The last few days have been an absolute blur. The Moosra and I are now in Bombay/Mumbai after a hectic few days of travelling. In the end we ended up hiring a tourist taxi to take us from Manali to Delhi. A comfortable vehicle and possibly safer than the coach which brought us there.

Once we'd negotiated (in a rather one-sided fashion) a price with the gangsters who run the taxi cartel there, it was a case of taking the windy mountainous roads out of the state. The heavy rainfall of the previous days had caused many rock falls and the road was lined with piles of rocks and fallen trees with the occasional worker clearing up a blockage. After about half an hour after starting our driver received a phone call, there had been a large rock fall which we had escaped by a matter of minutes. Fate or what?

The highway was interesting, we stopped at a restaurant (covered in AirTel boards) for tea, where I seized the opportunity to top up my (AirTel) prepaid balance. After some awkward attempts at Hindi, it became clear that these boards were just advertisements! Soon after this we hit the main highways where the heavily decorated cargo trucks that power India were most visible. We made it to Delhi several hours later, passing through Chandigarh, a pleasant city unlike the (dare I say it) dirty cities in India which I've visited so far.

On Sunday we made our way to Bombay via air. A friend of mine has repeatedly warned me that Delhi is a scary place, I would surmise from my initial experiences of Mumbai that it is possibly more-so. The city is vast and endlessly busy. It also smells, bad. Thank heaven for air conditioning. There was a bit of alarm as I passed the security check at the hotel because my bag was vibrating. It transpired that my electric shaver had managed to turn itself on!

Due to time constraints we were only able to spend two nights here, and that was a poor decision. After the laidback days in Manali last week, we've found there is all too much to do here. The problem is too that we're staying in a very plush hotel - whose luxury seems wasted everytime we go on an excursion. Still, wandering around, it is very odd how this city is full of contrasts. There are people sleeping on the street just outside of our hotel, the view out of our room is marred by a dilapidated apartment block in stark need of a fresh coat of paint.