Disembark Viking Orion and Commence our India Tour

8th September 2018.

Breakfast this morning is at 8 am, before disembarking just before 9am. We are all sad to be leaving Viking Orion as we have had a wonderful time. Our baggage has already gone ashore as we had to leave it outside our rooms last night by 9pm.

Sadly, Sharon and John are not continuing on to tour India with us, as John has to get back to work. We have had a great time together and will miss them.

Arrangements from here on are for us to be picked up by our tour guide just outside the cruise terminal, and fortunately, our guide is there waiting for us. John and Sharon's driver wasn't at this spot, but our guide did his best to direct them to where he most likely was. Hopefully they had no trouble finding him.

It only took about 15 minutes for us to get to our hotel, the Trident Nariman Point Hotel, located on marine parade. Of course it is only 9.30am, so we had to wait until our room was ready at 11.30am, relaxing in their coffee shop drinking their tea.

View from the front of our hotel

Once settled into our room, we went for a walk in the area surrounding the hotel to stretch our legs and get a feel for the surroundings. I also needed to find an ATM to get some Rupees. The ATM turned out to be quite a challenge. There are banks everywhere around us, many advertising they have ATM's. The ATM's are hidden away behind closed doors inside the bank building and not so easy to find as today is Saturday and banks are closed.  Nevertheless, these little rooms are open if you can find them. The next challenge was to get them to give you some money.The first bank we tried refused. The next one would only let us withdraw the equivalent of AUD 100, so with $5,000 rupees in hand we moved on, not wishing to push our luck any further.

There is a walkway for the full length of marine parade that runs all of the way around the bay for 3.6 km. It is locally known as the Queens Necklace, because of its appearance at night when it is all lit up

Queens Necklace

The streets of Mumbai are a lot cleaner than the last time I was here and there is a concerted campaign to clean up the city. You don't need to stray too far from the main roads to see that it is a huge task. Looks like the local rodents are also on the cleanup list.

The only restaurant nearby that looking inviting for lunch is closed for a private function, so we walked back to the hotel to eat at one of the restaurants there. First we thought we would have a look around, and found a nice pool deck on the 5th floor.

It is very hot and sticky in the afternoons here, so we spent our time inside savouring the air conditioning.

By 6pm the temperature had dropped and there was a nice sea breeze, so we ventured back out for a walk along the Queens Necklace. We weren't the only people with the same idea.

The sun was setting

Young people on the beach looking back towards our hotel

Walking back to our hotel, the numbers of people seems to be increasing

We walked for around an hour and the conditions were quite pleasant, as long as the breeze persisted. Night time really seems to bring the locals out.

A night shot of the bay from the hotel pool deck

The easiest dinner option for us was to again eat at the hotel, so we had a pre dinner drink in the bar with an interesting name and then down to India Jones restaurant which served a very wide range of Asian food, which was very tasty.

Interesting name for a bar !

Our tour company will collect us from the hotel tomorrow at 11.30am, to take us to the airport for our flight to Udaipur, where our tour of Rajasthan commences.