The journey to Mumbai!

The orientation finished in Pondicherry a few days ago, so the hectic journey to Mumbai started. We got a bus from Pondicherry and after 4 hours of sweating, watching a Tollywood film (the souths version of Bollywood), and trying to avoid people sleeping on us, we arrived in Chennai. We headed straight to the train station to stock up on food supplies for the mamouth 30 hr journey to Mumbai. At 22:30 we got on the train and fougth with our bags until we were happy they were securly padlocked to the bottom bunks. After that we pretty much went straight to sleep with inqusitive India eyes peering at us from all directions of the carriage.

In the morning we were woke by Tamil words and a scattering of english, such as "Omlette! Chai! sweets!" I ignored the food sellers pacing up and down the carrage as long as I could. Then at 9:00 I gave in and decided to wak up.

The day sped by, possible because there was nothing to measure time by. It all kind of merged into one. We decided that it was like having a day in bed, but people brought food to you, rather than having to go downstairs for it. We sat and read, chatted, listened to music, etc. We didn't get hastled much either, which was good.

As for the food, we concluded that if someone ate and drank everytime a seller walked down the isle, you would burst after an hour. There was barely 2 minutes between one seller and the next shouting what they had to offer. It kind of dissapeared into the general background noise after an hour or two. The things on offer ranged from a whiskey bottle full of honey, vegetable biriyani, flowers or and a lassi. You couldn't ask for anything else!

So after the full day, we then slept again until 04:00 the next morning. We were rudley awaken by the guards and 'guided' off the train. We had arrived in Mumbai.