Pauline at MUWCI & University of Glasgow : Mumbai exeat

Hey everyone,

This weekend was exeat. Exeat is a weekend in which we can travel around India. My friends and I desided to go to Mumbai. So friday after school, 14:30, we took the bus (of course we left at 15.. This is India..). We were 21 people in a bus for 18 people so 3 had to sit on the ground for the whole trip. (Fortunately I didn't)

As you can see we had a lot of fun! The 20 people were: Amrita (India), Aishwarya (India), Sonia (Polen), Mary (Brunay), Thy (Vietnam), Eunhee (South-Korea), So Hee (South-Korea), Chi (Vietnam), Amelia (Maleisia), Melisa (Maleisia), Lauren (Africa), Louise (South-Africa), Satsuki (Japan), Haruna (Japan), Marie (Denmark), Clara (Brasil), Eden (Israel), Rhea (India), Ilayda (Turkye), Lan Anh (Vietnam) and me (Belgium (; )

We arrived at Amrita's house at 9pm. Her parents were so nice and we immediatly felt like home. One of their friends cooked for us. He was a chef in Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, so the food was AMAZING! Her house was very pretty and se even had a pool (a common one), but when we wanted to go it was in construction ):

So the first day we woke up at 7am and we went to Mumbai centre. First we visited a art gallery. I didn't really like it, but when you're with friends everything is fun. So Aishwarya and I made some funny pictures.

So after that we went to Colaba cross road. This is a shopping street with all kind of little shops on the street... You have to bargain to pay less. It was a lot of fun! It is also unfair because I was with Aishwarya and I always had to pay two times more.. I don't have pictures from Colaba cross road, but it looked a little bit like this:

Then we went to Gateway in India and Taj Mahal Hotel. This is the hotel that had a terrorist attack that traumatised whole India. We took a boat to go see Gateway from far. It was very nice and refreshing, because Mumbai was so hot :o

(Gateway in the background)

(on the boat)

After that we went to Marine drive. That is a sort ocean next to the street but there is no beach and it is very dirty because Indians have the weird habbit to just throw away all their dirt on the ground..

This is how it looks like in most of the Indian streets..

So we got back to Amrita's at 11pm.

The next day we woke up at 6 and we got ready to go to Pogoda temple. This was a big Golden temple that we reached by taking a boat. It was very beautiful from the outside and the inside was very calm and made you lose all your stress. Their were a lot of meditation sessions, we did one. It was very nice to just relax and think about nothing for a moment. After that we went to the supermarket to buy things for MUWCI. It was very nice to see a "normal" shop. It was a very nice, but exhausting day. Here is a picture of Pogoda temple:

The next day we woke up at 9am and we got ready to leave. but first we went to the beach. It was not as clean as the Belgian beach, but it was ok and we had a lot of fun.

That was my exeat.. Here are some more pictures: