Travelling to new places is the hobby I am focusing much more in past few years so when this opportunity came for an official visit to Mumbai, I grabbed it with both hands - both figuratively & literally with as it involved carrying one suitcase with equipment.
There's nothing special to talk bout the journey or the job I went for so I will go straight to the Vashi railway station from where I caught my first Mumbai local train. It was very easy to get on board compared to what I had imagined & was both cheaper & faster compared to the taxi ride I opted to reach early. The struggle to get home is real in Mumbai & I got to experience it this time. It took all the three modes of commute - train, rickshaw & taxi - plus one & a half hour through the evening life of Kurla, Sion & Dadar to reach my hotel. Finally I found the bed to let my body to relax after a tiring day.
Now the job was over but it was already 7 pm so the idea of experiencing Mumbai's night life was dropped & I headed to the nearest bar to taste something new. This time I opted the Old Monk rum to find out why its liked so much by the three idiots from five point someone. The dinner was bad so the next best thing was a good sleep.
Saturday began late at around 7.30 as I finished the sleeping quota of previous day. Now was the time of sightseeing to make the tour more fruitful. As I have about 4 hours to pass, I decided to explore more of the Mumbai local & reached Andheri in a flash. The Juhu beach is surrounded by costly hotels & residences of very rich & hence the whole area is totally clean, the atmosphere is completely peaceful. Anyway I always find myself at peace on the beach. And as memorabilia of this tour, I got myself clicked by a professional photographer.
So here I decided to wrap up the impromptu tour of Mumbai & reached Vile parle via rickshaw to catch local train to Mumbai Central. But there was yet another lesson (very much) due to be learnt - the difference between MMCT & CST which I learned the hard way. I boarded the train to CST instead of MMCT & realized it only after almost reaching there. It was already afternoon & about an hour & half remaining to board train to home so I panicked as usual & caught taxi from to reach one hour before.
As always, about one hour was spent in the railway premises. It was my first journey on a Rajdhani train, second one on the double decker superfast & both way the refreshments were the only good thing in the otherwise tiresome journey.
