Mumbai to Goa

We landed at midnight in Mumbai and decided to take the safe route to the train station, a prepaid taxi, however, half way there the rim of our taxi gave way, so our driver got out to put on a new tire. He didn't seem to know how to take it off though and started tightening it. Eventually we got it sorted and then found that the spare was flat as well. We hailed a new taxi and didn't get any money back from the first guy, India 1-kretchies 0. We found the station we wanted but no one seemed inclined to sell us a ticket. We didn't make the first train but managed to get tickets on the second one coming through. There are a variety of different options for train classes in india and i somehow managed to purchase the lowest of the low on first try, well done. I thought we had bought 2nd class a/c seats, but they were just 2nd class, India 2-kretchies 0. We got booted from a few different seats as we had no idea where ours were and then we were forced to run the length of the train all the way to the cheapies at the back, all full, so we sat on our packs in the aisle until someone had mercy on us. It was a 12 hour journey which was quite long but we had some extremely friendly folks around us and the vendors who came on board at every stop were lots of fun. Finally in Goa, we decided it was too late to locate Chris and Esther Lyth (suzies bro and sis in law), so looked for a hotel on a beach nearby. We got taken in tow by a local guide who proceded to drag us to several different places which were all full, so we finally just went for an expensive room and called it a night, India 3-Kretchies 0. A great first day really though, having loads of fun here and seeing some amazing things.