After an uneventful flight watching a bit of Dublin’s Singh Street in the film ‘Sing Street’ and flying over Dubai’s Palm Island we landed in an almost empty Mumbai airport where they immigration spent about 20 minutes trying to take our fingerprints.
Traffic here is crazy. They drive by using their horns as much as they do the accelerator. That’s all you hear – honk honk! Loads of people and cars on the road. if you think that the M25 is busy – that’s nothing compared to the traffic here. Mind you there are 23 million people in Mumbai!!! and loads of smog.
Security is high here too. Entering hotels one has to go through security screens and they check cars with explosives detectors.
I have been here 10 hours already and still haven’t been able to get any money. That is quite frustrating. We were told we could change money in the hotel but when we tried we learned that they was none left. In the last week India has recalled and stopped issuing 500 and 1000 rupee bills resulting in extremely long queues appearing outside banks everywhere throughout the country. We are going back to the airport tomorrow to meet up with the rest of the group, and I’m only hoping that we’ll be able to change some money then.
I’ve had a first sighting of cows by the side of the road.
There are so many people here that many are living in shanty towns and under tarpaulin. A small sukkah as we know it is bigger than the homes that some of these people live in.
We were meant to go to 2 museums today but somehow we only got to the flower market and spice market which in itself were amazing.