A funny thing happened when I got lost in Mumbai

Accidental Tourist Catherine Rudolph learns something about the power of sign language and the kindness of strangers

The first thing I hear walking through the halls of Mumbai Airport is an English Christmas carol.

Once in Royal David's City rings out amidst the hum of Indian voices and the click of my trolley wheels over linoleum-tiled floors.

"How delightfully strange," I think, smiling to myself.

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I find the conveyor belt upon which my backpack should be dumped and delivered and set my eyes on the plastic flap in anticipation of our reunion. It never comes.

I watch as other travellers collect their luggage and wheel it away, while the ever-revolving black rubber mocks me with its emptiness. I wait another half an hour before resigning myself to the fact that my bag with its supply of clean clothes, underwear, shoes, toiletries and books, is lost.

At the flight desk, a prettily made up woman tells me my bag's arrival is guaranteed, but not necessarily imminent. I'm stranded, in India, with nothing but an aeroplane toothbrush.

Fast-forward 24 hours past a horde of mosquitoes and a bed in a seedy airport hotel and I am walking the streets of Mumbai.

My bag is still lost, and I'm wearing the same clothes I've been sweating in for the past 48 hours, but I'm too absorbed in the blaring, honking, haphazard world around me to care. Passing a row of parked cabs, I notice a pair of feet poking out of an open passenger door - the driver is sprawled on the backseat enjoying a nap in the afternoon heat.

Men perched on plastic chairs outside their shops, wearing long trousers and button-up shirts, survey their widespread newspapers. The air smells of warm earth inhabited by many bodies. I feel I fit right in.

I wander until I realise I have no idea where I am. I stop abruptly and turn around, as if to find a miraculous trail of bread crumbs in my wake. Even if there was one, it would have disappeared under the ubiquitous pigeons - something I never associated with India but there you go, they're everywhere.

"Damn pigeons," I think. "How am I going to get back to the bus?"

Said bus is departing at 3.20pm for Goa and my seat is booked. Suddenly, all the frustration and exhaustion from the long journey, bag saga and grotty hotel room erupt and I wilt against a street lamp and sob.

It's a rather pathetic scene, thankfully brought to an end by an elderly bespectacled man with a bristly moustache.

He puts a hand on my shoulder while I regain self-control and says in a soft and wonderfully rounded cadence, "Tell me, what is problem?"

I try to explain that I am lost, but his minimal English and my non-existent Hindi result in a game of charades - I look around, trying to mimic confusion; the poor man looks at me with a crinkled brow that perfectly captures the notion I am trying to convey.

Eventually, I get my bus ticket out of my wallet.

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His face breaks into a smile and he indicates I should follow him. Prabhu, my saviour, turns out to be the owner of a small street stall selling crisps, gum and Indian sweetmeats. With a flourish, he brings out a pen and a battered accounts book from which he carefully tears a piece of lined paper.

Leaning on the counter, he draws me a map to my bus. At this kindness, I almost start crying again, but instead buy an array of sweetmeats, which Prabhu helps me choose.

With unreserved relief, I find Jollybus 9368. Sitting down in my hideously patterned bus seat, I absent-mindedly start nibbling a sweetmeat from the paper bag.

Once in Royal David's City is playing faintly in my head as I survey the ever-moving madness outside my bus window. Delightfully strange indeed.

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