More Mumbai Stories

Besides the Navratri festival, I managed to do some sightseeing around Mumbai during the day.

It takes a long time to get into downtown Mumbai - there are no highways, and the traffic is legendary. I have no doubt that many people have died from simple, preventable things while waiting for an ambulance to drive 10 blocks through Mumbai traffic.


But, when I finally got downtown, everything was close to my hotel. And of course, it's not like I'm the one doing the actual driving. You don't rent cars and drive yourself here, it's actually cheaper to rent a car with a driver. Makes sense, I'm sure most tourists would total a rental car in about 10 minutes driving here.


I checked into my hotel and my driver took me to a wonderful little cafe for lunch. My host for the weekend had arranged my afternoon for me and communicated the plans to the driver, who didn't speak any English. Turns out, my host had great taste! I had a great goats' cheese and roasted pepper sandwich and finished off with a large piece of cheesecake. It was a very un-Indian meal (which was nice for a change, I will admit).


After the calm bliss that was the cafe, I was dropped at the insanity of the 'Gateway to India' shown here:


The gateway was built to commemorate King George V and Queen Mary's visit to Bombay in 1911. When the British left India in 1948 the last troops passed under the gateway before boarding the ships home. Not so insane so far, essentially, it's just a big arch. What is insane was the people. First you have the people trying to hawk their wares - oversized novelty balloons (what balloon isn't a novelty?), nuts (hot and not), popcorn, etc. They're pretty persistent, but manageable. Worse though are the beggers and the hare krishna's. The beggers get in your face and will not leave you alone. If you turn away, they follow. I yelled at one. It didn't help. My best course of action was to walk quickly away, while attempting to dodge them, and yelling "no" at them as if they were a bad dog. Actually, that's a good image - you know when there's a large dog that keeps jumping up and you move side to side to get away, but they persist. Yeah, that was what it was like, only imagine the dog telling you how they hadn't eaten for 10 days and that they have a starving baby at home. The Hare Krishna's don't want to convert you, they want to tie string or flowers on your arm, bless you and then demand a donation.


So, after a bit of this, I found a somewhat quiet area to sit down. It lasted about 20 seconds before a girl beelined in my direction. She sat down next to me, asked my name, and we had a bit of a conversation. Still though, I was waiting for it. I knew she wasn't just being friendly, she was a hare krishna, so would want a donation (incidentally, hare krishna's don't have a bad rap here like they do in North America, it's a religion, but in NA it's treated like a cult). Before we got to the point where she tied string on my arm and asked for money, 4 dudes walked over and wanted to have their picture taken. At first I thought they wanted me to take their picture for them, to get a group shot. But then I realized they wanted a picture with me in it! My new buddy told me that they probably are from a village that doesn't see white people, especially not women with short hair. I should have picked up on the locals and charged them some money!


After that was over, another dude comes over to me, and you can tell he's in cahoots with my new friend. While she's chatting me up, he ties a string on my arm (very carefully, I was glad he didn't cut the circulation off), says some words (presumably blessing me), gave me a flower to put in my pocket, tried to get me to eat something (I didn't) and put a dot on my forehead. It was really cool, until he demanded 500 rupees from me, otherwise the blessing wouldn't work. My former friend then picked up the cause and told me horror stories of what would happen and that it had to be at least 500 rupees. I gave them 50 and got up to leave. She followed and slid a flower bracelet (a bunch of live flowers, in various states of decrepitude, attached to an elastic) before I could protest. This is when she went in for the kill and told me how hungry she was. I had told her from the very beginning that I wasn't giving her any money. And I didn't. She wanted me to pay her for the flowers, so I returned them to her. Don't play me like that. I'll give you money, take you out for a meal, whatever, but you're sure as hell not going to get it from me by pretending to be my friend.


For those of you thinking I'm really mean right now- I had done some reading on this problem beforehand. I guess the beggars all report to their 'pimp' and so they don't actually see the proceeds from the money. It's an industry. I do intend to give a wack of cash to people before I leave - but it will be to NGOs to give to those who are the worst off, and to the people at the hotel who have to clean up after me, or maybe even random rickshaw drivers if they don't piss me off too much!

After my experience at the gateway, I headed to the National Gallery of Modern Art. It was good, not the best gallery I've been too. However, there were some really amazing pieces of modern Indian artists. The building it was in was really interesting - it was circular and tall, so there were many levels to the gallery, and lots of stair climbing! This is a link to someone's picture of it (I followed the rules and didn't take pictures inside)

After the quite of the gallery I headed with my driver to the markets to buy traditional clothing to wear to the festival (note the contrasting day: quiet cafe, crazy gateway, quiet gallery, crazy market). My driver had been instructed on what to help me buy. He did my negotiating, so I got some okay prices (I think). And I suppose it went as well as skirt shopping could go.

My last stop of the tour was of the hanging gardens. Now, there was nothing 'hanging' in these gardens at all, so I was a little confused about that. What was there though, were topiary animals and a chipmunk. An Indian chipmunk!

Okay, they had other stuff there like trees and flowers:

If you look closely you will see the bananas growing in that tree. Free-range bananas, neat!

After that excitement, I returned to the hotel to get cleaned up and into my skirt for the festival!

As you can see, I managed to take some pictures of Mumbai. It seems tourists are more prevalant, so no one yells at you for snapping a few pics.