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Published: October 6th 2009
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The ubiquitous Mumbai taxis... minus the noiseIt's 2.45am and I've just got myself down onto a bed which my feet hang off the end of. Lonely Planet reckons that some of the rooms in the hotel I'm staying in 'flirt with pokiness', but mine is already having intimate relations... if I try, I can just about touch all four walls at once, it's stuffy and humid, and all I can hear is the continual beeping of car horns.
I'm in Mumbai, and it's been a rude awakening coming from South Africa. I left my hostel with a pool in Johannesburg on Wednesday morning, and had the fortune of being upgraded to business class for my 9 hour flight... something to do with me being 6ft 5in (too bloody right I should get more leg room!). So after enjoying South African Airways' finest food, wine, beer and in-flight entertainment (not to mention reclining seat... nice), I was unprepared for the onslaught when I landed. Firstly, my card wouldn't work at the airport ATM, so I had to persuade the pre-paid taxi booth to let me draw cash on the way. I then had the misfortune of being driven into Mumbai by a grumpy, cheerless fellow who mis-read
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I had more room in business class on the flight over... Fort as Colaba and spent the last half of the journey shouting at me in Hindi and broken English ('this 2km extra... 2KM EXTRA!!!'). I didn't get a thank you when I paid him the agreed fare.
So, my first day in India's biggest and brightest city didn't see me in the best of moods! I was dripping with sweat 5 minutes after stepping out of the door of my hotel, but made my way a short distance south to see some of the City's grand monuments from the British Raj period... namely CST (the Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus, formerly Victoria Terminus), Bombay University and the High Court. The main tourist spots are centred around the Fort and Colaba areas, which are filled with decaying buildings which probably looked remarkable in their day... but sadly are shown little love now. Instead, the character of Mumbai is dominated by one thing... traffic. Car horns sound constantly, and watching the drivers' behaviour shows why... to save petrol the engines go off at traffic lights, so taxi drivers are invariably caught unprepared when the lights go green, and the horns start! Horns are also employed in just about every other traffic situation... and
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A train disgorges its passengers at CST especially when one vehicle cuts in front of another, which is often.
I headed down to the waterfront at Colaba to see the famous Gateway of India and Taj Palace Hotel, and then caught a ferry to Elephanta Island to escape the city and take the sea air. I spent most of the hour-long journey chatting to three Gujarati lads, who'd spent the first 20 minutes serruptitiously looking in my direction and trying to sneak photos of themselves next to me! They finally plucked up the courage to talk and we chatted about England, Gujarat and their main reason for visiting Mumbai... prostitutes, which are apparently cheap but steal all your money! The main attraction on the island is a cave temple containing a giant sculpture of Shiva, reached via a toy train and 124 steps. The cave was impressive, but the route up was lined with tacky tourist shops, and the guide I unwittingly inherited rushed me through in time to make the last ferry back to the mainland.
After trying with difficulty to buy an Indian phone sim and book my train ticket out of Mumbai (I wanted to do this as a priority!), I'd pretty
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The Taj Palace Hotel much had enough for one day, so I headed back to a restaurant near my hotel and went to bed after a long, cold shower (the first of many in India!). The rest of my time in Mumbai was a lot more pleasant. I visited Banganga Tank, a cluster of temples and shrines at the end of a peninsula facing the Arabian Sea, Kamala Nehru Park and Chowpatty Beach, as well as strolling through Oval Maidan to watch the practicing cricketers and visiting the former Prince of Wales Museum (the new name is too long for me to bother writing!). Everywhere I went, people would stare and sometimes smile, and little boys would run up and ask 'whatisyourname'... or 'how many dollars?'. The highlight of my time there, however, was Mani Bhavan, an intimate museum devoted to Mahatma Gandhi, and housed in the beautiful building where Gandhi spent his time when in the city. The museum features numerous photographs and documents chronicling Gandhi's life and campaigns, including his time in London and South Africa, and contains the room in which he formed his philosophy of truth, nonviolence and self sacrifice (satyagraha).
I left Mumbai on a train bound for
Aurangabad, to the east in Maharashtra state. My overriding memory of the city (besides the sound of car horns) was one of people generally trying to get money from me at every turn! Taxi drivers try to charge 100 rupees when the meter is 15... people start a friendly conversation about England but inevitably always end up asking for money or a favour... I even had one man asking me to buy travellers cheques with his money so he could avoid paying tax on an overseas venture! There is, of course, immense poverty and hardship in Mumbai (which I don't think is appropriate to show in photos, as much of it is very shocking), which goes a long way to explaining this behaviour. But this just added to my general dislike for Mumbai, and helped explain the great relief I felt when my train finally pulled out of CST!
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jose
non-member comment
gods on country
do u have any plan to visit kerala?