It is hard to describe the feeling of flying into a new country, let alone a new continent, and taking your first taxi ride through the city - exhilirating would come close.

Before you arrive you are always filled with all the information, good and bad, that you have read, seen on TV, and heard about since you can remember about the place and the people you are visting.  However, you understand that how something is in your imagination is never how it is in reality.  So you try to take it all in to be able to compare the two as you as you see things for the first time.  This goes for the first few days after arrival too.

We flew into Mumbai early in the morning, and after dealing with the fact that our checked bags were still in Qatar and would not arrive until the next day (that's ok we had insurance and went on a "necessities" shopping spree in the afternoon), we took our taxi ride to our hotel.  The streets were relatively empty, but it was still cool to see the city as it woke up.  We had not slept in 24 hours or so, so we crashed quickly.

Some things you hear about India: crazy drivers (taking your life in your hands everytime you cross the street), dirty (open drain sewers, people disposing of garbage everywhere), slums, cows wandering around on the street like they owned the place, bargaining for almost everything, and intense stares are all true. We are still having trouble with all the staring and on several occasions teenage boys and men have gone for Rosanna's breasts and backside. Awesome! I have wanted to go a little crazy on some of them, probably a bad idea in a foreign country though.

The streets were packed with people throughout the day, and many slept on the streets and in the train station during the night. As with Africa many people are getting by on subsistence living.  Cars, buses, rickshaws, push carts, and motorcycles all fight for space on the roads. I have had many urges to closeline people that wiz by us on motorcycles and miss us within inches.  

Smells of effluent, incense, deep fried foods, spice, animals, and car exhaust filled the air. We realised later that Mumbai comparatively is not as bad as other places in terms of being hassled constantly and the amount of garbage everywhere. It basiclly gets progressively worse as one heads north to more touristy and populated areas.

With all the negatives comes some positives. Some of the architecture in Mumbai is stunning as you'll see from some of the pictures. Indian food is delicious and besides the staring and hassling, Indian people are very friendly. We enjoyed our first stop in India as we ate some good Indian dishes, shopped at amazingly inexpensive places, and took in some sights.  Mumbai was overall a nice city and we were glad to have stayed there to get acclimatized to the Indian way of life.