After enjoying our time in Udaipur, we readied ourselves for the internal flight that would take us to Mumbai. An hour an a half in the air, with Jet Airways, and we were ready to touch down in Mumbai, or Bombay as it was called whilst under British rule. It was an exciting city to be arriving in, and we were keen to explore the streets and find some of the places mentioned in Shantaram, the critically acclaimed novel by Gregory David Roberts (if you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend checking it out).

We elected to stay in an apartment about 90 minutes away from Colaba (the City Centre), we hadn’t appreciated just how big Mumbai is (over 600 kilometres squared, with a population of over 20 million people). Compare this to England which is around 130 kilometres squared, with a population of about 54 million people and you get some idea of just how big Mumbai is. On the plus side, now we had an Indian SIM card, we were able to use Uber to get rides between our apartment and the city centre, and the 1h 30m journey cost £3-4 and doesn’t require any haggling (if we were forced to negotiate a price with a taxi, I suspect it would have been more like £25).

Following somewhat in the steps of the protagonist, Lindsay, from Shantaram, we saw various sites including Leopold’s Cafe (a central meeting point in the novel) and the infamous Victoria Terminus train station (also knows as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right).

We also engaged in a tradition which we get pulled into, everywhere that we go, which is having lots and lots of Indians (men, women, children, families) wanting to have photographs with us. Standing outside the Mumbai Gateway of India, Gemma had a photo shoot that lasted 25 minutes solid, being photographed with no less than 50 separate groups. Just as we thought we’d be able to get away, someone else reared their head, who had been patiently waiting for 10 minutes, and we didn’t have the heart to turn them away.

Staying in an apartment outside of the City Centre also gave us a different view of India, seeing how people live there lives outside of the main tourist hotspots. Next door to us we met an Indian family who were staying there for a few days in order to go to their sons University Graduation. Upon arriving at the apartment, we were a little lost, and unsure what we were going to do in Mumbai, but immediately the father of the family came over to us and said he’d help us. Although he and his wife spoke limited English (and we speak no Hindi) we were blown away by his eagerness to communicate with us. He was so happy that his son was graduating, and insisted that his wife and son came out of their room to speak to us. Several times over the days we spent there, the son came out and ushered his dad back into his room, as he was embarrassed about his dads gushing, but it really was quite sweet. As well as having various conversations with the family, they also insisted we tried various homemade snacks and treats and after 3 nights of staying there we felt sad to say goodbye to them.

But after seeing lots of busy cities, monuments, landmarks, palaces, etc. we were now heading to Goa, the party capital of Goa, with picturesque beaches and all-night parties! This was the part of India that Gemma was most looking forward to, and upon arrival immediately provided a very different outlook compared to what we had seen so far. The hostel (called Jungle) was somewhat of a party hostel, and as soon as we checked in, we went outside to be greeted by fellow backpackers sitting around a campfire, passing around beers and rums and chatting about where they had partied already, and where they planned to go next. It was a lot more reminiscent of the same of the more lively hostels in continental Europe, vs the more traditional guesthouse type lodging we had experienced thus far in India.

The next day we headed to the beach with a couple from our dormitory in the hostel; they had arrived before us and suggested Baby Vagator beach was the best one to head to within walking distance from our hostel. We were happy to follow their recommendation, and found the beach to be very agreeable, from the complimentary sun loungers and umbrellas to relax on, to the golden sand and warm sea… and of course cows…. you can’t get away from the cows in India.

After a couple of weeks of eating nothing but Indian style food, we were happy to have something a bit more familiar for the holiday setting, some pizza and pasta, and what could be safer to eat than pizza and pasta? Surely a couple of dishes which wouldn’t have any adverse effects on our bodies which had been subjected to more curry in two weeks than we normally eat in a year? Well…

After our pizza and pasta, we were both ill for the following 5 nights that we stayed in Ajuna, so ill we could hardly leave our dormitory room (or at the very least, not ever be more than 30 seconds from the conveniences)! There was much disappointment at not being able to join in with all the frolics with the other guests at the hostel and also much pain and discomfort from the food poisoning (we were later told never to eat meals from the beach type shacks that we had our pizza and pasta from, so a lesson learnt there perhaps)! We were given something to try and help our stomachs, but the survey is still out as to whether it actually helped or not, but literally, every Indian that we spoke to suggested trying this stuff (along with eating bananas):

We did eventually recover, but not intime to party in Anjuna, however we did still have another couple of days in Goa in a slightly different part of Goa called Panjim (which is the capital) which has a lot more of an obvious Portgese influence on display (Goa was under Portugese rule until 1961). Whilst Panjim wasn’t a place to party, it was a place which seemed to have amazing colours everywhere we turned.

Goa has certainly been a nice place to visit, almost like a holiday within a holiday, taking a week off from busy Indian cities to relax a little more (even if we were ill for the majority of the time). Once again we are impressed at how different each part of India is, Goa is figuratively a million miles away from New Delhi (but then again, it is also literally 2,000km away and when you move 2,000km across continental Europe, it comes as no surprise how different various European cities look). We feel that Goa is a place we may come back to in future, perhaps for 9-10 days to just stay in a nice hotel on the beach and relax, but that’s for another year, as of right now, our next stop is another flight away: Kerala towards the southern tip of India, famous for its backwaters and coastline.

If you have enjoyed this post, please consider liking our Facebook page below. By doing this, you will be kept up to date with our adventures. This includes being told when there is a new blog post for you to enjoy. It also helps us grow our site and following.

[efb_likebox fanpage_url="https://www.facebook.com/OurBigPlanet" fb_appid="1489467474509397" box_width="320" box_height="240" responsive="1" show_faces="1" show_stream="0" hide_cover="1" small_header="1" hide_cta="1" locale="en_US"

]