Ah, why is there this preconception that mountaineering is dangerous? Damn the people that invented staircases and kitchen floors, on which one can twist one's ankle when performing the simple task of trying to pick up one's luggage. On lives my opinion that the most ordinary tasks result in the most painful accidents. Yip, just a couple of hours before departure I unfortunately twisted my ankle, resulting in a lot of pain and intense swelling. Sigh. The up side was being wheeled around all airports in a wheelchair, thus skipping queues and gathering many sympathy points. On the flip side Mix and I lost quite a lot of credibility when claiming that we were on our way to the Himalayas to do mountaineering. Either way, I didn't imagine arriving in Mumbai in a wheelchair...
...Just as I didn't imagine that I'd arrive without my luggage. The pro of my bag still being in South Africa is that I didn't have to lug it around Mumbai, which would have been close to impossible with my foot. Instead JetAir will send it to meet me in Kashmir. Luckily Mix bought a set of Black Diamond trekking poles (at Drifters ;)which I put to good use hobbling around the streets of Mumbai.
Other impressions of Mumbai: sticky heat and suffocating humidity, smells that "assault the senses" (quote Mix) - interesting insert for climbers, Bombay duck is not a duck but a smelly fish that people dry on the streets of Mumbai for consumption -, cleaner streets and less people than expected and Indians that want to take photos of us. We had a good chuckle sitting at The Gateway to India, a great colonial arch by the sea, as three sets of Indian families discretely sneaked up to us to pose for a photograph with us. Haha.
