It is a typical disembarkation morning:  Breakfast early to avoid the crowds, shower, final backpack packing, then waiting in the lounge for our 8:30 luggage pick up call.  Of course, they are running early – as they did in Singapore – but we are cooling our heels because we have no idea where our driver will be to pick us up!  We have tried to get Amit, our tour contact, to tell us where the driver will be – inside the port at the ship or outside the Green Gate.  He just keeps telling us the driver will be there at 9.  Where??? Let the adventure begin! 

A little background before we begin:  We found this 9-day India tour called “Kipling’s India” tour which takes you to places Rudyard Kipling lived or visited in India.  The description says it is a “group tour” with a group size of 1-10 and partially guided.  All the hotels, inner-country flights and train transportation were included, as well as all our meals in Pench, the National Park where we would have Game Drives, ostensibly to sight a tiger.  We booked through a tour consolidator, which then handed us off to another tour consolidator and then down to our tour “manager” I guess you’d call him, Amit.  Ed has had many conversations with Amit though WhatsApp over the last few weeks, which makes us confident that at least we have a contact who will respond to us.  We have an itinerary from the website, with a list of hotels – although at the last minute, fortunately when we asked Amit about one of the hotels, we find out that almost all of them have changed.  Um. Well, Ok.  Nice to know in advance, maybe?  But still – we now have the up-to-date list and are ready to go…assuming we can find the driver, and if not, we’ve got Uber, no worries.

On with day’s activities.  We tried to wait as long as possible, but you all know how we are, meaning, we are out and through Immigration around 8:30, grabbing our bags from the huge tentlike structure (there is no terminal here, just a totally commercial port with this semi-permanent tent structure for baggage and check-in) and hang out inside the baggage collection area just people watching. This is worth the price of admission on its own.  Deer in headlights, huge groups who don’t follow directions, people searching for bags.  Bedlam!

Meanwhile, I do sorties outside, checking all the name boards drivers are holding up.  None for us.  We wait until about 8:55, still no signs with our name, still no further information from Amit, so we head out to try to get a shuttle to the gate. Talk about a massive CF!  There is no one there from the cruise line to organize this, you just walk out and try to get on a shuttle. Now mind you, these shuttles are regular buses, many without a lot of luggage storage – if any.  There is a crowd near the first bus – nope, it’s full. Second bus? Same.  Finally, the 3^rd bus is empty, cool, go!  Trying to queue up is a nightmare, people are just milling about while the stressed out drivers are trying to put bags in the small hold.  There is some woman standing in front of one of the baggage holds blocking everything up.  I manage to get my bag around her, as the driver just sort of grabs it out of my hand around her.  Ed has the big bag and isn’t so fortunate.  He’s trying to get around, but she won’t budge. She finally says, “I’m in line waiting,” and we’re like, lady, so are we, do whatever you are doing and move!  Oh, and you know what she’s doing?  Trying to put her tiny little backpack in the hold.  NO!  Take it on the damn bus.  Sigh. Finally, we get the big bag on and manage to get onto the bus with idiot backpack lady a row or 2 behind us.  Can we tell you how happy we are to be off that ship? That was just a microcosm of the behavior a whole lot of people displayed on that ship.

Off we go to the Green Gate.  Now, if we can find our driver!  15 minutes later we are out into the melee of taxi drivers, group organizers and general passenger bedlam from all those who now don’t know what to do outside the port.  We wait here for a while, figuring maybe the driver will be here?  No such luck, nor do we have luck texting Amit. Finally, we walk up the street to get out of the fracas as the gate and order an Uber.  Of course, this is when Amit texts back to say the driver will be there in 2 minutes. Never mind, seriously, we have the Uber.  It’s only a couple of bucks and this way we are handled and at the hotel, probably before the driver can find a parking space and find us!

The Sahil Hotel is located in Central Mumbai, a couple of blocks from the train station and the bus depot.  We’ve never stayed in Central Mumbai before, and the streets are teeming with people and street life.  Really crazy area, with the hotel a lovely respite in the middle.  It is only 10am when we arrive, so yeah, the room is nowhere near being ready, not until 2pm we are told. Crap.  Oh well, we’ll figure out something to do. As we are sorting out our luggage to be held, who other than backpack woman shows up.  NOOOOOO!!!  OMG, we are hoping and praying she isn’t on the tour with us!  That would just be too brutal to contemplate.

Banishing that thought from our heads, we make our way out into the busy streets in search of coffee.  Not an easy task in a mostly local area! Coffee drinkers, these folks are not.  Tea? Yeah, absolutely.  Coffee?  Not so much.  There is always the – shiver – American chain solution though, in this case, McDonald’s right down the road. We hate to do it, but we have nothing but time to waste, and an iced coffee sounds really good at this point.  And it was really good, if not expensive.  We were 2 of only 4 customers, making us wonder if they get much business in here at all.  We can only surmise they do later in the day, as there is a whole menu of everything chicken and veg you could ever want, including the McCrispy burger – which comes in veg and chicken.  If we were hungry, we might just try that chicken version, but we only here for the beverages at this point.

Coffee done, we hit the streets, exploring the City Center mall directly across from the hotel, hoping for some shops to browse to waste time. Nah.  It is a Mobile phone mall.  Seriously.  The only thing in here are about 40 mobile phone accessory shops.  The building looks like it might have been a regular mall at some point, but not today.  Not a place to waste a lot of time, especially as we need nothing for our phones since we will be getting new ones the minute we get home (our batteries won’t hold charges, Ed’s phone is impossible to charge, period, and my phone is running out of storage space – need I say more?).

Back out on the streets we walk a couple of blocks, passing this entire row of corrugated sheds that do nothing but computer work.  All out in the open air – printing, typing, translations, online forms, surfing, etc.  Definitely street living here!  We also pass a little fruit market just set up on the street, and multiple food carts that we’d love to buy something from but wouldn’t dare since we still have 9 days on the continent and don’t want to be chained to the bathroom.  Around the corner, past the cows – yes cows on the street, just hanging out, eating, with some guy watching over them. Onto the Hypermarket – where we have to leave our backpack in the locker area before entering into the crazy grocery store cum snack store cum convenience store cum department store.  They had everything you could imagine at really cheap prices.  Like Don Quixote in Japan, only not as organized or, well, clean. 

Snack purchases and exit door search complete (they take security seriously here), we manage to cross the street and hit the beer place for supplies, then walk back to the hotel to wait for our room to be ready.  They put us in one of the restaurants, where others are waiting for taxis to leave – quite a few to board the ship – and since the restaurant is open, we figure might as well have lunch.  I wasn’t all that hungry, and just ordered some Naan, Ed had a chicken omelet with adorable smiley face potato fritters.  Cute and just what we needed. 

An hour or so later, our room is finally ready – and what a room!  This place is awesome!  Nice big modern bathroom, comfy large room with a big window and electric shades that automatically open up when you open the door and close when you leave.  All electronic control panel too.  It’s a great place to hang for the next 2 nights.   But now, it is a little after 1pm and we need something to do.  Scrolling through GoogleMaps we find the Nehru Science Center which looks fairly interesting with a bunch of different exhibits as well as a Science Odyssey film on Australia’s Great North. What the heck?  It’s an afternoon of activity. 

Uber over, easy and cheap, tickets purchased, but no Odyssey film as it is only in Hindi, we head through the gardens with lots of children’s play sets as well as this cool exhibit on depth perception.  Using different pieces of cricket players in different places, you can create a whole scene by using one eye to look through the peephole.  Actually pretty cool.

An old 1916 Steam train was also in the garden, used at the docks as a winch to move ships, it was operational until 1971 when it was used in a vintage car rally.  An old, 1909, electric tram car as well as the horse drawn version were also on display as we make our way into the main science exhibit hall.

Inside there are tons of different exhibits and rooms, from the Sound and Hearing gallery (a great place to understand sounds – and as you can see from this placard, how you can ruin your hearing with loud music, we’re looking at you Celebrity!), Light and Sight – where there was this amazing 3D movie thing that made it look like you were actually standing there watching the Polar bears and penguins, Technology Heritage, Aviation, Evolution, Prehistoric Animals – it was crazy the depth and breadth of everything here.  We had a blast wandering through all the different rooms and playing with all the different hands on (purell please!) demonstrations. 

Emerging from the museum – and right in time too, as about 10 buses had just pulled up disgorging hundreds of visitors – we were greeted to a Mumbai skyskraper view, complete with tons of circling vultures – they are all over this city it seems. Walking toward the exit, a beautiful raven decided to get into the act, can’t let those vultures have all the photo opportunities!  And then we were out on the street, waiting for our Uber to whisk us back to the Sahil where we just hung out and relaxed the rest of the afternoon.

Ate dinner in the Bluet restaurant in the hotel – it was easier and the menu was huge, and we had the place all to ourselves for quite a while – until the backpack woman and husband come in, that is, wanting to know if the ice is safe to drink….sigh….).  At any rate, dinner was great.  We ordered Stir fry Mongolian Lamb with BBQ and Hakka Noodles for our mains, then made the tactical error of ordering the Exotic Crispy Veg Bao buns.  OMG.  They were delicious, but oh so huge!  Everything was great, but far, far too much to eat.  Finishing our drinks, we make our way back up to our room and collapse, stuffed on our bed!  We’re ready for tomorrow’s full day tour – no food necessary!  (yeah right…)