The Preamble

Wednesday 27 December 2023

Bristol, dark, dull and wet

You may or may not already know but Boy Wonder and I usually travel on bicycles, and we've been doing that since 1987.  However, since we have reached our 'Autumn' years the two year cycle tours have come to an end.  For now ........ only to be replaced by a 3 month European tour each year with the odd winter sojourn to warm climbs.

We're leaving the bikes behind for this trip, heading back to places we visited many years ago, Sri Lanka and India.  The last time we were in Sri Lanka Sadam Hussein invaded Iraq (1990) and a civil war was raging.   On 26th November 2008 we arrived in Mumbai about 2 hours before the whole city was shot up by terrorists.  The reason we were in the hotel we chose (Colaba district) in the first place was to be close to the ferry that would take us to Alibag, on the Mainland, without having to cycle through the traffic of Mumbai (even we aren't THAT crazy).  The gunmen came in on the same ferry so the authorities cancelled it.  We were under curfew for 3 days while the Taj Hotel (approx 500m to the right of our hotel) was shot up, hostages terrorised (see the film Hotel Mumbai) and finally stormed by police.  To the left of us was Nariman House, also under siege, hostages taken, and several people killed.  Mumbai's main railway station was also shot to pieces, with many people killed, good job we changed our minds about taking the train to Goa otherwise we would have been at the station.  We were tired when we arrived in Mumbai and decided to give the very popular cafe, Leopolds, a miss that night, it was heaving.  That was also destroyed and many people, many foreigners, were killed.  Every now and again we think about the bullets (literally) we've dodged.

Hoping we'll have fewer dramatic incidents this time, just looking forward to some winter sunshine, culture and amazing food. 

Laters.

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