North to Mumbai !

We finished up our time in Goa with some more beach time and some more Indian Brandy, resulting in a day in bed for myself (Ships) and the Camel (Matt).

The journey north to Mumbai proved to be quite long and more difficult, mainly due to Fyvie being a bit ill and it being extremely hot. The Crow is still proving to be a ridiculous piece of engineering, with still no repairs made and only a small bit of oil usage. It is starting to complain a bit during the heat of the day - particularly as we've been dragging it up some pretty big mountains, lots of second gear, 20km/h climbs. Stunning scenery throughout. We have to stop during the absolute heat of the day and remove all of the kit and the engine cover just to let it recover a bit.

While preparing to leave Goa we realised that we better wash some of the more disgusting of our clothes and so the first bit of the drive was 'laundry hour' with various wet t-shirts and boxers decorating the crow, accompanied with classical music hour and Rhydian, producing even more wierd looks from locals than usual.
We have also had a few firsts during this phase of the journey - first crash witnessed, saw a 4x4 smack the side of a bus just in front of us, aswell as a lorry swerve and almost overturn, there have also been a lot of wrecks on the side of the road - mainly buses and the odd obliterated rickshaw!! We have also had our first few police encounters, generally seem fine and just want to say hello, one wanted a bribe. One very frightening encounter was a woman who decided to walk out in front of the rickshaw while carrying her baby and then promptly fell flat on her face! We came to a stop quite easily before her, but had we been in a bus or truck.....

Both Fyvie and Matt are feeling a bit rough now, food during the night stopover on the way was a bit suspect, quite a remote place, the restaurant staff and locals came to sit and watch us eat. The following day saw a big lunch order in a roadside cafe, three cokes, three plain naans and a boiled rice!!

There also seems to be a lot going on in the country at the moment, as we drove through Mangalore a plane crashed, yesterday a train was derailed too, therefore we're still backing Rickshaw as the safest method of travel.

The journey up to Mumbai saw the Crow pass through the 1500km marker, with the last 50km into the city proving to be pretty horrible with ridiculous traffic. Upon arrival we weren't sure that we were allowed to take the Rickshaw on the toll road in - went for it anyway and just got a big laugh and cheer from the toll booth staff, got pulled over a bit later on and fined by the police, 3 quid well spent. Also, in town, we noticed that there suddenly were no other rickshaws (we later found out that Rickshaws aren't allowed in the southern part of town where the hotel was) but just decided that ignorance was the best policy and carefully evaded policemen!

The people in Mumbai seemed to be even more friendly - nearly every car laughing and waving. We had 3kg of Bananas tied up in the back and chucked them out into passing rickshaws, much to everyones surprise.

First night in Mumbai, met up with Charlie, a friend of Fyvie's brother in-law and his colleague Martin. They took us to a ridiculously nice bar on top of a skyscraper, even got driven there by their chauffeur - bit of a change to the Crow!!
The day after the roof top bar and Charlie offered to show us around the city, again with the help of Jay the chauffeur.


We visited the Darubi slum area - where slumdog millionaire was filmed. Very humbling to see the area, unbelievably big - apparently around 40% of the cities population (of 20million) live in the slum, we only strayed a few streets from the car but it was very interesting to see the hive of activity surrounding the recycling that goes on.

Afterwards we retired to their private members club and had some drinks in the sunshine, a very contrasting day for what seems to be a very contrasting city.