Around Mumbai
Trip Start
Jul 07, 2008
1
61
215
Trip End
May 27, 2010
Mumbai (Bombay),
Maharashtra,
India
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Bentleys Hotel, Colaba, Mumbai
Cloudy, hot and humid
I think we may have sorted out the jet lag now, we only slept for 12 hours last night! It would appear the hostage situations have been resolved. We managed to walk right down to The Gateway of India today and from there we could see the damage sustained to The Taj Hotel. Virtually the whole of the top floor has visible smoke damage from the windows and balconies.
The press were out in their hundreds a very different situation from Thursday, the day after the attack, when we saw hardly any press at all. It's Saturday, so clearly The Taj is the main attraction for a lot of Mumbaikites, hoards of people milling around taking photos and watching the press do their news items. There seemed to be the beginning of a demonstration by a crowd of men. I can only guess that it was something to do with Pakistan as they were flying the Indian flag and every now and again I heard the word 'Pakistan' in English bandied around. The older man leading the group wore a white tunic with Hindi writing on, and he was wearing a turban, Rajisthan style.
We went on a little shopping expedition today and managed to find a slightly better scale map of Maharashtra than the one we have. We can now at least see there is a road between Mandwa and Murud, even Google maps don't show one! We found an internet cafe too, one with a really fast, consistent connection. The PC and keyboard were old kit but the servers, router and everything else seemed to be quite new. We were able to let everyone know we are OK, and that's the main thing. We'll go back later and upload my blog and some photos.
Some interesting road signs we have spotted:
Helmet on your handlebars?
What are you protecting?
Honking addict?
Save yourself, get some help!
Helmet and head go together
The honking sign is very funny when you consider that a great percentage of the population honk their horns ALL THE TIME. It's also quite common to see vehicles weaving up and down the road looking to see if they can get past the vehicle in front and get ahead, oh, and at the same time honking. I saw 3 policeman the other evening on a motorbike, all of them were largish people, and none of them were wearing a helmet!
We were talking yesterday about our expectations of what Mumbai would be like and we both said the same thing - a bit more slick! As you drive into the city from the airport you come across an area that does have some high rise, shiny windowed 'corporate' type buildings, but they are surrounded by the usual ramshackle accommodation and shops. India is a place of contrast and it's no different in Mumbai. We passed some huge shanty towns on the way across town but in between the shacks and home made shelters there will be a designer furniture store. Colaba is a big melting pot of expensive, cheesy and hippy chick. You can wander up and down The Causeway and buy beautiful silk sarees from a number of designer type shops or you can wait until the stalls come out and buy a pair of sandals for 100rps.
A lot of the buildings in this area are 20s/30s. Bentleys, where we are staying, has premises over 4 different sites and we are at Arabia Mansions. It's very Art Deco, with some beautiful tiling throughout and they seem to have kept most of the original features like the zig zag ornate woodwork around the bottom of the balcony. The metal screens to enclose the balcony are a bit of a disaster but they do keep out the noise.
Across other parts of the city the Raj is alive and well, CST station (the one they attacked) is classic Gothic Victorian, really over the top, but I like it, even if it does have some bullet holes now. I was brought up on railway stations (not literally of course) because my dad worked for British Rail, so Euston and St Pancras were very familiar to us as children.
I want to stick my ore in here and say that I don't like what they have done with St Pancras. The beautiful ceiling (it's probably called something else when it's such a large structure but you know what I mean when I say ceiling) is supposed to be admired without interruption. It's the expanse that is the wondrous thing and what give's it it's wow factor. Before they refurbished it you walked, or were driven, up the sweeping front entrance where you alighted into the huge central archway. As you walked into the station, at the end of the archway, the huge expanse opened up before you. Now, when you arrive at St Pancras, you walk through an underpass that becomes a shopping mall, and then if you crane your neck around the top of the mall you get to see the beautiful ceiling that they have lovingly restored. Or, if you like you can walk up to what is effectively a mezzanine floor, where the Paris trains come in and where there is a huge statue of a couple kissing hello or goodbye, it isn't clear, and look at the ceiling from there. The problem with that view is you're half way up and again don't get the full effect of the space. Go take a look and see what you think for yourself.
It has been a strange introduction to India this time. Mumbai is very different from Chennai and Delhi AND it was almost 20 years ago when we here last. Having said that, some things don't change. The smells, a mixture of pan, chi, curry and incense are pretty much everywhere. The sheer volume of people can sometimes be overwhelming and we saw some of that on our way here from the airport, with thousands of people spilling out of CST at evening rush hour, but because of the attacks it's been more subdued than normal. The vegetarian food is absolutely delicious and just how I remembered it, although once we get out into the smaller villages I'm sure our choices will be very limited.
We in the west have become very fussy about the type of work we will or won't do. Here there is no support mechanism, if you don't work you don't earn money therefore you don't eat, simple as. Here, you will find people doing the most menial tasks and jobs will be broken down in a way that Henry Ford would have been proud of. For example, at the cafe we have been going to there are the people who prepare the foods and drinks. Several doing the different types of foods (they do Chinese as well as an extensive menu of Indian dishes) and at least 2 people preparing drinks. Then there are the waiters who take your order, the guys who deliver the dishes to your table, the guy who delivers the water to your table, the guy who clears away the dirty dishes and wipes down your table. Usually it is only the owner who issues the bills and handles the money. Today we had a juice at a stall that was smaller than my bathroom and 4 people worked there!
Reading through the Times of India yesterday I noticed an advertisement for ICICI Bank (well known in the UK at the moment for offering consistently good rates of interest to savers). They were offering personal loans of up to 15 lakh (a lakh being 100,000) to those earning at least 96,000 rupees per annum (approx Ģ1200). I earned more than that when I left school in 1973!
Even though we have been in the heat for the past 4 months (apart from our 3 week sojourn to the UK) we are finding the humidity here a bit difficult. My fingers and ankles have swollen up and we both feel rather bloated, probably because we just keep drinking.
Talking of sweaty, I'm off for a shower before we hit the streets again.
Laters
