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Published: July 10th 2005
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Gateway to India
This imposing monument stands at the harbour and used to greet the numerous ships that sailed into the port. Well, we finally have gotten around to writing the next update... a huge apology to all of you who have been waiting for this one!! We last left off arriving at Mumbai airport after a ridiculous 2 day journey from Kigali...
So here we were in Mumbai! We worked our way through the rather disappointingly small airport, got our bags, figured out how taxis worked in the country, and headed off to our hotel! Now we had heard lots of stories about taxi drivers in the lonely planet and from other travellers. Basically, one of the most popular scams is where the taxi driver tells you that the hotel you are going to is likely to be fully booked. Or closed down. Or burnt down! He then kindly offers to take you to another one which is 'just as good' and happens to have availability. When you get there, indeed rooms are available, but you pay more than you wanted to, and he pockets a nice fat commission...
A slightly more advanced variant occurs when the savvy tourist says that he's sure that the hotel has got availability, at which point, the taxi driver offers to take you to
Elephanta Caves
This used to be a temple complex, but has been long abandoned. a travel agent nearby where you can make a phone call to the hotel to check for yourself. You get to the travel agent, they kindly make the phone call for you, you talk to the person on the other end, and discover that indeed your hotel is booked out. And so you take up the taxi driver's offer to take you elsewhere! Of course, later on you figure out that the person on the other end was part of the scam, surprise surprise... 😊
So - having heard all these stories we were quite ready to make sure that we wouldnt' fall for it. And would you believe it, our taxi driver did indeed try to take us to other hotels!! We would tell him to take us to Hotel Causeway, and a few minutes later, he'd say 'Hotel XYZ, right?' and hope that we'd say yes without paying attention... but we were savvy intrepid travellers and got him to take us to our hotel, although we had to argue a bit...
Still - we got to the hotel! One of the nice things about India is that because of the great exchange rate, everything is really
Carving of Shiva
In one of several of his guises... cheap! So there's absolutely no need to stay in backpackers' accomodation here... The hotel still wasn't as nice as we were hoping, but certainly a relief after Rwanda's!!
The next morning we headed out to see the city. Amazingly, in spite of all the warnings, we were still surprised by the hordes of cars (mainly black and yellow peugeot taxis), the myriad of colours and above all, the variety of pungent smells that we experienced as we walked through the streets!! Hordes of stalls line the streets, with eager sellers trying to get your attention so that you too can have the opportunity to purchase high priced (for India) low quality merchandise. We also met quite a lot of beggars which was quite distressing, especially the little kids, who were really difficult to say no to...
We spent the day organising train tickets and accomodation for our next stop (Jaipur), buying some fruit (finally we could buy oranges again!!), and of course, sampling the local food at every opportunity! Mumbai isn't really the kind of place where you go sightseeing, although we managed to do some of that as well...
A few interesting things we learned about India that day...
To start with - it is ridiculously hot in June!! It was so hot in fact, that we were drenched in sweat perpetually. The heat really saps you and you just lose all will to go around looking at tombs and monuments and temples and so forth, and end up really taking things slow... this was probably the most unpleasant climate we had encountered so far, definitely more hostile than even the desert in Egypt and Tunisia.
Queueing is a waste of time. We had learned this lesson in Africa, but it's far worse here. When a bus arrives, everyone just piles on. People hang off the side of the bus, risking certain dismemberment from other closely-passing traffic. If you are standing in a ticket queue, you need to keep constant watch on your flanks to ensure that nobody else tries to come in from the side and cut in! But we certainly mastered the art of staking our territory in the queue.
While you're there, you might as well get used to the fact that people will stare at you. Partly because we are a mixed couple, but we were used to that. But they're not as predatory as the stares that Catherine experienced in Egypt and Turkey. But - they keep staring. In fact, if you stare at them, they just keep staring. We even filmed them staring at us, but that didn't detract them... 😊
Food is ridiculously cheap!! We were eating in really really nice restaurants, where the waiters were in suits, for a whole 3-4 $AU per person. And so so yummy... I got into the habit of ordering two or more meals every time we sat down to eat, just so that I could sample the different foods... so much for the weight I had lost so far... !! Every meal is accompanied by pickes and raw whole purple onions (little small ones) - and I got really addicted to that. But Catherine wouldn't kiss me for most of India unfortunately as a result of that ... 😞
The level of poverty is statistically nowhere near as bad as in Africa, but it certainly hits you when you are in the city. We had numerous kids come up to us, with outstretched hands speaking in Hindi and begging. They were also very persistent and kept following us. It was really difficult for us - the times we did give some of the kids some money we got swamped by more of them, and that just made things all the more harder.
We did do a few touristy things... went out on a boat to see the Elephanta caves, which are basically the remains of old temples... very impressive, although we didn't give it full justice because of the heat. You have to climb this rather steep path, and if you want, you can actually pay $6AU to have 4 guys carry you up the hill in a palanquin... but years of post-colonial guilt wouldn't allow Catherine to avail herself of this service, so we slogged it ourselves in the stinking heat...
We also saw quite a few old colonial buildings, but to be honest they weren't that interesting. Also went to Chowpattty beach, which is kinda the equivalent of Bondi Beach in Sydney, except not as clean and you certainly don't swim in it!! But we got to sample lots of food from street vendors - most memorable was a drink called Falooda - which is basically milk with rose syrup, almond essence and some kind of pink jelly, and a large lump of kulfi, which is like ice cream but isn't (sorry I know that's not particularly helpful) - but nonetheless a very nice and sickly sweet drink that comes highly recommended!!
I got to use some of my tamil as well. I did study the language for 10 years while living in Singapore, and so I thought I'd use it here so that I could pass off as a local. Of course, nobody else spoke Tamil here, since Tamil is mainly spoken in the South... but I did use it to stave off touts, but I don't think we fooled anyone. I think the combination of our little camera bag, guidebook, and of course my rather Caucasian wife, all contributed to this.
So what can I say about Mumbai - it's dirty, crowded, smells quite bad - but there's a certain attractive vibrance that makes the city really interesting! People are really friendly, especially after you buy something from them (!!). Food is absolutely fabulous (and cheap - we were eating like kings for a whole AU$4 each!). Of course you get the touts, and the scam artists, but if you keep your sense of humour about you, you can still enjoy the whole experience!!
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Holly Berry.
non-member comment
Hotel Causeway, out of ten?
Hello, I'm from England, and have been travelling India for two months, I've been having trouble booking a hotel, and have finally managed to book Hotel Causeway in Mumbai, was it any good? as I can't find it on the net..you're review would be appreciated! and I hope I can even get there, with all this taxi mayhem business from Mumbai!!! I'm on my own, so I hope I'll be ok!? Thanks, Holly.x