Bombay

From: Tommy Hermansen
Date: Sat Jan 13, 2001 12:58pm
Subject: Bombay

Just some first impressions of Bombay: I landed at the airport at 5 am this morning. The Kuwait Arlines flight was very good, and with their reasonable prices I can definitely recomend using them if any of you guys are heading this way. The airport was dodgy to say the least, I knew right away I had landed in India. But somehow everything seemed to flow efficiently, the people were helping each other, and also helping keeping the luggage on the lousy transport when we were waiting for our bags. Even though this was early in the morning there were lots of taxis and people waiting by the exit. I walked away from it all to gather my thoughts, and sat down to talk to a man sitting in the parking lot.

He told me it was way too far to walk into town, and that a taxi should cost me around 250rp. Then a guy with one of these open moped based taxis offered to take me to town for that amount. It was quite far so I thought the price was OK. Suddenly he stopped and told me to jump over to another taxi. This time a cab (a car). The first guy paid the second driver 120rp to take me the rest of the way. Some scheme he was running for sure… Anyway I ended up by an OK hotel after the third try, the driver was nice and went with me inside at all the places to ask if there was a room available. So I ended up at an air-conditioned room for 1000rp a night, which is about 200 norwegian kroner. I’m just staying over the weekend though, I need to head down to Goa to wind down from all this hustle and bustle.

I met a cool guy who’s working at my hotel, maybe we’ll go out for a beer when he’s ended his shift. All in all I’m doing OK down here, just need to get used to the Indian way of life…Hope to find my friend Kjetil tomorrow.

Tommy