Arrival in Mumbai

Arrived in Mumbai 30 minutes early and with much relief all of the bags and even the bikes appear. It seems that someone had tried riding Tom's bike with the tyres deflated and the valve has ripped out..

Luckily(!) Tom has two spares but less luckily, finds that one of the spares is pre-owned and also deflates... but two tubes later - we're off!

We'd feared that there would be thousands of people waiting to mob us on arrival. This was far from the case, perhaps because we left the terminal 30 minutes after everyone else, perhaps because we were of no real interest to the locals.

We're heading down to a hotel near the gateway to India to meet the girls. A bicycle shop on the way draws our attention but they don't have any spare tubes - and we're much too excited to stop for long. Our street map of Mumbai is pretty useless - we have 30 to 40 kms of urban sprawl to cross so head south and try not to be killed by the lorries buses and motorbikes. After asking many people we finally arrive at the Gateway to India, our hotel nearby and meet up with the girls. They have failed to book seats on their train out in the morning and we have no idea whether or not we'll be able to get a ferry out with our bikes.... oh well. Cold beers and a veggie curry beckon.

When we visited the medical centre for vacinations and advice on malaria pills, we asked the doctor if it was possible to travel through rural India without getting any tummy troubles.
She assured us that if we were diligent it was possible. We were and we had no problem at all.
The rules were....

• go vegetarian
• keep clean (we used steralising hand cleaners & wet wipes)
• only eat in busy places with a reasonable turnover
• don't eat raw fruit or veg unless washed or pealed by us

We also took a water filter which was a blessing. Not only when we actually ran out of water but for filling the bidons at night for a fully loaded start to the day.