Official Blog #1 - Mumbai

Mumbai made its presence felt immediately.  It was 80 degrees and muggy at 1am on January 28th as we left the airport.  All the rumors of the insane driving proved true at once.  Our driver sped down the highway and later local streets at 100 kilometers an hour or more, weaving back and forth past gigantic trucks and scooters alike as there is no such thing as lanes here.  A taxi in front of us ran over the hind legs of a dog as we entered the city center, and his awful cry was a lot to take being in the country 15 minutes. 
The traffic was not bad coming in being the middle of the night, but that was the last we saw of empty streets.  Mumbaikers seem to have no concept of driver safety of any kind.  One way streets mean nothing, and several times we saw families of 4 or 5 packed onto a tiny scooter with no helmets.  It was definitely surreal to see mothers sitting sideways holding their infant children casually on their laps.  

The other obvious shock was the poverty.  There were whole families sleeping on the streets, many of the babies crawling around naked, which we could only guess were "untouchables".  A step above them, over half of the city's population live in slums, and we took a tour of the largest in Mumbai called Dharavi.  We were told this was a highly sought after slum to live in as it is prime real estate within the city limits and they have various enterprises that generate $650 million a year.  They have "factories" where they collect all sorts of plastics, break them down and turn them into pellets where they can be sold to be made into pretty much anything.  They have another operation where men clean the inside of old oil cans for reuse by dipping them into boiling hot water and chemicals.  These and other profitable businesses filled the whole area with black smoke.  It smelled horrific and we could only imagine what that did to the workers' lungs.  They worked 10-12 hour days, 7 days a week. 
As we crossed over a sludge filled "river" into the residential area of the slum, Shauna had to put her sunglasses on to hide her tears.  Children of all ages, half naked, were playing in mounds of garbage.  We could hardly manage to walk through alleyways which were their filth strewn streets, with home after home on each side. 

The most amazing thing about all of these people was the genuine smiles on their faces.  They were all happy.  The children loved to wave hello and come up and touch us.  There was begging, but not nearly as much as we thought there would be and we never felt overwhelmed by it.  I'm not sure if it was Pat's blond hair or what, but everyone could not get enough.  There were at least 4 photo requests from locals on the street asking if Pat could be in their picture.  They were equally amused by Pat's necessity to apply sun tan lotion.  People stopped and literally laughed out loud as he applied for a good 10 minutes daily.  In general the people were just so freaking friendly.  They took so much enjoyment out of watching us enjoy their culture.  Everyone went out of their way to make sure we were happy, and you could see clearly it brought them joy.  This was especially apparent in the restaurants, and keep in mind we were eating in cheap places. 

Speaking of restaurants, the food here is incredible.  We ate at one "nice" restaurant called Khyber, where we got chicken badami, pani puri, and lamb kebabs with sugar cane juice and mango lassi.  It was all amazing.  We didn't have to eat for the next 24 hours we were so full.  Besides Khyber, however, we ate mostly street food which was also delicious.  From the dal and naan to the tikka and panki chatni, everything we ate went down easily.  We also wanted to give a shout out to Leopold's, where we went to have a cold beer after 6 hours of walking on our first day. 

Aesthetically the city was not gorgeous but it had its moments.  As our guidebook says it's more of a city to be experienced than to sitesee.  Shauna said it perfectly when she observed Mumbai was like Times Square times 2 - everywhere.  There are definitely some cool sites though, such as Elephanta Island where ancient Hindu caves are carved in from the rock.  You'll see these in the pictures along with the Gateway of India, Marine Drive, Malabar Hill, and the Taj Mahal Hotel (where we went for high tea one day). 

Although it may seem like a lot of negative, we had a unforgettable experience and are happy we came.  We promise every blog won't be this long but there was a lot going on in the city and we felt it would be a disservice not to talk about it.  Next it's on to Ranthambore National Park to look for some wild tigers, so look for that blog in a few days.

Carpe diem!

S&P