Samantha Mumbai...

Where to start. People warned me about starting in Mumbai, in India, in May. and I shrugged it off. Cos its really very difficult to imagine what this place is like until you land here. Those warnings suffered from the same thing this blog will suffer from, the complete overwhelming of the senses that occurs is very difficult to capture.

As we descended to land after midnight in Mumbai I could see lamps spreading for miles with no discernible pattern to them. I imagined shanty towns spreading out in the darkness and my palms began to sweat. Less than twenty minutes later I was in a taxi with two young lads who seemed intent on killing me. My "driver" paid scan attention to the rules of the road but I relaxed as I realised that neither did anyone else. An ould toot of the horn at regular intervals semed to work wonders. Matthew's reassuring parting words "Trust no-one" are useful but ultimately you have to trust someone and these lads had a sign with my name spelt correctly on it, most of my friends couldn't have done that.

The poverty is pretty stunning in the true sense of the word. In the hour long taxi journey from the airport we drive through what I can only assume were the edge of the slums. "Pavement people" sleep along the side of the road, lining the streets for miles, some on carts or the occasional flatbed truck but most just on a bit of cloth or cardboard on the ground. They seemed strangely unthreatening, their beds appealed to my sense of basic living, its hot, so sleep outside without blankets, though I was very tired at this point. Behind are their "homes", structures made of anything and everything, with here and there a crumbling row of two story buildings almost indistinguishable from the shacks around them. Where I am staying is in the centre of the tourist area so the poverty is less obvious but not hugely so. People still sleep where they see fit, day or night, with mangy dogs panting sluggishly in the daytime shade and chunky big rats running around at night. Everyone wants something off you, of course they do.

The heat, though I have said it was fine, is never going to be a non issue. Up north they are having heatwaves of 45' and people are dying, down south here its only 35' so we count our blessings a little. I am drinking more water than I have ever drank. Mum/Matthew you'll be delighted/disgusted to hear I bought a baseball cap( Nike) to protect my cheann from the sun. Mum I am also wearing that sleeveless monstrosity you bought me, it works well in this heat. In Mumbai the streets were often beautifully shaded by huge amazing trees but the shade is little relief from the sun. It's the most beautiful city, so bizarre. The people, the taxis. All sorts of buildings thrown in to the mix. I couldn't even start to describe them without pictures. Which I am taking .

I gave in to one beggar when i was buying my cap, she was a mother with a very cute kid I think she said his name was Marcus, he'd a great big cheeky grin, most of the kids seem to. The thing was she didn't want money, she wanted rice and she needed me to go into the supermarket for her as she wouldn't be allowed in without me. So we went in to maybe get some rice. She knew she had me whatever non commital frowns and grunts I was making and she picked out 10 kg of rice. But we were both winners, my guilt was assuaged slightly, I could ignore the next thirty beggars I met with a face a little harder than before.

Sometimes it gets too much. One evening after no real human interaction for maybe 36 hours I was taking a last walk before heading to my room to watch reruns of the 2005 Berlin Athletics Meet ( did you know there's now a 50 metre dash?). I was pretty run down, and getting a bit fed up with the constant harassment when this guy tapped me on my bare arm from behind. When I glanced around I realised it was the stump of his lower arm tapping me and that the guy's face was almost melted. I didn't look again just returned to my air-conned room and watched people run for six seconds at a time until i felt tired enough to sleep.

It is lonely of course, all this change so suddenly and no one to share it with, to self pityingly commiserate with over how mad it all is trying to deal with it. Fortunately I've been lucky and have met a lot of people already. It's weird how quickly the company of strangers can be familiar and comfortable after a matter of hours. I travelled around Mumbai and down to Goa yesterday with two Danish girls (who pretend to be Swedish cos of the cartoons). I was roughly following an Irish girl Aisling who I met the day before who I am probably going to head on to Hampi from here with. All strictly celibate of course, true to form.

I haven't said enough about Mumbai (for the record probably the most impressive city I think I've ever visited) and now here I am in Goa, at the end of the season. Paradise apparently and sometimes you'd believe it. We are on the beach in stilted huts, lounging reading in hammocks. Baby wild pigs roam around under my hut (Gina I have named the smallest Snuffles in honour of the late great Nibbles) . It's pretty idyllic. But the poverty is still there, the filth building up around even the smallest resorts.

Met a very proud Indian mother on the train to Goa, her sons a bank president in Bahrain and a lawyer headhunted to London. She earnestly emphasised the importance of being highly competitive to succeed in life and of how driven her sons were. I concluded that they were probably complete dicks. But they will be secure, successful dicks and in a country with such constant reminders of poverty and its effects I can only hope that I would be a secure successful dick if I needed to be. What was also very interesting was the unashamedly patriarchal household she lived in. Her husband decided when she had to quit her job, where they went on holidays, where she lived (they had two houses.) I've decided I will find an Italian woman who has been adopted into an Indian family at a very young age and now wants to see Ireland. There's bound to be one around here somewhere.