Our final day was a later start than usual, with the overnight train to look forward to that evening! It was the floor for us, as the family we were staying with were in the process of moving house. We started up by checking out the CST station, formerly known as the Victoria terminus. It is a pretty impressive building, with millions of people passing through it daily. There is a constant flow of people everywhere you go it Mumbai. You really get a sense of how populated the city is, let alone the country.
We then went to the Crawford street market, having high expectations of the bazaars. Sadly, there was nothing. Just saris and saris, and saris. So many saris, and I didn't really feel like purchasing one for myself...! Having been truly dissapointed by the bazaar, we headed off to the prince of Wales museum. This huge museum had everything to do with Mumbai, and was crowded with hundreds of people, all Indian. It was really interesting, but by this point, I was struggling with the heat and lack of water and food. I could have eaten a horse for lunch if it was possible. Shame there wasn't a tesco nearby. Poor joke, I know.
George was then adamant of heading off to the Nehru centre and the planetarium. When we arrived, there was a huge queue, so we went for it, and cut in. We were also not asked for our tickets, which we hadn't purchased, so we were in...for free! We thought we'd hit the jackpot and gone under the radar, but that's very difficult when your a white guy in India during the low season? We subsequently got caught and had to pay the 50p ticket! The show itself was rubbish. Don't think I really need to say much more about it.
We had one more stop off to see before we left, which was the dhobi ghat. This is where all the washing is done in Mumbai. There were lines and lines of women thrashing the dirt out of the clothes. It didn't look very good for the clothes, but the clothes looked a lot cleaner than when we did our washing in our hostels!
So we finally headed back to the flat, where there was nothing but WiFi and a TV...all you need really..! We chilled there for a couple of hours, as our train was at 9pm from mumbai CST, or what we thought was Mumbai central....
So we were recommended this small Indian restaurant just outside Mumbai central, which specialised in pav baji. This is basically bread and spicy sauce. Was delicious. However, we were a bit stressed out as the food took 30 minutes to get to us, and by the time e finished our food, it was 8:30 and we didn't know where the station was. So we rushed out of the restaurant, and fast walked towards the station. We got there, and looked up on the board for our train number and see which platform we were on. However, we couldn't find it. Where was our train? Did we get the date wrong? Did we get the station wrong?! These ere all the thought running through our minds, hoping that both the answers were no!
George then remembered that CST was the huge station we visited earlier in the day. Oh god. So it was 8:45, our train was leaving in 15 minutes, and the station we had to get to was on the other side of the city. It wasn't looking good. So we ran outside looking for a taxi driver, and ran into this youngish driver who was very keen to know what all the fuss was about. We told him the situation, and he thought he could make it in time, so we promised him we'd pay him 500 rupees (5 pounds) if he got there with ten minutes to spare, which is a lot of money for a taxi driver..! So we jumped in, with little confidence of us making the train in time. The sweat coming off our faces was crazy. Backs drenched, sweat in the eyes. I was planning in my head how else we would get to aurangabad...by bus the next morning? Where would we stay for the night? Another expense.
Nonetheless, we arrived, at 8:55. We had 5 minutes. This was going to be tight. Having found which platform we were on, we noticed that our carriage was on the far end. Seeing as the average Indian train has 30 carriages, it was a long way for us to run! So we ran, and ran, and ran, hoping we'd get there in time!
The relief when I stepped onto our air conditioned carriage was out of this world. I was so sure we were going to miss it. But we made it? George trundled in a minute later. We were both drenched. It looked like we'd just had a shower. We'd made it, and we were off to aurangabad...yey!
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