Despite waking up fairly early the next day, we lazed about in our jarmies for a good few hours – making the most of a slow start by soaking up the action from the street scene below – before diving headfirst into god-knows-what with everyone else.

Even from our second storey window, bustling Colaba was nothing like we’d seen before in Rajasthan, or Goa for that matter. Not a cow in sight, no gigantic piles of food waste and plastic bottles, no donkeys pulling carts of firewood, rocks or sacks of grain. As well as Mercedes, Lexus and Range Rover, at every turn there were also lots of pairs or threes or fours of young blonde western girls – only this time rather than ethnic pants and bikini tops like Goa, here they all were head to toe in designer cotton tunics, kurtas and aviators. We watched on sadly as almost at every turn they were approached and latched onto by hoards of the desperately hungry and needy streetpeople, wanting ‘just a couple of rupees’ for some food for the (more often than not) naked baby dangling from their hip. And all this unfolding with the noisy gothic crows circling overhead…

It was a pretty depressing and horrendously satirical scene, which I think sums up our first impressions of Mumbai – the two absolutely raw, in-your-face, x-rated extremes of wealth and poverty. And Mumbai makes no apology for it either – here, it’s quite literally dog eat dog. But politics aside, we now only had a handful of hours to complete our full immersion. Time was running out like no tomorrow and we still had to find Mumbai’s beating heart! So having tanked up on far too much of the real good stuff – strong black coffee – we closed our eyes and dived straight in.

Colaba is an ultra cool neighbourhood within walking distance of lots of Mumbai’s high notes, so we made a beeline straight for Marine Drive (which is a palm-tree-lined boulevard stretching about three and a half kilometres along the edge of the Arabian Sea), before stopping in front of the Gateway of India, an immense twenty six metre arch facing out to Mumbai Harbour. Back in the day it was the first thing you’d see when arriving in India by boat, and it was built to commemorate King George V and Queen Mary visiting Bombay (the city’s name changed to Mumbai in 1995) in 1911. There were crowds of tourists, Indian and international, and cameras everywhere. Eager to get more of the street action, we wandered back to the Colaba Causeway markets where with my new-found confidence (I’d left my haggling training wheels back in Jaipur!) I picked up more antique padlocks (I think I’ve got a problem), jewellery and a cheap pair of pants to wear on the flight home.

In the hot afternoon sun we sauntered past the acclaimed Leopold Cafe of Shantaram fame, downed a couple of whiskey sours, ate beautiful pea-green pistachio macaroons and sampled the best Mumbai must-see in window-shopping – each gorgeous antique, home furnishing and stylish, luxury brand store providing a little kaleidoscopic snippet for our return visit. Two days is just not enough for all there is to take in here, and we made a promise to each other we’d definitely be coming back to finish where we’d left off.

After a late afternoon meeting with Jit’s grandmother’s 80 year old cousin Nanu (who’d kindly taken an hour and a half train trip from the other side of Mumbai to come and see us), we got ready for dinner and headed out for what was to be our last supper – running through all the highs (and lows – like the duty-free Kentucky bourbon that had made it from Singapore to Goa and then through virtually all of Rajasthan before exploding in my bag) of the last few weeks.

Hands down the hardest on my heart, and the most deep breaths I’ve had to take, has been for the animals. Animals are on-the-whole loved and free to roam in India, but occasionally you do see some pretty desperate situations, ones that had me looking up the Ministry for Primary Industries protocols for how to get stray animals from overseas to New Zealand! We’d seen so many dogs along the way just doing it so tough, most with back legs that weren’t working properly having been hit by a car or bike, and now here in Mumbai so many cats and kittens, playing so close to the road, and so much smaller than dogs their luck just wasn’t the same. There were two cute little black and white kittens living in the gutter across from our window and so many times I wondered how hard would it really be to somehow get them home with us, to where they’d be safe and oh so loved. The New Zealand government wouldn’t quite see it this romantically though!

Throughout the trip from beginning to end we’d had Indian cuisine for breakfast, lunch and dinner and everything-in-between (our favourites being the tandoori snapper in Goa and the best-in-the-world laal maas in Rajasthan), it would have been a sin not to. Mumbai was going to be no different as far as we were concerned, but of all the places we wound up at, an asian fusion bistro just off one of the main streets drew us in. When a palate cleanser of a single scallop-with-watermelon-and-cucumber-foam-served-in-a-scallop-shell-with-bamboo-and-dry-ice arrived at the table, we knew we were in for something pretty theatrical – and PA PA YA delivered. Dish-upon-magic-dish of ‘xinjiang lamb’ (lamb with fresh coriander, cumin and dry chillies), ‘ceviche frito, tomato and aji with tigers milk‘ (seafood on a tomato verde with a citrus marinade), ‘pla samrot gung with mandarin sour cream’ (prawns with spicy chillis and a citrus cream) and ‘kurobuta spare ribs’ (smoked and barbecued with a wild berry squash) left us wanting more and desperate to change our flights home.

Mumbai is definitely a mish mash of everything and anything, a big noisy blend of cultures, rags and riches and dialled up to maximum volume. But we’d set out to discover whether this city had a heart and while we didn’t quite find the answer this time round, we’d certainly found a strong enough pulse! And we’ll definitely be back. In a heartbeat.