April 12th Mumbai and beyond.

Interesting is the best way to describe Mumbai,we went on a tour that took in the Gate of India, a museum and Ghandi’s house before going shopping, in this particular case the shopping experience was not good, pestered at every turn by people selling trinkets, beggars and small children demanding a Dollar!!!!!! Not good we were glad to get back on board ship. Overall I must say we have no desire to return to India, but in its defence others loved it so it’s just a personnel opinion. The weather remains hot with temperatures in the high twenties and low thirties and the seas remain calm. Our next port of call was Oman and the port of Salalah. We took in a tour which ended up at a spa and beach resort, it was first class and I must say we really liked Oman. We now have six sea days as both ports of call in Egypt have been cancelled on safety grounds, so no visit to the valley of the Kings for us. We have been on reduced lighting at night because of the threat of pirates from Somalia. We have on board members of the Royal Navy to ensure our safe passage through the Gulf of Aden and into the Red Sea, we should come off Pirate restrictions on April 12th. It’s our fifth sea day and we enter the Suez Canal for a passage which should take around 12 hours to complete we had to stop in the middle to await ships coming from the opposite direction. It is quite different from one side to the other on the one hand built up with lots of green and on the other desert. The weather remains very good with calm seas although a couple of days ago it got very foggy and we sailed through a sand storm which was interesting!!!. We continue to enjoy ourselves and by the time you read this we will be in Haifa (Israel).