We landed just before sunset, and found ourselves plunged into the massive urban sprawl that is Mumbai, or Bombay to the older generation. Led by our prepaid, non-air-conditioned, and very eccentric taxi driver, we were introduced to the sights and (at times pungent) smells of the city. As our taxi driver was cursing at the traffic in English and playing tour guide to us in Hindi, I saw for myself that this was another place of haves and have nots, the vast income disparity evident with the beggar knocking on the window of a shiny new Mercedes, ultra modern skyscrapers rising above squalid slums, and the destitute homeless lie on the streets while sharply dressed professionals dodge them like potholes or just hop over them, like potholes.
That night, we headed to Colaba in South Mumbai for some food and drinks. Along the way, we passed by Leopold Cafe, a site of the 2008 attacks by militants from Pakistan. There are still holes in the wall outside, possibly from bullets that missed the people in the restaurant on that fateful day. Despite this, the restaurant was still overflowing with customers and kingfisher beer, and it seems that people have either moved on, forget, or become oblivious to the fact that it could very easily happen again.
We started our day visiting the Victoria terminus, also known as the CST, also another site of the terrorist attack. I walked in expecting it to be the most fortified location in south Mumbai, but all I saw was a sleepy machine gunner and people going around metal detectors. They must have either stepped up on intelligence gathering, or that the people selling concessions are actually undercover commandos.
The rest of the morning and early afternoon was spent walking around a lot. We took a commuter train to the suburbs at Khar road just to see what it's like over there. The suburbs remind me of some residential parts of Singapore, but not long after we found ourselves in the middle of a slum relocation project in the west near the coast of the Arabian sea. There we got a good whiff of drying and dying krill amonst other things, and the scale of it is quite a sight. Fishermen would just lay out the gazillions of krill on sandy fields, roads, sidewalks, rooftops and any other flat surface touched by sunlight. Every urban critter will then congregate like animals to a Serengeti water hole, taking first pick, maybe spitting out the ones that are not tasty enough. The rest is then hand picked (it's probably cleaner this way compared to scooping it up en masse with all the other goodies on the road, although more time consuming) and perhaps exported to Asian countries with a healthy appetite for dried shrimp to be consumed, like Singapore!
Getting on the commuter train to Chowpati Beach, I had my first experience of chasing after a moving train. I got on first, then Dan. Dan had the luxury of realizing that the commuter trains are different than the intercity ones on the main line, in that they accelerate a lot faster. In retrospect, unless you are as nimble as Dan, you should not try it. Marveling at how inexpensive the tickets were at 7 rps each, we made ourselves comfortable in a very deserted carriage while the other sardines in the next carriage looked on with envy. This continued until we were slapped with a fine by a ticket attendant for only having a second class ticket and being in first. We were misled and had no idea. The metros we're used to don't segregate by class or gender.
After a whole day of walking, The rest of our day was spent mostly food hunting. Near Chowpati beach is a stand (New Kulfi Centre) selling Kulfi, a spiced ice cream served solid and diced up. It was so good I could have made a meal out of it. After that we went to a rooftop bar to cool off and get away from the streets for just a moment to recharge before taking the elevator back down to India. Dinner was at this superb roadside stall just behind the Taj Hotel (Taj was also attacked in 2008) It didn't matter if you had to eat on the sidewalk or if cars drove through the eating area as the restauurant's a well established local eatery and the stood is just plain tasty.
One great thing about blogging from an iPod is that I'm doing it in a very crowded bus, standing up, with one hand on the rail and the other typing away. More on this next stop, Goa!
That night, we headed to Colaba in South Mumbai for some food and drinks. Along the way, we passed by Leopold Cafe, a site of the 2008 attacks by militants from Pakistan. There are still holes in the wall outside, possibly from bullets that missed the people in the restaurant on that fateful day. Despite this, the restaurant was still overflowing with customers and kingfisher beer, and it seems that people have either moved on, forget, or become oblivious to the fact that it could very easily happen again.
We started our day visiting the Victoria terminus, also known as the CST, also another site of the terrorist attack. I walked in expecting it to be the most fortified location in south Mumbai, but all I saw was a sleepy machine gunner and people going around metal detectors. They must have either stepped up on intelligence gathering, or that the people selling concessions are actually undercover commandos.
The rest of the morning and early afternoon was spent walking around a lot. We took a commuter train to the suburbs at Khar road just to see what it's like over there. The suburbs remind me of some residential parts of Singapore, but not long after we found ourselves in the middle of a slum relocation project in the west near the coast of the Arabian sea. There we got a good whiff of drying and dying krill amonst other things, and the scale of it is quite a sight. Fishermen would just lay out the gazillions of krill on sandy fields, roads, sidewalks, rooftops and any other flat surface touched by sunlight. Every urban critter will then congregate like animals to a Serengeti water hole, taking first pick, maybe spitting out the ones that are not tasty enough. The rest is then hand picked (it's probably cleaner this way compared to scooping it up en masse with all the other goodies on the road, although more time consuming) and perhaps exported to Asian countries with a healthy appetite for dried shrimp to be consumed, like Singapore!
Getting on the commuter train to Chowpati Beach, I had my first experience of chasing after a moving train. I got on first, then Dan. Dan had the luxury of realizing that the commuter trains are different than the intercity ones on the main line, in that they accelerate a lot faster. In retrospect, unless you are as nimble as Dan, you should not try it. Marveling at how inexpensive the tickets were at 7 rps each, we made ourselves comfortable in a very deserted carriage while the other sardines in the next carriage looked on with envy. This continued until we were slapped with a fine by a ticket attendant for only having a second class ticket and being in first. We were misled and had no idea. The metros we're used to don't segregate by class or gender.
After a whole day of walking, The rest of our day was spent mostly food hunting. Near Chowpati beach is a stand (New Kulfi Centre) selling Kulfi, a spiced ice cream served solid and diced up. It was so good I could have made a meal out of it. After that we went to a rooftop bar to cool off and get away from the streets for just a moment to recharge before taking the elevator back down to India. Dinner was at this superb roadside stall just behind the Taj Hotel (Taj was also attacked in 2008) It didn't matter if you had to eat on the sidewalk or if cars drove through the eating area as the restauurant's a well established local eatery and the stood is just plain tasty.
One great thing about blogging from an iPod is that I'm doing it in a very crowded bus, standing up, with one hand on the rail and the other typing away. More on this next stop, Goa!
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