Back to it? (Mumbai) I was nervous on the plane on the way over - I honestly can't tell you why that was! Maybe it was due to the amount of faff I had to go through before I could even sit on the plane: Despite arriving almost 3 hours before I needed to I still managed to get stuck in silly check-in queues and pointless security checks (twice!). I was now travelling with Gulf Airlines (instead of British Airways), this meant that of the other passengers 60% I couldn't see, 20% were aging Punjabis and the other 20% were the offspring of the 60% that I couldn't see!! All well and good...until the security checks when coats, bags extra had to be taken off - I've never seen so many people wear so many layers of thick over coats (with more children hiding inside!!) From start to finish it took me almost 3 hours to check in and get airside!! This usually calm procedure at Standsted airport gives me time to sort things out in my head and prepare myself - not at Heathrow! The stupidity of it all was in some way a preparation for the numbnuts that are aplenty in India! The people and the environment in India are so different from what we know back home, I was eager to reduce any 'culture shock' that I might experience (after my cushioned living back at home in England for several months) despite already having lived there for 6 months. I had to expose myself back to these stupidities again and built up my patient & tolerance levels. I'd undoubtedly 'soften' since arriving back home on the 1st April 2005, and my "Spiderman senses" needed sharpening up. At 1pm that afternoon I'd left Anand Nivas (home) in Royston and walked over to the train station - not more than 10mins, but in those few minutes an observations came to mind that made me chuckle. As I knew it everything around me was about to intensify - the noise, number of people, dirt, filth, heat, amount of activity & movement. This gentle 10min walk along a clean, well-maintained, quite street with relatively little noise, traffic and distractions in sleepy little Royston would be the last time I'd experience it for the next 3 months. From here on in, every time I'd walk somewhere I'd be accompanied by an army of Rickshaw (taxi) wallahs, hotel touts, beggars, stray dogs & cows, walking through discarded plastic bags, bottles & cups, mixed in with a good dose of dust and various sorts of excrement. And the soundtrack for this Indianised walk? It wouldn't be India with the sound of dozen chai-wallahs balling "Chaaaaaai", 2 dozen men spitting out streams of blood-red Paan "Aaarrgggg-tooooouuuu" and letting it dribble through their yellowed teeth while talking to friends about the size of their moustaches, and not to forget the hundreds of motor vehicles (none of which would be legal in the UK) blowing their (fog-)horns for seemingly no reason "Blaaaaaaahhhahahahahahahaha-lalalalal! As i like to say, India must be the only country where you can get a mobile ringtone set as your car horn.....and the louder and more ear piercing the better!! So, there I am sat on the plane, slightly goosed off at the amount of pre-departure faff I had to go through, but also fully aware of the fact that I was about to submerse myself in stuff a lot worse. I was psyching myself up again to deal with India, handles Indian-Indians and getting ready to rough it again. I always used to use the time in journeys to adjust myself to the next place I was going to. In this instance, I knew Mumbai fairly well, I knew the layout, the areas of town the approximate pricing - I knew it all, but I also knew it was going to semi-difficult to readjust. Needless to say I spent most of the flight.....past-out sleeping! Landing in Bahrain (Saudi Arabia) in the morning, although it was only a transits stop on to Muscat and then Mumbai, this was the first time that that 'buzz' of travelling came back to me. It was a new place that I knew nothing about, the people, the lifestyle, the mannerisms - my curiosity was in overdrive! I was switching "on" again. As we transited through to Muscat and on to Mumbai I got chatting to one of the aircrew who explained a bit to me about the Middle East, Omar and these other countries that have only ever been places on the map to me. Mentally I bookmarked Omar as a country to come back to and find out more about! (The odds of me getting a job when I return seem to be getting slimmer!). Although this Gulf Air flight was not the original one, I'm glad things panned out this way. Without the stopover I'm sure I would have entered India with the wrong frame of mind. Several hours later our plan cruised in through the smog, skimmed the rooftops of the slums on the runway and landed between a slum settlement of 60billion, 20feet on the left, and a nation of tea drinkers, spitters and horn blowers (!) on the right! Welcome to India, and India's second city and financial capital to boot!. Being such an important place in India, the airport was typically Indian - Chaotic!. I hated this airport with a passion, over 8 times, I had to collect/drop people of at it in 2005/6. And now i saw it from the other side...my opinion remains unchanged!! Our flight landed at 8pm at night, and the airport is some 25kms from the south part of town (Colaba) that I wanted to get to. I knew this and had already resolved in my mind to crash the night in the airport and then make my way to town in the morning and have the morning to try and check in somewhere. I was also out of practise! Some guy called out "Hotel, Sir Hotel, Good Price, With receipt!" through a Perspex counter that once read "Tourist Hotel Booking" I mentioned to him my part of town and my budget, and low and behold he offered me a hotel (inclusive of transport to town) at a reasonable rate close to Colaba. I thought "why not, it’s just for one night" One of the first things that struck me as I emerged from the terminal building was the warmth. It was bout 9pm, but that warm muggy evening air took me back to 12 months ago. The air was mixed with the smoke of burning rubbish and stagnate water, and as I walked with my driver out of the airport and round to some back alley where his "unofficial" taxi was parked, I felt strangely at ease. I can imagine for others arriving at night to Mumbai and then taken through some decrepit unlit backstreets surrounded by a billion new and simulations stimuli it may be too much, yet somehow I felt assured, comfortable and not worried in the slightest - I new full well that I'd be fine, the hotel wouldn't be anywhere near where I thought it would be, but that was all fine to me!! In the back seat of this "taxi" we blared our way south, and chomped up traffic along the way. The traffic usually consists of 52 seater Rickshaws, 8 seater Motorbikes, and a herd of cows that failed their application to Anchor Butter. The sight of a bus charging straight to us, then serving at the last minute didn't faze me in the slightest!! What did faze me was my own stupid mind. I'd started to think again, and I resolved that I was actually not looking forward to roughing it again. I'd got used to my comforts, hot showers, clean rooms, hygiene! I was nervous about 'roughing it' , I was lazy to put the effort in to managed the agro of roughing it again (bargaining, looking for rooms, walking places) - I was contemplating throwing money at people to get them to do things for me. This knocked me for six! How could I even think about paying people to do things for me - knowing full well, I'd be ripped off, and the job wouldn't be proper; how could i even think about doing something and paying more than I'd need to for it, How could i put myself in a situation where I'd be taken for a ride buy others! --- I put it down to exhaustion and pretended it never happened, after a good night's rest I'd think more clearly and my brain would reboot correctly!!! The India I saw outside of me was just the same as when I left it. People swatting on the high kerbs, spitting paan in a manner that could have easily been a musical fountain with the sounds of the traffic! Shanty towns made from old (& new!) road signs, sheets of tin, cardboard, all illegally pulling power from the mains to power the 32 inch colour TVs in the back of their rooms!! Old men sitting around doing not much else apart from gurning and congratulating each other on being Indian! I was back! And as the driver pulled up to a hotel that wasn't were I was told it would be, I knew that I was back amongst these people again and I couldn't stay in side my taxi forever!!