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Published: March 17th 2009
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Arriving to Mumbai by train is quite a shock, even for 2 people who have been traveling in India for 3 months and think that they have seen it all. The shock comes in the scale. Sure we've seen poverty in India up to this point, it is omnipresent, but seeing the amount of squalid slums that surround Mumbai is truly heart breaking and baffles the mind. It is pretty much a continuous sight for 2 hours as the train is speeding along. You're debating whether you should just shut the window and look at something else but then you feel guilty to not at least aknowledge the reality that is so close to you. In the end I chose to just keep on looking even though it feels awfully wrong to look at such misery from the relative comfort of a train seat.
Welcome to Mumbai.
Once we step out of the train some dude, who I instanly recognize as being dodgy, tells us where the station exit is after noticing that we are looking for it. After a few moments of trying to get our bearings straight and figure out how the hell to get out of
this overcorwded hindi labyrinth we go in the direction that the shady dude had recommended, seeming like the most plaussible. Of course as we come down the staircase the same slimey buggah that we had tried to shake off moments earlier is there waiting for us with a gigantic ear to ear smile that just says "Cha ching!". My scam radar was going though the richter scale I tell ya! This guy was the absolute definition of a scam artist; Slick, overly smiley, smelling of 10 ruppee notes and factory paan. Total cliche. Anyways, we cant manage to escape his tenticular grasp and find ourselves whisked into his cab, where he tries to tell us that a taxi ride to the hotel that we have reserved will cost us 500 to 600 ruppees (12 to 15 $$), he even pulls out a laminated 'government approved' fixed rate paper to prove it. We argue for a little while knowing that this price is ridiculous. During our bickering he keeps insisting that we give him a price, knowing full well that we have no clue how much it should really cost. At one point Jen points this out to him and asks
Onion man
The ladies go wild for him! him if he knew what the meaning of 'honesty' is. This very articulate english speaking Indian had no clue about the meaning of the word and fumbled a few times trying to repeat it. "Homesky? horneswy? No never hear of it". Hmmm how ironic! After this, as we try to leave his cab, he hands us over his cell phone so we can call the hotel and ask them how much a taxi should cost. We proceed and find out from the hotel management that it should cost no more than 50 rupees. Slightly embarassed by being found out, like a child with his hand in the cookie jar, he looks on as we get our bags together and bounce out of there as fast as we can. Not having made 10 meters, like cartoon dogs going for those long string of rubbery sausages, taxi drivers literally pounce on us offering their services. We settle with some sweaty mustached guy who drives us for 100 ruppees to our new home for the next few days, the New Bengal Hotel.
Welcome to Mumbai!!
Arrived at the hotel we are shown to our little, 700 rupee, palace. And what I
mean by "palace" is "tiny hole". See, accomodation in Mumbai is 3 times the price as elsewhere and 1/3 the size and quality. For this price we had a share bathroom that was also the permanent habitation of a flock of hardened city pigeons that, being Indian pigeons, seemed to be suffering from diarrhea. Too much fibre in their diet im sure.
Welcome to Mumbai!!!
Ok, ok. Enough with the negative ranting, but hey sometimes its needed, especially when its all true!
This may come as a suprise to most readers, because of the direction that this particular blog is going, but WE HAD A BLAST IN MUMBAI! Hell yeah!!
Mumbai turned out to be a dynamic, modern, fun loving city that in our opinion has no equal on the sub continent. There's incredible colonial architecture on every corner that rivals anything we've seen in our lives. The Victoria train station is just gob smacking impressive. It's gothy, it's massive, there are statues of animals everywhere. It just rocks! I had to go look at it 3 times during my visit. I have to admit that it was not far from the New Bengal Hotel, but
Great architecture
Yup, Mumbai is full of it. still!
Being total foodies, we made every meal during our time in Mumbai central to our days planning. Pretty much everything revolved around that. There really weren't any duds at all and every meal was actually quite special. But there's one notable outing that really stands out. The place is called Bademiya and its a Mumbai institution. Straight up, Its the Schwartz of Mumbai. The place is actually not a restaurant but a street stall gone mad! It's truly singular! It's a street stall that is probably the most popular food establishment that I've seen in my life. A 3-storey Cage Aux Sports (huge sport bar/restaurant complex in Montreal) doesn't even come close to the amount of people being served in one night. There are tables set up all along on both sides of a 200 m long street. These tables are being looked after by approximately 30 waiters working their arses off, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, arms full of plates filled with delicious kebabs, dodging traffic. There are people chowing down kebab rolls in every direction wherever you look. Its totally crazy, the food is top knotch and we absolutely loved it.
Chowpatty beach
This is where people come for coconuts and snacks. Another wonderful thing about Mumbai is the taxis. If youve never seen them, they are black and yellow, they're shaped like Al Capones getaway car and they are driven by the most honest Indians this side of the Ganges (withstanding the blood-sucking theives who wait for tourists at the train station). Most of the time they just put on the meter without even putting up much of a fight, a behaviour that is almost unheard of anywhere else in India, Gujarat being one notable exception.
So our time in Mumbai was really, really awesome and for us it felt like being in New York again, but with a raw Indian sort of edge to it. It's really an exciting place to be and sure all the cliches are true but there's so much more to it.
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