Miraj to Mumbai

Another morning of a cold dubba bath.  

 

Dr Prabha Quraishi and her husband.  She is the director of the hospital.  

We had very nice masala omelets for breakfast and filter coffee. Apparently Dr Prabha made all of our food.  I did not get a picture.  Darn.

Pastor Shashi Kamble and Rakhi Moreshwar.  The pastor was our driver all day yesterday. We were all packed up by 8 am.  Shashi & Rakhi picked us up.  We went to chapel.  

The choir sang "Blessed Assurance."

Men on the left, Women on the right.

Medical students all drop off their backpacks when they come to the chapel service.

We got to the train station in plenty of time.  I was impressed with the changes.  It was much cleaner, fewer beggers, no coolies (porters), and much quieter with fewer vendors shouting out their products.

What I always called "Temple flowers"

Here comes our train, the Koyna Express.  It was only a little late.  We left Miraj about 9:30 am.  The Inaugural run of the Koyna Express was in 1920. 

We thought we found our seats: 5, 6, and 7, but apparently they were the wrong 5, 6, and 7.  The conductor came and got us to the correct seats.  They were much better because we got our own compartment. We had it to ourselves most of the way.  Then one guy came for seat number 8.  He went ahead and climbed up to the upper berth.  

Sugar cane, grapes, jowar (millet), bananas and coconuts seem to be the crops growing right now.  Maybe wheat also, I'm not sure.  Some other grain.

Gas storage tanks

Gas train cars being filled.

Ah.  Relaxing.  We will be here for 10 hours.

Harvesting the sugar cane

Then they let the goats in to clear more and then they burn the field.

10 rupees for a Dixie cup of tea. Ahh.

When we got into Satara Station around noon.  Compass people had ordered a lunch for us.  I had thought that they said veg biriyani.  I was a little nervous about it being too spicy for me.  I had a text from Compass saying to go to the entrance of the train and someone would hand us our lunch.  

We got 2 Domino's pizzas

Veg 

Cheese

2 pizza was perfect for the 3 of us.

My work station 

I should have a glass of wine while working on my blog.  I guess I will have that tonight when I finish this.  But the Dixie cup of coffee was good.  It was 20 rupees.

Lots of tunnels.  We went through 5 going from Mumbai to Pune by car.  It was 12 tunnels by train.

It was a very relaxing day on the train.  I enjoyed the scenery and we mostly spent time on our devices.  I had a chance to work a bit on my blog.  

We had accidently ordered biriyani, thinking that it was the Compass people taking our order.  George went ahead and paid for it anyway.  He had his for dinner.  But it was too spicy for me.  I have had my chikus and bananas.  

We pulled into Thane (pronounced ton - a) station.  It is the station closest to Rebecca.  It was a big station and we did not have any idea how to connect with the driver.  He was looking for us.  I learned something with WhatsApp you can do a live location.  Rebecca helped us with that.  We just stood still and the driver found us. We apparently had gone the wrong way.  He was a bit put out.  The next thing on the agenda before taking Rebecca back to her place (Marry's place) was to stop at the 7 - 11 where I had bought the wine on Wednesday.  I thought that I had left my credit card there.  Whew!! I had.  That was a relief.  So I feel much better now.  It was a process for them to let me have my card back.  Then we took Rebecca home and then we went to the Country Inn and Suites by Radisson.  It is the same hotel that we were at a few days ago. 

I finally got my dinner

Some interesting spellings

Normal water (did I say this already) is water that is not hot or bottled. In fact in the Villa Retreat one time they felt the the water was too cold so they added some hot water to it. Who would want cold water.