[JPM Travel Journals]
INDIA and NEPAL 01
Intro to India
Holi Holy Vrindaban
The Sadhu in Taj's Shadow
Pushkar's Respite
A Sitar & a Vespa in Udaipur
The Clean-Bombing of Mumbai
Goa Beach Hippie Sighting Tours
Unequal Vision in Benares
Everest, Out the Window
Into Their Thin Air
Anna Purr Now
Within You Without You
Rishikesh Part 2
Amritsar: Bold, Gold
His Holiness of Dangerous Liasons
Delhi Visit #5
New Delhi Turns to New York
[ PHOTO ARCHIVE ]
01 April 01.
Mumbai (Bombay), India.
Got in yesterday morning on the sleeper train from Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Mumbai is a world of difference from the rest of India I have seen in the last four weeks. Which is to say that there are half as many people urinating in public here in Bombay, the streets are wide, and in general things are more tidy; But it mostly is a sterile or homogenous sense of tidy or organized. Not as characteristic or charming in some way. I think the British left behind too much soul here or something (errr.. not that the British are homogenous, etc, but just that India seems to be obfuscated here most by the Imperial European control for so long.)*
Mumbai. A back street pause for photo.
I'm not staying in Mumbai long-- went exploring most of yesterday and today, and might catch a Hindi film tonight, as this is the centre of the Hindi film world, good ol' Bollywood, where all films suddenly turn into macho violent and/or romantic music videos every fifteen minutes. All the scooter taxi's even tend to have little mudflaps with painted Bollywood stars on them in their 80's attire, sunglasses, moustaches, and blood dripping foreheads, et al. No wait, that was in Ahmedabad, as the scooter taxi's arent really in Mumbai proper for want of the more expensive metered-taxi's.
As yes, the expense in Mumbai. It's no New York or LA, though it wants to be, and yet this place is much more a metropolis and much more expensive than Delhi and any other big Indian cities I've seen so far. In other words, my tiny hotel room, scarcely bigger than my skinny bed and with a prison-width window of the Mumbai waterfront, is $7 a night instead of the typical $2-4 I've been spending. And I had breakfast at a tourist cafe that has the audacity to charge $1 (45 Rupees) for a banana lassi! The nerve!
I took a walk today to the Hanging Gardens, just past Chowpatti Beach and all the little boys playing in the surf; and a cute old Sadhu with a baby kitten sleeping on his age-weathered chest. Beyond the hanging gardens, on the hillside, hidden by landscape, yet omniously close, are the alledged Towers of Silence. This is a ritual ground of the Parsi faith which uses the area as a funerary site. Instead of cremating or burying their dead, they leave them for the vultures to dismantle, then after four days the bones are swept into a well. No, I didn't get to see any corpse-chewing, but I did see all the filthy birds circling in the air, diving down, just out of view from the Gardens.
Circus Posters. Nudity? No. Repression? Yes.
On to a more pleasant note. Yes, I am heading to Goa tonight on the night train. This being my last Indian train for perhaps a while, and descending into the heat of the south, I splashed out and got an A/C second class ticket, with 4 bunks in a berth, insead of six and the usual loudness and chaos that ensues in the cheap sleeper berths (which up until now I've always utilised.) In the morning I'll hope to be in the state of Goa, and will arrange to get to Paleloum, or however its spelled-- a supposedly less overrun, more tranquil beach front, where I hope to find the beach-hut accomodation and serenity (with the ocassional indulgence and social gathering) as found in Ko Chang, Thailand, on my last Xmas holiday.
Prior to Mumbai, on making my way from Udaipur to here, I stayed one night in Ahmedabad, Gujurat, which was one of the more hectic, hair- raising episodes of this trip thus far. Not only was this city overwhelmingly crowded, dirty, loud, and air-polluted (breathing was not a fun activity for about 48 hours) but upon arriving there after the six hour bus ride, the goons on the bus-squad unloaded my backpack (which rides in the aft trunk) the stop before me, with a bunch of others who were getting off there. They just assumed I was getting off with the other funny talking pale dudes, I guess. Then they told me (mostly with gestures and simplistic words) that my bag was 'back there' and that I needed to get off. Before I knew what was happening the guy who escourted me off the bus alledgedly to retrieve my bag, got back on and the bus started driving away! It was dark, nightime, I had no idea where I was, where my bag was (I had my personal day bag with all the important documents and things with me, on my person, as almost always) and I freaked out. So here I am running down the chaotic streets, chasing after this bus in an overwhelmingly confused state, my cheap imitation-birkenstock sandals flopping wildly as i run down the street screaming (much to the amusement of everyone, surely.)
Then it became like a movie.. a scooter taxi pulls up next to me running, I literally dive into it, straddling the side-rail, and we go off chasing the bus. The bus makes a wild turn (are they trying to lose me?) and so I jump out of the rickshaw and start running again. I finally catch up to the bus, and climb in, screaming obscenities in full recognition that they are incomprehensible except in volume and tone, and I probably looked like I was about to 'retire' someone...
Now then. So I ride on the bus for thirty minutes while he makes a few more stops and keeps chatting with his pals here and there. "Where's my fucking bag!" "No Worry. No problem"... etc. We go to the train station. No bag there. No other tourists (from the bus) there. Then the bus depot. No bag, no tourists. I'm literally about to throttle anyone within a hundred yards, and scanning the bus dashboard for valuables that I can take for ransom, any identification materials to bring to the police, etc. Then we show up at the travel office. I don't know whether to punch out the bus squad or embrace them all when I see that my trusty dusty internal frame backpackers suitcase-of-sorts is sitting there in the back of rickshaw who apparently knew the bag was unclaimed and to bring it here. God save his moustached soul.
I'll skip the part about me screaming at the top of my lungs at the main travel office, and just move on to my hotel and dinner story.
So. I've got my bag back, and after a few hours my blood pressure has returned to almost normal. I tuck into a vegetarian cave called Cona Restaurant where I almost need a flashlight to read the menu, and order up what is one of the best meals, a Gujarati thali, that I've had in India. So sweet and succulent and tasty that I almost forget about the hellish experience with the bus.
The next day, I took an extended walk, did some exploring. Had some more fine food, for dirt cheap, as usual, but the real highlight was (no not the gujarati ice cream, which also was incredible) the Dada Hari Wav stepwells-- constructed some long time ago, a carved stairwell that descends five flights into the earth with a simple-temple like structure at the top. It was straight out of Indiana Jones.
I had to talk to six different rickshaw drivers before I could find one that knew where it was (including getting a short ride in a vespa- scooter sidecar, just for grins) .. but once there... whoa! They were built as a sort of shelter from the sun and heat. One could descend into the step well, hide in the little alcoves and in fact relax and chill from the relentless summer heat. I crawled around on some precarious ledges, got scared out of my wits a few times when I could hear more than a few dozen bats lurking in the cubbies overhead in the dark. It was such a strange, experience-- frightening but wonderful in this sort of earthen, stone tomb almost a hundred feet into the earth-- shafts extending from the surface, bringing sunlight punctuated through the chambers. But there was no golden idol, or whips, unfortunately.
I've been hidden far too long in this stylishly named "Cyberpunks Internet Cafe" and so I must re-emerge out into the real daylight and perhaps find my way downtown again for that Hindi film at the proper cinema. And then its to the train.
Postscript-
Did I forgot to write about renting the Vespa in Udaipur? Cannot recall.
* Later I find out that on account of U.S. ex-President Clinton's visit to Bombay the city was practically sterilized, ironically just prior to my own arrival. It's funny how the subtler aspects of the city's uncleanliness could not be timely enough disposed of-- red beetel nut and paan spit still dribbles the lower three feet of most outside walls of any given light colored structure. It's as if all the shit and schmutz was just scooped up and tucked under the proverbial carpet for the royal inspection. It all makes so much more sense now-- there was such a creepiness, a misplacedness of the clean in Mumbai in my visit... Now I suspect it to be, as I've indicated, very time-relative. Maybe instead of cleaning the streets and mandating half the cabs to stay in the suburbs (which I suspect but can't confirm) they should have just passed out blue GAPTM dresses and fat cigars to every man, woman, child and cow. That would have been a more appropriate welcoming.
Goa Beach Hippie Sighting Tours >>
©2001 JPM. All photography and writing copyrighted.