Mumbai Madness

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After years of planning, farewell parties, hangovers and emotional goodbyes...we finally boarded an old and tired looking British Airways 747 to Mumbai. We both had a mixture of feelings from tiredness and nerves, to eventually, excitement. This was be a long trip of at least three or four years, so emotions we running high.

A smooth nine hour flight with crummy food, cruddy on-flight entertainment, and frumpy trolley dollies, saw us land safely in Mumbai. As we left the plane the humidity hits us "yes, we're somewhere exotic!". The feeling soon evaporates as the stench off dirty diesel, human waste, and curry vibrantly lifts the room. It's 4am, and there is only three or four thousand people waiting for a mere two hundred and fifty passengers, most of them taxi drivers frantically awaiting our overpaying custom.

As we drove at 4.40am through the (relatively) quiet streets of greater Mumbai, you notice families of people asleep on the pavements, gangs of dogs confidently roaming, dark and quiet slums - almost, too quiet? - but nestled proudly around all the mess were HUGE sky scraper apartment blocks and commercial buildings. The half hour taxi ride was to be the quietest part of our time in Mumbai... Ooh, cliff hanger!

It took us a while to find the moderately sized Hotel Grant amongst the millions of meandering streets, back allys, walkways and underpasses. This is a city you can easily get very lost in quickly. The hotel appeared to have shut down, thirty years back, but alas after knocking five blokes arrived from nowhere! They weren't expecting us, although we had booked? but dubiously had a 'deluxe' room vacant. Bagman 1 took ally's bag, Bagman 2 took mine, liftman pressed a button, whilst toiletman and pickinghisnoseman were left disgruntled! This was our first glimpse into beurocracy in India. Five people for one job.

But fair play to Hotel Grant, it was loud, and shit. Stuck in 1970 with old brown and gold cabinets, it had light switches that stopped working in 1972 and a smell that would outlast religion. We stayed the entire four nights because it did have a good restaurant next door who delivered any order (via liftman) as room service. The Indian cuisine so far was excellent, nothing short of supreme. Deskman was constantly trying to sell me hash, whilst pickinghisnoseman had another talent of hacking up beautiful amounts of phlegm loudly at night. Now that would make a great superhero name!

Our room backed on to a main road, which is bad news because Indians drive with one hand on the horn, and the other up a nose. They don't see when they drive, but hear. Four beeps equal "I'm near, I might overtake, or drive into something that might kill us all". So needless to say it was very difficult to get decent sleep 😞

A few facts about Mumbai, it's population density is 29,000 people per square kilometre! The number of public toilets per 1 million people is 17! And Mumbai's British built, amazing, train station: Victoria Terminus, passes 2.5 million people a day!

So basically there's of shit load of people about. This generally means that day to day life is chaos for everyone. Mumbai has everything, from actors, millionaires, the rich and famous, to gangsters, street vendors, liftman, bagman 2, beggars, etc, etc...so it is easy to be overwhelmed by the pace. But if you enjoy the diversity and craziness of it all, it can be a fun and entertaining place...well, for a few days!

We watched the sunset and ate Bhelpurri from the stalls at Chowpatty Beach front, where the locals come to enjoy what they might describe as 'fresh air'. We had a drink in the world famous, fairy tale like, Taj Palace Hotel - which was proper lush...We pondered about going in as the security were pretty intimidating, and seeing as we didn't arrive in a luxury car, and were wearing flip flops with sweaty frocks on, we didn't look the part. But after, to top that off, eagle eyed Pug found a Mcdonalds selling McSpicy Chicken, imagine how the eyes lit the city! We also saw 'The Gateway to India', where the British arrived and colonised India, yay.

Amongst all that we chilled in cafes, had expensive drinks in a rubbish jazz bar, almost died in several taxis, and ordered a lot of cheap room service in 1970.

Boy are we ready for relaxing in Goa. Our train leaves at 5.10am, and we're not sure about the validity of our ticket? ...



Pugism of the week: "Pugzilla"

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