when it does rain, it is monsoons and floods each year! We landed at night, had a quick trip to the Hotel, then next day, not quite realizing where we were, took a taxi into town to the Tourist Bureau, – 1 1/2 hours later through congested, hot, smelly, noisy, polluting traffic and we finally made it there. I must admit that after that we quickly learnt to use the local trains, which had women carriages, were very crowded, but cheap, quicker and kept your blood pressure lower! A quick trip in a motorized rickshaw at this end and we were back at the hotel at the end of each day. Not a good hotel, even though it was Holiday Inn, and we ended up eating next door each night, for the same price, but a lot better quality and service.

Our second day there, Marg and I went in by train, and she went to jump into the women’s carriage, I was meant to jump into another part of the train, and then meet at a certain station. Needless to say, I couldn’t get on due to the crowd, we missed each other at the station, so we ended up spending the day apart in Bombay, finally meeting back at the hotel. We were better organized the next time!! Saw the Gateway of India where the last British troops left from on ships on Independence Day, did some shopping and had a pretty good look around the city, which was mostly on foot. Quite hot and dry here with temperatures around 36^o C, so walking around looking at their parks and monuments was very tiring in the heat. There was a lion park on the outskirts that we went to, bought a ticket for their safari bus, but wouldn’t leave until 8 more people arrived, so we ended up by paying for all 10 tickets (total S$5.00) ourselves and having an empty bus. As it was the first trip of the day and we did actually see the 5 lions that they had in the park! Also headed to Kanheri Caves, which are some 2^nd century Buddhist caves on the outskirts on Bombay. Over-all,, a good part of the trip and then next onto New Delhi and then the Taj!