A survivor of the Mumbai terrorist attack did not think he would make it out alive from his besieged hotel when he first heard gunfire and explosions.

Steve Vincent, from Farnborough, locked his room door, turned off the lights and was in constant telephone contact with his family for 18 hours before Indian soldiers rescued him.

In that time he did not know the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel had become part of the city-wide battle between terrorists and the Indian Army that would last around 60 hours and kill at least 195 people.

On Friday he came home to his parents Yvonne and Philip, who were up all Wednesday night at their Merlin Way home calling him every 20 minutes.

Mr Vincent, 27, was three weeks into his first visit to India - a six-week business trip to Mumbai to help set up an office there for his employers, Dow Jones and Company.

As well as phoning his family Mr Vincent used Facebook on his Blackberry to talk to his 21-year-old brother Edward, who was at Bath University where he is a student.

Mr Vincent said: "In the first few hours I didn’t think I was going to make it out.

"There was constant gunfire and explosions until about 3am. Then it went eerily quiet.

"Normally the streets near the hotel are really hectic, 24 seven, but that night there was no one out there.

"Then when the sun came up I looked out the window and could see no-one."

Work colleagues contacted him to say Indian soldiers were reportedly trying to rescue people from the hotel and to keep his eye out for the black uniforms of Indian army commandos.

He was whisked away and put on the next flight to Heathrow Airport.

"Mumbai is a really friendly city. Everyone there was really helpful," he said. "I may go back there some day but not in the near future."

Father's horror

A dad from Fleet has described the time his daughter was holed up in the Taj Mahal as “the worst 48 hours of my life”.

Peter Plummer’s daughter Amanda McGrail had been celebrating her honeymoon with her new husband Matthew in the five-star hotel in the Indian city when they heard explosions and gunfire.

They managed to keep away from the gunmen by barricading themselves in the hotel’s Lavender Room on the second floor.  There were several people with them, including a hotel maintenance worker who had been shot.

Mr Plummer and his wife Patricia, of Connaught Road, kept in close contact with Amanda and Matthew because the pair both had mobile phones.

But waiting for someone to rescue Amanda was torture, said Mr Plummer.

“At first the foreign office help line was the wrong number. We couldn’t get through to anyone,” he said.

“It took three-and-a-half to four hours and I was getting text messages from my daughter saying ‘help me’,” he said.

Amanda now works as a PA for a financial firm, but was born and bred in Fleet and attended Calthorpe Park School and Farnborough Sixth Form College.

She was married to Matthew in September, but they planned a delayed honeymoon for November, which was supposed to last three weeks.

The traumatised couple were eventually rescued by armed Indian police, who were able to take over part of the hotel on Friday, almost two full days after the gunmen first took hostages.

They were due to fly out to Oman on Saturday, but instead flew home to reunite with their families on Friday.

They couple are thousands of pounds out of pocket, after having to hand over £3,500 for new tickets home. They also lost all their cash and belongings in the hotel.

For more on this story see The Mail, out on Tuesday, December 2.