India...finally....!!

First your picked up, spun around in the air before eventually being flung to the ground. Then it picks you up again, chews you up and spits you out….welcome to Mumbai!!!
After a 12 hour journey this is the last thing you need, especially when you still have to get into the city and find a place to stay. As luck had it I managed to hook up with a German girl called Anna at the airport and we spent the next 3 days seeing the sights together.
This city of roughly 17 million people often makes you wish that you were emotionless and completely oblivious to your senses.
It is a cacophony of colours, noises, smells and tastes that will either make you feel that you have reached another level in your spiritual quest or will quite simply drive you bonkers.
The noise is there continuously. The tooting of horns as the 40,000 taxis in Mumbai try to ply their trade battling for right of way with buses, lorries and other vehicles that dare to undertake the perilous task of getting from A to B!
Just watching the traffic is like watching a modern day version of the chariot race in Ben Hur, although amazingly there seem to be very few accidents here…. every vehicle, person and beast that ventures onto the road seeming to have some kind of invisible force field that prevents them from coming to harm. That said, every vehicle seems to have some form of battle damage, although whether this is from collisions or some form of self inflicted scaring is open to pure speculation!!!
Riding in a taxi from the airport was one of the scariest moments I have ever experienced in my life, (Yes, its even worse than Cairo! ) the driver rapidly changing lanes, cutting up lorries and basically causing mayhem. Now I know how it felt to be a Japanese Kamikaze pilot during the war! Taxis here don’t use their brakes, just the horn!!!
Id also like to see how some of these taxis would cope with a thorough European M.O.T….. the one we rode in felt like the back axle was suspended on 2 blobs of jelly and if you had kicked the tyres your foot would have probably have disappeared into them.
We arrived in Colaba about 1-1/2 hours later, relieved to simply be alive and of course tipping the cabby generously just for getting us there in one piece!
Buses are not much better either, dragging you half way down the street while you hang on for dear life.
I managed to get hold of a copy of Indian traffic law, it was written down for me on the backside of a piece of A5 paper and basically the only way you can commit an offence is by not honking your horn.
Lights are something you use at night to make your car look pretty, Taxis, move around with all kinds of internal fluorescent lighting on the inside while on the outside, lights are presumably thought of as optional extras!
Mumbai is a shoppers delight …or nightmare depending on how you look at it.
Forget London, forget New York, this place has everything you could want for silly money and if this had not had been the beginning of my trip then I would of certainly filled both of my bags by now with a wide range of clothing and other goodies.
T-shirts cost around £1…. Beautiful women’s saris starting at around £7, Indian trousers and tops a steal starting at £2 each. A wide range of jewellery, clothing, bags and Indian home décor can also be had for a pittance!
That said, not a lot can prepare yourself for the assault before you arrive. You are quite simply a walking £ sign and every Indian salesman and trader will use every wile in the book short of bashing you over the head to part you with your money. Scams and begging is quite common too. The most common scam I encountered is the woman who asks for milk to feed her baby. She takes you to a certain stall where the milk is sold to naïve tourists at a hyper inflated price….. otherwise straight forward in your face begging is the norm! While it is hard to resist the temptation to help what appears at face value to be a poor, destitute homeless child, by giving them money you simply encourage them to continue begging and ultimately you cant give money to everybody. If you are a soft git like me, then you can always buy some fruit and hand that out instead, at least it gives them something to line their stomachs with.
The food here is wonderful and I cant praise it enough. The curries are exquisite, the service impeccable and the prices unbeatable. The first night I was here I dived in to a Tandoori Chicken at a restaurant called Ali Babas near the Gateway of India. I have never tasted such fantastic food in all my life and while this admittedly wasn’t one of the cheapest restaurants in Mumbai, the bill for 2 of us came to about £15 and this included, naans, rice and several drinks.
On Tuesday we took the boat over to Elephanta Island. This is basically a small island in the middle of Mumbai bay that has a few ancient Hindu temples located on it. We spent a few hours walking around although the temples admittedly were not that impressive. All was not lost though, we had a great time watching the local bandit monkey population making indiscriminate attacks on Indian families who simply had travelled to the island for a picnic. On the way back the boat broke down although Indian ingenuity got it going again. In the evening we took in Crawford Market and Chowpatty Beach and spent some time walking round Mumbai. We met a Hare Krishna from Canada on the bus and were invited to a vegetarian restaurant that the local temple runs in town.
Even the main railway station is an impressive sight even if its name is now unpronounceable ….. even to Indians!!!
Then on Wednesday we decided to take a tour of the Dharavi Slums. The tours are run by Reality Tours in Mumbai who take a sensitive and ethical approach to visiting these areas and of course photography is banned. Entering this area, you wonder what you have let yourself in for, however you gradually begin to realise that although this slum is run down and looks terribly impoverished, everyone smiles and everybody has a job. Dharavi contributes approx $650 million into the Indian economy every year and is a revelation to see. Its more or less a city within a city. Everywhere you walk you will find small workshops and shops going about their daily business. Everything is recycled here, especially plastics that are sorted, shredded and resold to businesses all over the world. On the outside the living conditions look terrible with open drains and unsanitary conditions, however on entering the houses you will quickly see that even though the accommodation is small, the owners take a pride in what they have and keep everything spotlessly clean. When you are confronted with situations like this and still see the residents smile, then you realise how small and insignificant our “so called problems” are in the West. They have a saying here “ No one in Dharavi goes to sleep on an empty stomach” and you can certainly see that. We didn’t encounter a single beggar during our trip and Dharavi is the perfect example of what can be achieved from what you first concieve to be complete impoverishment and adversity. Our guide Krishna was a fountain of knowledge and very professional at all times.
Unless you’re a shopping freak, then 3-4 days is more than enough time to seek out the delights of this city. You will either end up collapsing with migraine or you will simply shop yourself to death.
Anyway, its time for some peace, quiet and some serious partying ….. so its off to Goa ….

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