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Published: October 29th 2017
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Scooby followed us? Not to pleased to see us thoughWe wake early on the last morning in India a little sad to be going home but fully refreshed from the fantastic nights sleep in the Taj hotel’s luxurious bed. We are also very excited to explore Mumbai as the first impressions we had last night coming in were all good. We start off with the early morning yoga session by the pool and after this the teacher serves us some delicious tea made from lemon and 2 other ingredients, that tasted sweet but wasn’t honey or sugar , we didn’t catch the name of it but it really did taste great.
After a final dosa breakfast and some lovely tasting cakes at the hotel we head out towards the market area. I have researched that there is a 150 year old market here that sells material so I want to take a look. The walk takes us past a shop called fab india which we were recommend to look in and it has really lovely homeware items in here and loads of blankets like the ones we have seen along the way, here they are at a fixed price which seems in some cases much lower than in the
tourist shops we were taken too, there’s a surprise!
Fashion street lives up to its name and is lined with stalls selling all kinds of clothes, most of them are western style and focus on fake designer goods, not really great copies and not of interest to us. We are passing by a scooby do buffet of clothing stalls, jeans, bags, belts, shoes, t-shirts, jeans, bags, belts, shoes t-shirts…. you get the idea. Each stall owner tries to lure us in seemingly the first potential customers of the day. I do stop at one stall as he has lots of different dresses and tops and we start to haggle on the price of one dress. It’s all very tongue in cheek as the dress is not very expensive to start with but he says he is going to give me a good price as I am his first customer of the day and so I am like a god. I say well if I am god then it should be free right. It seems I have taken over from Shenton today on the comedy side and we are laughing and agree on a price of £3, happy with this
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Manish market Marlarkey price, as is the stall owner, we carry on our way.
Shenton stops to look in a guitar shop and actually finds a guitar which has been made in India and the quality isn’t too bad. He sits and plays for a while and is tempted to buy it but its our last day and seems a little pointless to buy it now, would have been better if he found this in Delhi. The guitars have names like their Western name sakes, there was a ’Gilson, ifanez, maylor’ and so on.
After an hour or so of walking in the humid day we find the Manish market which is where the material is supposed to be, in the end I only find the same kind of stuff I have seen along the way and the prices are not that much different to home so I don’t bother buying anything, as it is a ‘real’ local market, I enjoy the comparisons . We buy some Indian spices, the range of spice is incredible, every type of masala imaginable and the fragrances are a heady mix, the smells and sounds around us makes certain that Mumbai has it's very own
unique identity. We haggle over the price which seems a a little high to me but the stall owner tells us we are getting local prices and he says “If you don’t like them I will give you twice the price back.”, yeah right!
The last thing on my list of things I want is incense so we get directions to go to a road called Samuel road, I can’t find it by using my blue dot but everyone seems to know where it is so we just keep asking and following the directions. The market is rammed and we end up walking head long into a traffic jam, not of cars this time but people, we squeeze along with the rest of the crowd who are going about their business The barrow men and boys push through with their long rectangle barrows, they shout and bustle, those in front of them soon move when nudged forward. They are carrying every conceivable load imaginable. As we latch onto a path created by one of them we spot a stall selling sugar cane juice. We decide to stop for a drink as it’s now humidly hot. The juice is served
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Juice colonic anyone? fresh in a glass that you are given to drink out of at the stall, the sweetness is refreshing and ‘green tasting’ and the coldness strikes at our throats. I am enjoying it when I am then struck again, this time with a cold thought, ‘hang on a second how is this so cold when its such a hot day?’ It's then that I see the man feeding the crushed ice into the hand cranked machine that he uses to squeeze the juice from the cane. We had just passed a covered area that must supply the ice locally, on a daily basis. There we saw huge blocks of ice with dirty black material draped over them, a couple of men were cutting chunks from these Mumbai icebergs and bagging them up. Perhaps a 20 rupee colonic on the way? I would pay 20,000 for one at this time. My non Dehli belly needs to be sorted out.
Eventually we find the incense sellers and buy hundreds of incense sticks from him, probably at twice the price, which is still incredibly cheap, so I am a happy buyer. Before we leave he gives me some perfume as a gift,
he says its an American favourite, called dove. I smell it and it smells exactly like the soap. He probably just gave it me as I am not smelling to clever, while standing at his stall I have been sweating from places I didn’t know I could sweat from.
On the way back towards the hotel we stop at the Mumbai’s famous central train station, inside it could be any London train station, it looks very well organised. It has beautiful ticket halls, outside of the building we find the sign indicating that it is a world heritage building. The front of the station is very ornate and gives an impression of times gone by. With as many dreams carried through its arches, as suitcases and parcels, I wonder how many were fulfilled?
We pass by a hawker selling screen protectors for phones on the street and I get one for my phone as I dropped it in Rishikesh and smashed the other one. This one only costs 50p and by the way the vendor is looking at us we believe we must be his first white customers. Next to him there is an old couple sitting on
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To the minute, these trains the road with newspaper laid out on the floor and spices for sale placed on top of the newspaper. We stop and buy some black peppercorns from them and again probably pay over the odds as we give them a hundred rupees , they tell us the price is 20 rupees for each small mound of peppercorn, its cheap for us and the couple need this £1.25 way more than we do.
We have had enough of walking now so get what we think is a taxi back to the hotel. It ends up being a type of bus so we have to wait until the driver has enough people in his vehicle to start the journey. It’s as hot as a sauna inside, we wait and sweat some more, until eventually we get moving, we leave the small warren of streets behind and a cool breeze from the ocean pushes through the vehicle, this is welcomed by everyone as we bump along to the Gateway of India, that stands in front of our hotel, facing the Arabian sea.
We take some obligatory shots of the Gateway and decide we are going to photo bomb people as there
are so many tourists here. Problem is as soon as people see us they actually want to have their picture taken with us so we have to photo bomb and run.
Back in the sanctuary that is the Taj we have cold showers and we then head back out, to Leopolds cafe, which is mentioned in a book Shenton is reading called Shantaram. Its only round the corner from our hotel and the food really is fantastic. Leopolds has been around since 1871 and since it first opened it has been an important meeting point and hub for the area we are about to explore called, Colaba. We stroll down the Colaba causeway, this area was the original backpackers area, the staging point for those in the sixties who traveled to India trying to ‘discover themselves’. I am not sure about discovering myself, but I do know if it wasn’t for the blue dot we would have got seriously lost at times. I decide the blue dot represents our Shiva while we have been here in India, sometimes it revealed more than we could have imagined and other times it took us on a wild Shiva chase.
Our
time here has now come to an end and as we start to return to the hotel to pack our belongings and leave we reflect upon our trip.
India has shown us a very small part of what she is about, how she is with herself and her history, the cultures and beliefs that for millennium have been ingrained here also have a root for us here in the West. We can find ourselves here as easily as we can loose ourselves here, being lost here would be no bad thing. Shenton believes once you realise you don’t really know anything, you are then ready to learn. This is us and India we are ready to learn more about this magnificent country and the only way we can do that is to loose ourselves in her by returning. Until the next time, goodbye India and thankyou.
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Amit
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Getting goosebumps !!
Names of CST train station, Leopold Cafe, Taj Hotel - all gave me goosebumps. All these places were hit by terrorists on Nov 26, 2008 in one of the worst acts of mindless violence. Anyways, never say goodbye to India. There is loads to cover on the next trip. :)