Sorry, I should have known better than to promise anything while in the land of India. My family swept me out of the house as soon as I got home yesterday, so didn't have a chance to write.
Everyone knows Bombay, Mumbai, whatever you want to call it. It's still referred to readily by both names here. It's the gateway to India and all that goodness. When I first got into the city, the colonization was blatantly obvious. The architecture was stunningly beautiful but also very, very British. The streets were laid with brick, there were no rickshaws, only taxis. The traffic was unbelievably tame compared to Hyderabad for a few reasons I think: monsoon season, more cops to regulate traffic rules, more foreigners who wouldn't be able to handle the craziness of unruly traffic, and most importantly the fact that there are no rickshaws, only taxi cars, so the roads were composed of 90% cars and only about 10% motorcycles, so the cars actually stayed in their lanes. I also realized why people's first reaction to "India" is "Oh, it smells bad there", because yes, Bombay smelled really bad. I promise that Hyderabad doesn't smell hardly at all, only once in a while you'll catch a whiff of stagnant water or something. Over half the people living in Mumbai are in slums, there are a lot of beggars. Lastly, all of the people I interacted with there spoke good English. Whoever says you can come to India only knowing English is partly right, but I know I wouldn't be able to really enjoy myself in Hyderabad if I wasn't able to speak Hindi or wasn't with someone who spoke Hindi.
Onwards to the trains. The trains were actually a lot better organized than I anticipated. I was able to book to and from tickets online. Mumbai is 800 km from Hyderabad, a 15 hour journey, and overnight there are beds provided, all for which I paid Rps. 600 round trip, or ~$12. They were very punctual as well, down to the minute leaving on time and hitting every station on the way on time. We booked the sleeper class as opposed to AC (first class). I was worried about suffocating in my sleep because of the heat, but once we got on there it was so open and there were fans that in the middle of the night I had to turn off my fan and huddle in a little ball because I was so cold. On the train there are a bunch of people who don't carry tickets who walk the aisles selling chai, coffee, tomato soup, bhel puri, omelettes, and all sorts of stuff, with chai as cheap as Rps 5. The ending station in Mumbai was the Mumbai CST, where Slumdog Millionaire was filmed, and we immediately recognized the platform where the final dance was performed, etc. One of my group members threw out the fact that CST is the busiest train station in SE Asia or something ridiculous like that, and it was absolutely packed. We were swarmed by taxi drivers as soon as we left the station.
After negotiating a price, we made our way to the YWCA. Note to all travellers: apparently you're supposed to have your original passport on you to check in to hotels. We were lucky they let us stay, and we packed 6 people into a room intended for 4 (but they didn't know that). It was a really nice hotel despite the fact that it was under the "budget hotels" in the lonely planet book. We each paid something like $13 a night here, which even so is really expensive considering two girls with us paid Rps 250 for two nights in Bangalore ($5). We dropped off our stuff and headed to a nice restaurant where we all gorged on Western food (there were even burgers!). We split into two groups after that, some going to Chowpatty beach and two others and I went shopping at the Colaba market. That's when most of the shopping happened, and there was a ton of good shopping there compared to Hyderabad. We went to Leopolds for dinner/drinks at night and there were tons of white people there. So far, in Hyderabad, I've counted 9 white people not associated with my university, but within a half hour of being in Mumbai we were past 50 already. It was actually very strange to see so many like us again.
Saturday was our one full day there. In the morning we hit breakfast early and walked over to the Gateway of India, which is basically just an arch dedicated to the British arrival in India, but has this huge plaza for tourists and such. From there we took a boat to Elephanta Island. The island was really neat, mostly jungle. We walked up to the top of this hill where there were some ancient caves with carvings in them of hindu gods (for instance, there was a three-headed Shiva). On our way up, we encountered many monkeys, and let me tell you, those things are dead evil. Cecilia was carrying a can of coke and a monkey charged her, jumped, and stole the can right from her hands, and then proceeded to drink it in front of her. When we finally got to the top, we were going between caves and we saw this mother dog with six or seven brand new puppies. They ran over to us and were being all cute, but later on we found the runts. There were about 3 runts in the pack who were shivering and whimpering and trying to get milk but couldn't because the other dogs ran them off. It was one of the saddest things! Those runts don't have more than about 2 more weeks on this planet, and some of us definitely thought about trying to steal one and save it. Moving on, we were descending some stairs and come across a family of monkeys. We look at them, they look at us, and we all knew. We turned as slowly and calmly as we could and started back up the stairs, but they knew they had us. They came running after us and we were running and they were howling and we were running faster. Luckily for us, there was a group of religious men who were standing under a tree with a bunch of food, and the monkeys detoured over to them. They actually beat the monkeys away, hit them, shoed them, and got away with it. I thought I was going to get killed by a monkey that day, but here I am. The cops on the island actually carry canes with them to ward off monkeys if needed.
When we got back, we visited the famous Taj Mahal Palace, where the bombings took place one year ago. The building on the outside is absolutely gorgeous, one of the most beautiful in all of Bombay. The security is a lot tighter there now, and seems to be just as popular as before. We didn't stay long though, just long enough to use nice, western bathrooms =).
We did lunch then at Cafe Royal, another western diner (we've been deprived). They had sour cream and parmesan and bagels. Hallelujah!
After lunch was when the fun really started to kick in. We took a train up to the Dobi Ghats, or the 136-year-old human-powered clothes washing center. This is where a bunch of American clothes companies send their stuff to get washed before selling it, we actually saw a pile of freshly washed jeans. It was huge! You'll have to see the photos for the full effect, but even so it doesn't do it justice. Unfortunately, we went in late afternoon and during monsoon season, so there weren't many people there, but typically there are 10 people working in one stall and 20 people living in one room. During monsoon season, they pay for a lot of the workers to go home because in a normal year the flood will come waist-high, but this year has been so dry it was like any winter or summer day. I actually read in the papers today that this is the worst drought since India's independence now, but we have started getting light rain these last few weeks. Anyways, the dobi ghats were really cool and we had a personal tour guide. All the workers posed nicely and actually seemed to enjoy our presence (probably because it means they have more money to go home sooner).
After the ghats, we decided to walk over to the Haji Ali mosque. The mosque is actually built in the middle of the ocean and the footpath can only be taken during low tide, so we were excited to see this, possibly walk into it. But, on our way we came across some drumming, kept walking, and found a mini-festival. As soon as we showed interest in joining, we got pink powder paint thrown all over us. We were dancing and throwing paint and having the best time ever. I wish I could explain the joy, but there's no way. This was easily the highlight of my trip. All of a sudden it didn't matter that we were foreigners, that I was a girl, anything. People just danced. And got painted. I was covered by the end, again, you'll have to see the pics. It actually temporarily dyed my skin, too, my hairline has a pink tint to it.
So by the time we got to the mosque, we were covered in Hindu festivities and thus made the conscious decision to not approach the mosque. We got some really funny looks on the walk there, though, and several people would shout out "Gunpati Bappa Moriya!" as we passed, meaning quite literally in Sanskrit "My lord Gunpati", or Ganesha. Although the footpath was supposed to be submerged when we got there, it was entirely visible to the bottom (again, due to the drought), but like I said, we didn't dare approach it.
From there, we somehow got allowed into taxis and went to Bungunga Tank in Malbara Hills. In the center of the tank is a giant stick where Lord Rama shot an arrow into the tank and thus became the Earth. The area surrounding it was absolutely awesome, it reminded me of a little european village with an indian twist. We encountered another Gunpati festival there that had firecrackers. The villagers thought it was hilarious that we were not only already covered in pink with headbands that read "Gunpati Bappa Moriya" but that we joined in their festival too.
After a long day, we taxied back to the hotel, showered, ate dinner, and perked up for a night out. A club rep met us on the streets and waved the cover charge if we went to Red Light, so to Red Light we went. It played mostly Bollywood songs, which was exactly what we were looking for, it was a lot of fun.
Finally, Sunday rolled around. The hotel let us keep our stuff there until our train left (thank god!), so after checking out we met up with two other people from CIEE but not in our travel group, Tom and Chaya. Chaya has family in Bombay who they were staying with and invited us to the Ganesha festival they were going to that day. This festival was rated the best one in Bombay the previous year. We got there and it was ginormous. The family welcomed us right in, although only 2 spoke English. The Ganesha statue was probably 50-60 ft tall and had many hundred pounds of gold and silver plates covering it. Around lunch time, the family invited us to eat at the festival, and thinking we were going over to the canteen or something to buy some food, they lead us to these blue tarps on the floor with lines of straight tape down them, and people were scrambling to get a spot in between two lines. We followed suit, sitting cross-legged next to some random indian people, when Tom and Chaya explained that we were going to eat off banana leaves, with our hands (not a big deal for me but nobody else in my group had yet). First they came by with these giant leaves, which weren't very clean, then later with pickle and a couple other dishes, then later with rice, sambar and daal. We were a sight for sore eyes, and it was very funny. I managed to keep pace with the indians but definitely needed some coaching on the banana leaf from the guy next to me. The others finished about 5-10 minutes late because of the hand obstacle. Once that was done, some of Chaya's cousins, who were actually working for the festival, managed to get us a mini tour/cut in line deal. Of course, there was the catch of being filmed but I'll take what I can get. We got to get blessed by a Brahman priest, got bindis, and a bag of blessed food. Behind us there were these scales, old-school scales with the two sides, or the justice scales, and a person would pay to sit on one side and on the other side they would weigh out their weight in coconuts or rice to sacrifice to Lord Ganesha. There are so many rituals in just this festival alone I can't even name all of them, but as we were on our way out, we passed through the "cafeteria" again and all the men who "worked" there, or the religious men like Chaya's cousins, were rolling across all the dirty banana leaves covered in food. I missed the explanation on that one, but it was interesting to see. Apparently, our food shift alone was 1800 people, and there were 2-3 shift after ours. So while we were there there were at least 3600 people there, but were definitely way more (those standing in line to worship, those who didn't eat, those who came before or after lunch), and the festival goes on all day until 11pm every day until the immersion. Truly fascinating.
After that we hit up a Modern Indian Art Gallery, which was really neat, but not something I have a lot to elaborate on. Then we got some dinner at Cafe Mondega. Don't ever eat there, it was absolutely terrible! But terrible in a really funny way where we were all laughing and joking about how incredibly bad it was. Despite the fact that we still had fun there, never bother to waste your money if you go to Bombay (again, in the lonely planet book).
Lastly, we got some falafel to go and made it to the trains on time. Nevertheless, a weekend to remember. By far the best weekend I've had here so far, and will definitely go back to Bombay sometime.
Photos at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=150543&id=642705832&l=1bfe94ceeb
Wow! Thanks for the virtual tour! Great descriptions, must have been a blast.
ReplyDeleteIt's especially interesting having read the book Shantaram, where so many of the Mumbai and nearby places are mentioned. It must have been fun (and kind of weird) to eat at Leopold's, the main gathering place for people in the book.