Advertisement
Published: December 7th 2009
So here we are... the first blog.
What can I say about Mumbai.... the smells are a mix of wonderful food and revolting bodily aromas, and horn honking seems to be a national obsession, I've never heard anything as loud in my life. On my first night - after a 90 minute cab ride across the city to cover 24 kms (and this was relatively quiet traffic wise), once I'd cleaned up I went for a little investigative walk around Colaba. The place is teeming with people - all of whom want to say Hello in that sing-song way that Indians speak, with a little head-wiggle to accompany it.
I quickly tracked down Leopalds cafe - which is featured in Shantaram if anyone has read it. It's choc full of westerners but just the spot to grab a kingfisher beer, eat some dahl and naan and try to get my bearings. It was great, though it was a little odd to find a man wearing what appeared to be pink pyjamas, trying to sneak under my chair waggling his straw broom around - I can only presume he was trying to clean the floor! My hotel is spotlessly clean but with the usual trappings of most Asian countries, ie, rocks for pillows, no glass in the windows and a really ineffective ceiling fan.
I met up with Hugh, an Australian guy and Johannas, a German guy later that evening for a beer and we made plans to go out the next day - they'd met this crazy Indian tour guide by the unlikely name of Terrence Alan Bradley who offers 'alternative' tours. He's definitely an interesting guy - within 10 minutes of meeting him he'd told me the tragic tale of having been engaged to a girl when he was about 18 and then moving to Mumbai to earn money for his wedding and when he returned home to Chennai his father had married his girlfriend. He'd never quite got over it and as it is Indian custom to remain untouched until marriage he's a virgin to this day at the age of 39!! Bless!
Anyway, virgin or not, he's a great tour guide. He took us on local buses and trains around the usual tourist haunts such as Victoria Terminus (location of the final dance scene in Slumdog Millionaire), but we also went the dobi ghats - where all the washing from hotels and businesses across Mumbai is sent to be done by hand in huge open air vats - mostly by men, which will probably explain why everything comes back not quite as white as it was when it was sent in!
We also went to a 'farm' which was in the middle of the city and is where the water buffalos are kept for milking - I hadn't mentioned my life in cheese, but it was pretty interesting and I think Terence was bit puzzled about some of the questions I asked about the collection of the milk and how it was then distributed to retail and wholesale - in plastic bags if anyone's interested so nothing for us to learn there!
finally we went to the Dharavi slums, which was an amazing experience. I was expecting real filth and squallor, and while it wasn't by any means comfortable, everyone there was happy and welcoming and no one was begging. The kids just wanted you to take their photograph - they were running around in raggy clothes, often with no shoes but they were laughing and playing. The families live in just one room each where they sleep, cook and live. The toilets are shared and the water and waste water runs right through the place. Because there aren't enough facilities you do see people squatting right in the walkways, but honestly once you've seen one boy doing a poo as you walk by then the next one isn't as shocking! Its really crowded and every square inch is used either as a shop or a home or somewhere to tie up your goat, where there is any open space at the edge of the slums it was used either as a cricket pitch or for flying kites made from plastic bags and bits of string. While there we saw one family getting ready for a wedding celebration - all dressed up amazing clothes with henna patterns on their hands and jewels stuck to their arms - I'm guessing it was going to be a fairly bling occasion.
So we've managed to work out the overly complicated train ticket booking system and made our first train journey - just a quick 6 1/2 trip to Aurangabad to look at caves and temples for a few days. I'm not quite sure how, given my walnut-sized bladder but I managed to avoid visiting the loo for the entire train journey. I guess this won't be the case for the next overnight 10 hour extravanganza to Hyderabad!
The train was rammed, no-one has any concept of personal space or even of waiting in the aisle for other people to pass, they just plough on ahead regardless of anyone coming in the other direction and as I was on an aisle seat I constantly had either arses or groins rubbing across my left shoulder.
Whilst here in Aurangabad we visited what is locally known as the poor man's Taj Mahal - similar to the real thing and it is a mausoleaum but much smaller. We managed to visit on a public holiday and the place was crawling with big groups of kids and huge family groups. I now have a little insight into what its like to be famous - everywhere we went people wanted to have their photograph taken with us - itwas mental. One schoolteacher with a group of about 20 girls asked if he could take my photo, and I was like, umm, OK and then all the girls screamed and stampeded towards me - it was ridiculous. Those that don't have the courage to just come up and ask just follow you around trying to take pics on the sly. It gets a bit creepy after a while. So, I now would like to publicly apologise to Vinnie Jones for stalking him down Regents Street all those year's ago...... I promise I will never stalk another celeb!
People always want to know where you're from and whever Hugh says Australia, they just go, ah, yes, he is from Ricky Ponting. They don't mention Freddie when I say I'm from England....
Unable to upload any pics at the moment - hopefully at our next stop we'll find an internet cafe that works on somethign above pigeon speed..
So off to Hyderabad next on the way to Ooty for some trekking....
Favourite food to date: chana dahl with tomatoes and onions
Favourite drink: Kingfisher beers
Most memorable moment: seeing a 9 year take a dump in the walkway of the slums!
love to all
Carole
x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.106s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 13; qc: 43; dbt: 0.038s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Rosco
non-member comment
Taking a dump
Hey Baker, Thanks for the blog. I'm in Oswestry and it's raining so that message has brightened up my whole day, keep em comin! Glad you're having fun. Do you think I would get told off if I took a dump in the corridor in Oswestry? Rosco