Daytime Thurs

Thursday 8th Jan.
I've had a short trip down to the Fort area of Colaba and paid a visit to the old Afghan church there. This was used by the British Army right back from 1848. Unfortunately there is no graveyard there. It seems that most of the burials happened about 80 Km outside the city, though the church guide didn't speak very good English so I had a bit of a problem in understanding. This is something I'll have to investigate when I get back here from Singapore.
Mumbai is a huge, strange place, slums are right next to more affluent areas with people even setting up little camp-sites on the sides of the roads. There are dogs everywhere, they even seem to curl up for a sleep on the highway! All the housing I've seen so far is way removed from anything I've ever seen before, there are corrugated steel shanty towns like the picture seen of South African Townships. The roads themselves are extremely poor, with even the more up to date areas being very bumpy. Some of it appears to have been dug up and then just left! The whole road surface - very odd.
The shops are amazing too – it seems that you can buy anything and everything at the side of the road. From the normal clothes, vegetables and other groceries, to car tyres, plastic, aluminium and even bricks, granite and marble slabs are available. I saw one building advertising X-rays (while you wait!).
Have also been to see the Taj Mahal Hotel – where one of the terrorist attacks took place, the lower floor windows are boarded up but apparently it is open for business. The Taj Mahal Hotel stands on the waterfront which is called the Gateway to India, this is probably where my Gt Grandparents arrived with the Army - and where Harry embarked on his sad return to Market Harborough. There is a tall monument there dedicated to King George & Queen Mary erected in commemoration of their visit December 1911.
Also drove past the cafe that was hit, this was open and bustling, so it looks like the terrorists lost as the message here is “business as usual” which is as it should be, we must never surrender our freedom to these sorts of attacks.
I'm now sitting in one of Mumbai's airports waiting for a flight to New Delhi as the trains aren't running today.