Mumbai to Southampton in 3 weeks

On 30th March 2010 my husband, Keith, and I embarked on a long-planned holiday to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary later this year. Since we'd had a particularly cold winter in the UK, we were both very much looking forward to feeling the sun on our faces for a change. Our holiday started in style as we were picked up by a chauffeur at our house on the afternoon of Tuesday March 30th for our drive down to Heathrow to catch the overnight flight to Mumbai.

Our arrival in Mumbai was at about 11.30am local time and as expected, it was overwhelmingly hot! I had developed an absolutely awful head-ache during the flight, however, and wanted nothing more than to hide in a darkened room. We assembled ready for our coach to  take us to the ship - a journey of more than 2 hours, which I couldn't fully appreciate due to my head pain. Having said that, the initial response to Mumbai was one of jaw-dropping mesmerisation (if there is such a word!).

The city is vast, with the majority of buildings being slum dwellings. I didn't manage to take any photos on this coach journey, but if you can imagine every available space being taken up by corrugated tin huts, with barely any space to walk between them you won't be far wrong. Every tin hut appeared to have a satellite dish on the top and of course there was the line of washing hanging outside each one too.

We were told by the guide on the coach that Mumbai has a population of approximately 18million people, with 5million of those being slum-dwellers. Apparently, 5000 new residents are migrating to Mumbai from surrounding villages every week, so the actual figures are constantly changing and practically impossible to verify.

The roads through the city are heaving with traffic and people, and are in a poor state - I made a mental note to myself not to complain about the pot-holes back home! Despite the fact that the slums are so obviously over-populated and not particularly pleasant as a choice of dwelling, Mumbai actually depends on them for part of the economy. A lot of home-made items - in particular, some of the most popular Indian snacks, come from small family businesses operating in the slums. Every tin hut (I cannot call them houses) has a water supply, electricity and a TV, which I was amazed at!

The local taxis that intrigued me the most were ones like this yellow and black "Auto rickshaw"  -there were so many of them! Image is courtesy of  "MumbaiDailySnapshot" on Flickr, you can view more of his images here: MumbaiDailySnapshot

We also saw some rather unstable methods of transporting goods and people and it made me wonder how many traffic accidents they must have on a daily basis. At one point, I looked out of the coach window and my heart nearly stopped - riding along on the road next the coach, weaving in between the other 6 lines of traffic (on a  road only wide enough to fit 2 lanes of traffic comfortably) was a woman on a moped with a small child just standing on the footrest in front of her - the child couldn't have been more than 3 years old!

Anyway, after our culture shock of India, we managed to board our ship, the MV Saga Ruby, by 3pm. We were shown to our cabin, our luggage was brought up to us soon after and we unpacked then I tried to sleep off my headache before our evening meal.