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Published: December 4th 2010
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I flew to Mumbai from Amritsar rather than take a 46 hour train journey. I love travelling on the trains but two days is pushing it by anyone's standards.
From the airport I had to take a hour long taxi ride where the driver got lost and repeatedly tried to talk to me in Marathi, so I couldn't really help him! We were slowly heading in the right direction though and got there in the end. I got to see some great scenery on the way was we crawled through the roads leading to the Arabian Sea, it was a very pleasant way to get lost.
I love Mumbai. It's like London if it was moved to the seaside and the central heating turned up to 35 degrees. With a population of 14 million, Mumbai is the second most populated city in the world.
It's the most cosmopolitan place I've been to so far, and it would be a great city to be at university. There are no cows, power cuts, and hardly any stray dogs. It's certainly the only place I've seen where groups of young girls go out together unsupervised to bars, dressed in their western
Taj Mahal Hotel
One of the poshest hotels in the world! clothes and talking in English rather than Hindi. This would be unheard of in all the other places I've visited in North India apart from perhaps Delhi, although I didn't see this there either.
Mumbai still has some quirks of randomness that defines the fact you are still in India, where anything can happen. For example, the Livi's store only sells jeans with long length legs. If you are regular or short leg size, they instead take your new jeans to the tailors down the road to have them altered and returned. At the Hard Rock Cafe -where on the way the driver got hopelessly lost again - they think it's Western to address you as "dude" and "bro" (I must try this with my customers at work when I get back to London), were permanently out of stock of their famous Hard Rock Bears (for a friend - not me!), and surprisingly pulled the good old fashioned "round down the change" stunt.
After checking into my hotel I went for a drink at the Taj Mahal hotel, to see how the other half live. The Taj was built in 1907 and has 22 floors, 565 rooms, 46
Taj Mahal Hotel/ Taj Tower/ Gateway to India
View from the ferry on the way back from Elephanta Island suits, and 11 restaurants. It also has several bars and it's ground floor consists of an arcade filled with designer shops such as Louis Vuitton. Famous guests have included The Beatles, Jackie Onassis, and Barak Obama. The hotel was also the scene of the 2008 Mumbai Attacks, where gunmen killed 167 people.
I chose one of the ground floor bars, ordering a Long Island Ice Tea, and read my book while listening into a conversation between two very drunk, very rich patrons who had been drinking for seven hours straight. They were so drunk that it was like being at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party crossed with Withnail and I. One of them, who I later found out was either India or Mumbai's top fashion designer who designed Barak Obama's clothes when he recently visited India, was telling a barely coherent and melodramatic story about being in love with someone he met in passing ten days ago. After a while another man who was on business with Rolls Royce sat next to me at the bar and was abducted into the conversation, as was I after another five minutes. It was quite an experience, but after another drink I
made my excuses and left leaving the poor bloke from Rolls, who seemed quite envious of me leaving, at their mercy!
I've been spending a lot of my time out at Leopolds, made famous by Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram. It's a good place to sit, relax, watch the world go by, but I would point out that the place is nothing like it's representation in the book. In Shantaram, Leopolds is portrayed as a cocktail bar when the Mumbai gangsters hang out. In reality it's a cafe trading in mainly Western food and it's own branded merchandise, while upstairs is a bar playing late 1980s rock music. I still like it, but I'd advise against anyone going expecting it to be like it is in the book.
Yesterday I took the boat over to Elephanta, an island six miles off the coast of Mumbai, site of the famous Elephanta caves. The cave containing carved stone Hindu sculptures was rediscovered by the Portuguese in the 17th century, although they unfortunately damaged many of the carvings by using the caves as target practice! The island is also full of monkeys, which signs helpfully warn visitors may attack you! Aside
from the caves and monkeys, the island is very picturesque and also contains at the top of a hill two Portuguese cannons looking down onto the land below.
One of the funniest things I've seen in Mumbai are the street hawkers. They sell the two most inappropriate things that I have never seen anyone buy. The first is massive chart maps of India. And I mean massive. The second is light bulb shaped balloons the size of an adult. I don't know where a tourist would keep one even if they bought it. The hawkers carry one fully inflated balloon round with them under their arms at all times and they look hilarious. If you haven't had the experience of being chased down the street by a man wielding an over-sized novelty balloon then you haven't lived!
Today I went to the Regent Cinema to watch another Bollywood Film, Phas Gaye Re Obama. I was surprised that it didn't have any songs, and although it was a comedy, it was a satire rather than the usual Bollywood slapstick style, so I couldn't understand much of it.
Still, I've really enjoyed Mumbai. Tomorrow I leave for Pune.
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Nigel O Mahony
Nigel O Mahony
Hey mate thanks for the interesting blog, we head to mumbai today and were looking for a few things to see over the next few days, and this is certainly better than any guidebook! Nige