Well, India is something else. Quite an incredible culture shock and will definitely take some getting used to. Currently, about an hour of walking round is as much as we can handle before we have to head back to the hotel for a lie down! We were just getting to grips with Bombay (and quite enjoying it) when we decided to get a train to a place called Nasik. Booking the tickets proved easier than we expected, but we ended up in a second class sleeper, which is one above the lowest class you can get! It was certainly a baptism of fire. Just walking along the street in India is an insane experience; people stare at us constantly and the traffic is total chaos with every vehicle jockeying for position and constantly beeping their horns. The food is great though!
By far the most shocking thing about arriving in Bombay is the poverty. Walking out of the hotel at night you have to step over the bodies of people sleeping on the pavement (of which there are literally hundreds), not to mention the big rats! Whilst we haven't been hassled too much (there was a woman with a baby and a monkey on a chain who gave us some trouble), occasionally it's hard to walk past the beggars with out giving them a few coins. The train journey out of Mumbai took us through miles and miles of the worst slums we have ever seen. The tracks are lined with enormous piles of rotting rubbish and lines of men literally shitting onto the tracks (they simply have nowhere else to go). It's quite an eye opener.
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