It was my first visit to India, and everybody had told me that Mumbai is super expensive more than Tokyo or elsewhere. Real estate in south of Mumbai is more expensive than Manhattan! So I was little worried about how much we have to spend there.

Here are the log for myself but glad if it could help others to go there.

Transportations

Pre-paid AC taxi from the airport to Powai cost Rs.250 which is about 5 USD

250 Indian rupees = 5.28325 U.S. dollars

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Powai is the area where I had to go. Which is about 10 km way. There are 2 choices for prepaid taxi, one is No-AC, another one is AC car. This is the cost for the AC one. It must not be the best price, usually taxi from the airport is little more expensive than usual taxi for local price, but as a first-vist foreigner, this is not bad.

Auto-Rikisha (Tuk Tuk) has meter and they don’t cheat

There are so many auto-rikisha, which is like tuk tuk in Mumbai. Center of Mumbai you see many taxi but around Powai, not many taxi there, but a lot of Auto-Rikisha.

It starts Rs.10. From Powai to the airport, which is the same way as I took taxi to, costs Rs.150.

Black and Yellow taxi, Non-AC / AC, meter starts from Rs.14

Most of taxi there are painted black and white, even Auto-Rikisha are same color. Old taxi is kind of lovely, heard it’s from 1960s or something, very retro. But some of them don’t have meter, or sometimes you have to talk the price.

New taxi with AC and electric meter is the safest one i think. They use meter and it starts from Rs.14.

There are some blue color taxi but I’m not sure if there are any difference. The prepaid taxi from the airport was blue.

Local railway is very cheap but impossible to use for business trip

I got few hours spare time, so wanted to go down to the city from Powai. I tried to take local train to go down there, but I couldn’t. It was full of people, as you see on pictures.

From Powai area to the city costs only Rs.6 which is very cheap, but for business trip, this is not the option you can take.

Accommodations

Serviced apartment?

3 of us stayed a serviced apartment close to the office. Mumbai team helped us to find it and they booked it for us. There must be 3 bedrooms but actually 2 bedrooms + extra bed.

I imagined serviced apartment like we have in Bangkok, which is fully furnished, has enough stuff to live and clean. However, the one we got was usual apartment + some guys who we can ask things to do.

The one we had was not expensive enough to get enough service, but still cost Rs.20,000 fore 4 nights, which already got a lot of discount.

Hotels

I’ve checked cost of the normal hotels, they are not too expensive, 100 – 200 USD… Not bad.

Food and stuff for life

Free food at office

I’m not sure if it’s standard or not, but basically food was free for us. The company provide breakfast, lunch and evening snack. Evening snack is big enough as dinner. I was kept feeding and feeding, now I got 2 killos ++ in India.

Restaurant

We tried cozy Indian restaurant in Powai, I expected it would be very expensive, but actually not too bad. Dishes starts around Rs.70 (for starters, soups) and main dish is about Rs 150 to 300. A bottle of beer costs around Rs.100, depends on the brand, for sure. Cheaper beer is india’s original Kingfisher or budwidser.

Supermarket

I felt the prices are almost same as which is in Bangkok center. Not super expensive or cheap. One thing i was surprised is that tissue is expensive…. 4 rolles of toilet tissue costs Rs.150 or so.

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