The Eagle has landed!

Welcome to Jamnagar everyone! 

After a 9 hour overnight flight from London (where I actually managed to get some sleep) I arrived in Mumbai on Friday morning where the airport was much less crowded than expected. It took only 5mins to get through immigration (no queue!) and our luggage was delivered 5mins later. Wow!

We were told the airport was so quiet, as India observes eid as public holiday, so most people had left the city for a long weekend.

After a quick check in at the hotel (just in case anyone ever wonders – the Hotel Planet Residency in Mumbai is not a 5 star hotel, as some webpages seem to indicate – unless you award one star for windows, one for a door, one for each of the aircons and one for a bed ;-) we went for some food at the highly recommended “Green House”. Delicious!

Going to and from the restaurant required us to get one of the auto-rikshas (some form of motorbike with a bench and roof which can apparently fit 5 (!) people…). It was “interesting” and I now understand why ca. 100 people are killed everyday in Mumbai alone in traffic… Keith has put a video of the ride on his blog, so have a look for yourself... But our drivers were careful(ish) and we made it to and back from the hotel in one piece (but for the evening meal we decided to walk to a restaurant…)

Here’s a picture of Paula (from Brazil) and Claudia (from Mexico) in the riksha:

And here is one from me, less clear as it really was VERY bumpy in the riksha...

 Today we took the flight to Jamnagar

(YES, this - emergency exit! - window was shut closed with tape…!!!!!)

and discovered that the flight from Mumbai is the only commercial flight to Jamnagar each day (the rest of the time the airport is used for military flights only).

Here’s a first glimpse of the city from the air

and one from the airport (and yes, this IS a tractor pulling the stairs for us to embark…)

We’ve spent the rest of the day sorting out currency exchange, SIM cards and (most importantly for some of us) our liquor license… More about this to follow later, so watch this space.

Now it’s off to get some sleep as we’ve been warned that tomorrow will be an intense day.