Arrival.

I am sure that those of you bothering to read this will be delighted to hear that I have arrived in Mumbai now. The three valiums I ate made the flight dreamy, the landing surreal and made me too terrified to do anything but shuffle timidly to a grinning taxi driver on arrival, paying the man far too much to get me to where I needed to be. I have barely left Europe my whole life so imagine my slack jawed disbelief at the sight of this very hot and very strange place filled with people lying on the floor, shouting, running and weaving wicker baskets beneath tarpaulins under motorway overhangs. After a hair whitening hour long taxi ride through dusty traffic (traffic laws? WHAT TRAFFIC LAWS??)to the Gateway of India, a huge monument overlooking the harbour, I wandered around for a while to attempt to find my bearings, but found them largely elusive. Some half hour or so into my uneasy two mile sojourn around the streets of Colaba and the surrounding market area of Fort, I was accosted by a man with a moustache named Babu. Babu tried to sell me a map I did not want and was delighted to hear that I am an Englishmen; the next thing I knew he was buying me a cup of chai tea and we were having some beers, however, I soon found myself paying for everything including a 'salad' for him, and ultimately sat there looking at the door whilst he described his appreciation of cricket to me in incredibly broken English. Having escaped from Babu, scribbling his number down in my notebook with the empty assurance that I would call him and we would meet up again today, I went to 'Leopold's' (against Babu's advice), a supposedly trendy hotspot that, after my bloody minded insistence that I go there, ironically turned out to be of poor quality. Still, they served me curry and cheap beer and I was able to amuse myself with dry judgmental assumptions about the clientele, so it wasn't a total loss. After dinner I walked around some more and tried to take photos but the flash on my camera appears to be faulty. This, in addition to the aggressively slurred shouts of a man demanding to know why I was taking photos, led to a swift retreat back to my cheap and cheerful salvation army hostel for the evening where I was obliged to ignore the lizard that bolted from the door when I went to brush my teeth, and compelled to perpetrate a small cockroach holocaust before bed. As I hurled myself into a rather sweaty slumber I managed around two minutes of conversation with my American bunk mate who seemed pleasant enough. However I discovered this morning that he has now left India for good. I hope it wasn't something I said. I am now in an internet cafe about to go on another wander. Later I am planning to visit the Global Pagoda and some place called Elephanta Island, both of which must be accessed by ferry. Apparently Elephanta Island has a massive statue of Shiva, which presumably gives it its name. Either that or there are a number of rampaging Pachyderms trapped in a very enclosed space where they send annoying tourists such as myself to, for a small price. After that I shall probably eat more curry and drink more beer.