Wobbling in Mumbai

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Having diahorrea and sickness was not the best thing to get 1 hour before a 15 hour bus journey and yet this is what happened to Donna for our Volvo ‘sleeper’ journey from Udaipur to Mumbai (Bombay). The bus itself wasn’t too bad, we had a double bed thankfully made out of plastic. The main problem was that the bus made sexist toilet stops. What we mean by this is that it stopped 8 times through the night for men to have a pee but only twice where the women could get out and do their business. To cut a long story short the journey was traumatic for Donna whilst Neil used his ipod to drown out Donna’s whining.

So then the bus arrived into Mumbai at 8am but of course didn’t drop us off anywhere near the centre of Mumbai but rather 15km on its outskirts, right next to a queue of taxis. A good idea you might think, but no they are only there to rip off the tourists for as much money as possible...not a good idea too because they were all pissed. By pissed we mean eyes rolling back into their heads and unable to focus on our faces 2 feet away from them and Donna stamping on the guy’s shins really hard and yet him not feeling a thing! You know, we just can’t stress enough how much we HATE bloody taxi/rickshaw/moto/trike drivers, especially when they form their little Asian mafia-like extort the stupid (so they think) western tourists. Grrrrrrrrrrrr!

We walked half a kilometre away from these sh*theads only to get extorted by another sh*thead who decided to hold back his extortion until we reached our destination of Mumbai CST train station. Neil had the almost obligatory argument over the fare and grabbed a nearby policeman to sort out the problem. A quick whack into the head of the taxi driver with Donna’s rucksack and we were off.

Mumbai CST train station was sadly the scene of some of the horrific November 2008 terror attacks where gunman opened fire and randomly shot at passengers, so was there any security there when we were in the station 3 weeks later? Er, no. Unless you call one soldier with a rifle from the 1970’s security control.

We had planned only to stay in Mumbai for one day as we knew the city was expensive and we had a train already booked for the next day down to Goa (yay, beaches for Christmas!). There were no retiring rooms free at CST station (these are hotel rooms used by transiting passengers, a good idea but always full) so Neil found us an ok hotel in the Muslim area, a few minutes walk from the train station for 900rps with fan, tv and hot water. Whilst Mumbai is a pretty and leafy city it was very soon apparent from our walking around it’s streets that the people were more unfriendly than all the other areas of India we have visited. We got a vibe of ‘we’re better than everyone, isn’t our city great’ and to be honest we didn’t see much of value here. We did come across other various scenes of the November terrorist attacks including the Cafe Leopold which was doing a roaring trade and seemed to be playing on it’s misfortune of having bullets fired into it 3 weeks earlier. On the day we were there part of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel was re-opening so the TV crews were out in full force and the crap security of yet another soldier with an old rifle and old metal detector was waving through the throngs of the ‘terror tourists’ voyeuristically visiting sites of the attacks. Yeh we visited but honestly we only wanted to see the Gateway of India, which we didn’t even get to see because it was covered in scaffolding.

We did find a nice restaurant, we couldn’t tell you the name of it or where it was located because we don’t remember, but we pissed ourselves laughing at the waiter there. He was being so attentive that he did everything but spoon-feed us the food that was put in front of us and all for a 20rps tip. When Donna gets her food, Donna doesn’t want anyone touching her food and took offense when this happened and told the waiter she would eat her own bloody food without any bloody help. Whilst Neil rather enjoyed having the guy cut his meat into smaller pieces and wipe his glass of water before and after taking a drink.

It was in this restaurant that we were introduced the finer subtleties of the Indian head wobble. It went something like this:

A guy of high stature and obvious wealth (and big belly) along with an enormous is drinking whiskey and eating behind Donna. With every sip from his glass the waiter fawned and pranced next to him seemingly responding to a series of subtle head wobbles and pursing of his lips. Neil couldn’t work it out but it seemed like ‘one purse of the lips’ was for more whiskey and ‘two purses of the lips’ was for the waiter to stop pouring. The head wobble came when food was placed in front of him but grew in wobbliness and speed if the moustached guy was happy with something put in front of him. Throughout all of this, the moustached guy said nothing and made no eye contact with the waiter whatsoever. The bill arrives at the end (something like £15) and the moustache guy points to the ‘boy’ (yes there was a boy here as well) and gives him 20rps along with a little head wobble and making a strange L shape with his index finger and thumb. The waiter gets another 20rps with a bigger head wobble and then with a slanting of his head and a last ‘purse’ of his lips he cruised out of the restaurant (drunkenly bumping into things on his way out). Now maybe he was just pissed and the restaurant staff were humouring him but if there ARE subtleties to head wobbling then this moustached guy must have mastered them to perfection! It was like some kind of silent cabaret/mime show which just goes on entertaining whilst you eat!

Meanwhile Donna still had the shits and hunting for toilet roll in the middle of the Muslim area of Mumbai is probably not the best idea (if you don’t know why google it!), thankfully 5 Immodiums later we got our train to Goa at 5am the next morning, where a happy Christmas was just around the corner.

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Photos

Cafe Leopold
scene of some of the terrorist attacks and frequented by tourists and indians alike

Neil in front of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel
the area was still roped off as the attacks had happened very recently

CST rail station
this was 6am in the morning..many Indians crowd the floor

Comments

[amitluvtoepxplore]

Great bus journey!
Guys u r carzy!! U travelled from Udaipur to Mumbai in bus! I am speechless.

[bill]

loving your indian entries! just followed your advice and googled "mumbai toilet roll", this travelblog entry came up at 8th! but not much else. you mean there are lots of police still in the muslim area because of the terrorist attack? hope you're feeling better already donna!

[deleted_49612]

Ah, this brings back memories. You have photos of a bunch of my hangouts from my last trip to Mumbai. I am going there again next May. Not much security in Mumbai! They must have put all of them in N. India then. Everywhere I went in December they were resting their heads on their gun nozzles and sleeping or drinking chai behind their sand bags. :D I hate taxi drivers too. One sort of developes an allergy for them after travelling for a bit. LOL That waiter! That is just way tooooo much service. :D

[Donna and Neil]

Taxi drivers
We have definitely developed an allergy to taxi drivers, they seem to be the same everywhere in Asia! We were shocked with how lax the security was all over India - apart from at the Taj Mahal strangely where the whole of the Indian army seemed to be!