I won’t bore you with every detail of our overnight sleeper train from Madgaon to Mumbai except to say the word sleep(er) should be removed from the name and type of train. We were in a second class aircon compartment (there weren’t any first class carriages on this journey) and the compartment had four of us in and a curtain to separate us from other bunks. Indian people, especially the two ladies and a three year old boy who we shared with, talk extremely loudly!….. ALL NIGHT! The wind released from the other side of the curtains was equally as loud! The only word to describe it was FARTING! no other polite description, such as breaking wind would suffice! This goes for the decibel level of Indian people breaking wind which we heard through the wooden huts on the beach which we have just left….. just saying. Otherwise perfectly nice people.
Oh and the first hour of our train journey was spent killing baby cockroaches and other wing-ed-things crawling on Glen’s back under his top and then on my leg. They finally joined others which were all over the floor and walls along with some sort of small beetles. (I was hoping they weren’t bed bugs!)
After travelling through the evening and night we eventually clambered down from the train at 4am and walked through the station. There were lots of Indian people sleeping everywhere… including outside on the ground. Anyway we took a little tuk tuk type taxi along large empty dual carriageways and alongside very poor areas with people in little shacks already awake and standing around. The journey took us through some very dirty and poor areas on the outskirts of town which didn’t fill us with joy. However, once we arrived at our hotel 40 minutes later the guys on the reception desk were welcoming. Glen negotiated a rate for a very early check-in (7 hours early), we then had a well needed shower and went to bed at 5am, just as the city was starting to yawn and stretch outside.
Fully charged five hours later we went out to explore. Everything looked much better in the daylight or perhaps it was just that we were refreshed enough to cope with anything we came across. To be fair it was so much better than the places we visited further north in 2015 and most importantly the people seemed friendly. We actually enjoyed ourselves here and are so glad we came.
The Gateway of India
This iconic monument was erected to commemorate the landing in December 1911 in Mumbai (then Bombay) of King-Emperor George V and Queen-Empress Mary, the first British monarch to visit India. At the time of the royal visit, it was not built and so a cardboard structure greeted them! After its construction in 1924 the gateway was used as a symbolic ceremonial entrance to British India for important colonial personnel. It has been called a symbol of “conquest and colonisation” commemorating British colonial legacy. The gateway is also the monument from where the last British troops left India in 1948, following Indian independence. Those troops were the Somerset Light Infantry.
Set back from the The Gateway of India is the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. A five star luxury hotel. The hotel is made up of two different buildings: the Taj Mahal Palace and the Tower, which are historically and architecturally distinct from each other (the Taj Mahal Palace was built in 1903 and the Tower was opened in 1973). The hotel has a long and distinguished history, having received many notable guests including Royalty (William and Kate stayed here in 2016) The building was commissioned by the Tata Group, India’s biggest conglomerate company and maker of trucks! (That bit is for you Karen!) This was one of the main sites targeted in the 2008 Terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008…. we wont dwell on that now.
We were surprised at the lack of Westerners walking about in Mumbai. It wasn’t until we got to the waterfront by the monument and the boats that we saw some. There were mostly Asian and Indian tourists there though, of all religions and they were in such interesting and beautiful outfits. I tried to talk to some to ask where they were from and to compliment them on their beautiful outfits but annoyingly we couldn’t understand each other.
Answers on a postcard if anyone knows where these two girls were from. Allie?
The first night we went to find somewhere to eat we saw an eccentric looking man with lots of white facial hair and an impressive moustache stood outside of a little cafe. As we walked towards him he smiled and shouted “cheap food” pointing in to the darkness of a cafe. I told him that was no way to promote his cafe. I said that he should be shouting “good food” not “cheap food” He was a bit surprised for a second but then he laughed. On the way back to the hotel that night I stood by him and shouted “good food” to the passers by. lol!
These shoe shine men were sat everywhere in train stations and we watched as men come along and quickly had their shoes cleaned before rushing off, presumably to work. While I was stood there watching them a very smartly dressed man in a suit gestured for me to go before him. I explained that I wasn’t waiting in line I was just watching, and we got talking. He asked where we were from and when I said England he said he had met Prince Charles and Lady Di. when they visited Kolkata (Calcutta). We talked about Prince Harry and Megan eventually he said he had to catch a train to go to a meeting. (He didn’t get time to have his shoes cleaned 🙈) He gave me his business card and said to keep in touch! I would love to know if he really had met them, he is a director of a variety of companies in India according to his business card.
We were at the train station waiting to see Dabbawala’s arriving in to the Fort business district. We also saw them in the streets on bikes with lots of the tiffin tins and food bags and containers slung over their shoulders. Men here pay them to collect their lunch from their wives or from a restaurant and deliver it to their place of work.
When we first arrived there one Dabbawala jumped off a train, walked towards us and when he saw us stood there he beamed at us. He was carrying lots of lunchboxes and tiffin tins and he was dressed in white Indian attire and it could not have been a better moment, Glen was stood in front of him with his camera and captured it! Amazing…. until we looked at the photo later and it was blurred so can’t put in on here. It will always help us to remember him though.
We passed one particular Dabbawala several times in the back streets and eventually he spotted us and smiled so we went over to talk to him. He was keen to speak to us but couldn’t speak English so he beckoned some young girls over to interpret for him. They were excited to do so and also answered questions we had about the practice. Mainly “why don’t the wives cook in the morning and then their husbands could carry it to work themselves.” This seemed to make them laugh! Anyway he was a lovely man and we enjoyed talking to him and the young girls.
We weren’t sure who the older lady was who joined us, she was just curious I think. Bless her.
So many people (mostly men) were chewing Paan which is made with areca nuts and lime, etc. and wrapped in a betel leaf. It causes a vast amount of red coloured saliva to form in their mouth and they spit it on to the floor without notice. I don’t know how we didn’t get covered in it as we walked around. The streets look like there has been a shooting and someone has been injured! We knew about it from when we visited Burma, it was widely used there. According to traditional Ayurvedic medicine, chewing betel leaf is a remedy against bad breath. It might make their breath smell better but it makes their teeth and gums red and effects their speech as they try to keep the mixture and the increased saliva in their mouth. They look ridiculous, it is not attractive at all! The mixture is addictive and euphoria inducing with adverse health effects. It’s a very antisocial pastime I think but some of the stalls make good displays.
This man had all sorts of jars of this and that to put inside of the ‘packages’ he was selling.
They were obviously expecting a good trade by the look of the amount of leaves they had ready.
It looked more like a dessert than something you chew!
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj train Terminus, built in 1887, is a UNESCO world heritage site. (It was once called Victoria Station). It is an impressive building and it is the busiest railway station in India. It is just one of many buildings of British design in the city, dating back to the colonial era. Looking up at these buildings (ignoring the Indian street scenes below) you could easily think you were in England.
We were out walking one afternoon and saw a litter of very young kittens playing together in a dirty gutter alongside their very sad ‘moth eaten’ mother. I couldn’t help but think about the similarity of the poor mothers and children who are sat on the dirty streets begging here. The mothers looking all to aware of the challenges in their sad lives while the little babies and very young children looked happy and carefree, seemingly unaware of their plight.
We’ve said how noisy Indian people are, well we walked past a school just as the children were all coming out towards their waiting mothers and it was like walking through a nest of bees! Sooooo noisy. So no change in the next generation. lol!
The good thing about Mumbai is that there are lots of women everywhere on the streets. This means it is colourful because of their beautiful and interesting outfits they wear. Most were in saris as you’d expect and the Muslim women were in their black full length clothing with a Niqāb or at least a head scarf, again as you would expect. However in one particular area we walked through we saw lots of women in a different kind of outfit. We asked one lady who spoke a little English why they dressed in this way and she said they were a different sect of Muslim, the Dawoodi Bohras sect.
Their two-piece outfits are called rida, made up of a long, loose skirt from the waist to the ankle and a top that covers the woman’s head and chest with an opening for her face which is like a matching hooded cape. It put me in mind of little red riding hood. (Sorry if I sound disrespectful) They are a single colour with less intricate decoration than saris and made from a thicker material. They are very bright and colourful as apposed to the black clothing we are used to seeing Muslim women wearing. It’s so good to see such different traditions and ways of life living side by side.
There are so many different religions with so many different styles of clothes, it is very interesting even though we are not religious.
We met an Indian man on a train in 2015 of the Jain religion but we’ve learnt so much more about that religion since. The main thing that struck me is that people of the Jainism faith have never been to war. Jainism is a religion founded on non-violence. ‘That non-violence is directed towards everything: people, animals, plants, and insects. Jains will go out of their way not to injure something, even a plant. The bulb of the plant is seen as a living thing due to its ability to sprout. They will not eat roots (garlic, potato, carrots, ginger etc) nothing that has been pulled from the ground only fruit that falls from the plant not a part that kills it.’
Some of the better buses we saw.
I liked the ‘BE GOOD & DO GOOD’ moto on this sign.
An unusual sight of an empty street, we couldn’t take a photo of a normal busy street as we have to keep our mind on staying alive in those!
Beggars on the street here are very thin and grubby looking as you would expect but I had two plump ladies asking me for money! I asked someone about this and he said it’s because they are not always begging for money for food, some are asking for money to pay for a wedding. If you have a wedding here, like I said before, they invite and feed 100’s of people and they often ask for money to help pay for them.
Other than a few men with missing limbs, who have literally chased after us down the street on their crutches, we have only seen women begging. We did see men who were sorting through the bins and eating leftovers that had been thrown away, it’s very sad. We do see this at home in Bristol of course but not as many as they seem to have here in India and not children. It’s a funny old thing, people are feeding cows here but ignoring the suffering of dogs and cats so badly covered in sores and growths. Also seemingly ignoring the beggars.
The streets have so many beggars or people clearly suffering here yet just a short car journey from our hotel there is the most expensive house in the world! Belonging to an Indian Billionaire. Something is wrong with the world isn’t it.
This building looked derelict so we were surprised to see that there was actually a functioning hotel in there!
I watched as this lady walked up to this terracotta container of water with a packet of tablets and washed one down with the shared stainless steel cup! What a way to have to live. It’s very sad.
Not sure if the tree is keeping the wall up or knocking it down.
Something we’ve learnt whilst in Mumbai is what a Tower of Silence is. (also known as a ‘dakhma’) There is one here in Mumbai called Parsee Bawdi and it is over 950 years old. The funeral ground is where the last rites of people belonging to the Parsee community are performed. Their religion is Zoroastrianism or Mazdayasna and is one of the world’s oldest continuously practiced religions. The bodies of their dead are exposed to scavenging animals and carrion birds, usually vultures. The reason for this way of disposing of their dead is to avoid contact with the four elements – fire, water, earth, and air, which they consider to be sacred, and therefore ought not to be polluted by the disposal of the dead.
The Parsis came to India from Persia (Iran) a thousand years ago with their Zoroastrian faith. This alternative to cremation or burial was also used in Iran right up until the government banned it in the 1970s.
We were in a restaurant eating a meal one night. There was one other table of people when we arrived but they clear the plates away and bring you the bill so quickly you are in and out in about 20 minutes. Anyway, our meal arrived and we were then the only customers left. There were about eight waiters just stood watching us eat. I said to Glen “it would be quite unnerving as a women on your own” and he said “ it’s quite unnerving for a man!” I think they are paid by how many desserts they sell because they are very keen to clear away your plates the minute you finish and come over to show you the dessert menu.
We tried to avert our eyes from the eight pairs of eyes watching us inside of the restaurant but then ended up catching the eye of the beggars and their babies waiting for us outside of the restaurant. There are no doors on the restaurant so you can hear the noise from the street outside which is very loud and has bikes, buses and cars beeping their horns continually. It’s just as well the food was good.
The ‘restaurants’ bring you the bill on a tray of sugar crystals, toothpicks and fennel seeds. Suffice to say we did not dip our fingers in to the dish of germs! Instead we chose to have curry breath!
In our favourite restaurant in Goa the bill was presented in this ornate wooden box. I think they were hoping we would fill it with change as a tip mind you!
We enjoyed the street food….. we had our fingers crossed behind our back as we did so though.
Later that day we came across a man with a wooden food cart. He was selling some sort of what we would call Bombay mix ingredients but with the addition of chopped tomatoes and onions and a wedge of lemon to squeeze on top. He made a cone shape out of a piece of paper and picked each ingredient up with his hands (!) and placed them in the cone. We took our snack in to the Horniman Circle Garden and sat in the sunshine to eat it.
It was delicious but when we finished we noticed that the white piece of paper with which he had made the cone was actually a photocopy of a legal document from the courts! It had the details of a court case, complete with names and addresses of the people involved. It was a case about a women who was being abused by her husband and mother-in-law. When we were walking around the area with lots of little paper and print shops the another day we saw similar copies of legal documents on the street! Goodness knows where he got the sheets of paper, I hope he didn’t just pick them up from around the printing shop street! Actually I hope he wasn’t the women’s husband!!
Glen spoke to this group of men sitting on the street, some were more keen than the others to have their photo taken.
One morning we took a boat to Elephanta island. It was about an hour from the Gateway of India monument. The sea was sadly full of rubbish and commercial boats and what looked like oil rigs… well we could smell gas so they may have been gas rigs if there are such things. Anyway I got talking to an elderly Indian lady who said that she was showing her grandson the sights. I asked her lots of questions about Mumbai and just after I left her to sit by Glen she fell asleep, Glen said I wore her out. lol! I also spoke to what looked like an Indian man but he said he lives in New Zealand Courtney, he used to live in Fiji and we talked about how I would love to visit there one day and how I always had done since I was a child, mainly because of Mr Ferman in the village who used to work there before moving to Marshfield. I think he fell asleep midway through my conversation.😉
As we chugged along on the calm sea I decided to leave our fellow travellers in peace and read the guide book about the island. I was amused to read, in what was surely a rare moment of honesty, that most of the caves are “hardly worth the visit” lol!
I was looking at the photos in the guide book and it had one showing a cable car, my heart sank. I had managed to discourage Glen from getting me to go on several of these in the last four months but was concerned that we would need to have the conversation again. That was until I read the line “Proposed new rope way…. “. Glen said “the 100s of boats that currently ferry people across will be pleased if that is ever built!” I don‘t think it will happen if enough people find out that the majority of caves are “hardly worth the visit” lol!
The birds are obviously used to the tourists on the boat feeding them their snacks.
The vulture population in India all but died out because of the drug diclofenac which was used in medicine for cattle. Vultures were dieing from kidney failure after eating carcasses of cows that had been treated with the medication. I think these seagulls will be extinct in future if they continue to eat so many E numbers in these orange coloured salty snacks they were being fed!!
When we reached the island we were welcomed with the usual walkway of stalls selling souvenirs. Glen said “all these ‘local crafts’ were probably made in China” and it would seem that even the Indian people on the island had been had over! They were selling ornaments of the Eiffel Tower! I asked if this was the Eiffel Tower in Paris (just in case there was a similar tower in India that I didn’t know about) and they said yes it was the Eiffel Tower In Paris! It would seem they were ripped off by the ‘Chinese’ when they bought this shipment of souvenirs to sell to the tourists. 😂
The island was full of Monkeys, this one was picking ‘nits’ from her baby and eating them! Waste not, want not.
The temples built in the caves on the island date back to approximately 600-635 AD. They are dedicated to Shiva. Shiva was conceived as Supreme Deity, as both the Creator and Destroyer of the Universe…… all I could think about was the fact that our caves in Cheddar are equally impressive if not more so. Although ours were formed naturally of course where as someone (or a 100 someones) had to actually carve these statues out of stone.
The island was originally known in ancient Literature as Gharapuri, it was the Portuguese who re-named it Elephanta island in 1534 after they found a colossal stone Elephant statue there. We were denied the opportunity of seeing the island’s namesake because it had been removed and reconstructed in a museum in Mumbai in the 19th century. The lack of a stone pachyderm did not discourage UNESCO to include it in its World Heritage list.
This poor ‘Mother’ had her work cut out!
This scene of the goat cocking her head around to watch the dog eating a corn on the cob grabbed our attention. She was, we assumed, braving up to make a move on the corn herself but took too long because suddenly a cow appeared on the scene. The cow walked over, pushed past the goat, gave the dog a nudge with his horns and took the corn in one swift move. 😂
Avert your eyes Karen! The next photo is a snake!
Clouds are different here… they are sort of like curdled milk….. which is fitting what with all of the curd they sell.
This is a stall selling a drink made from sugar cane, just like the ones in Egypt. They always remind us of you Magda, when you took us to Dahar back in 2011 and said this drink was good for “cleansing your bowels“. 😬
We came across an old lady who was very thin and was sat making some sort of food balls which didn’t look very edible. Behind her was an old van with two cows tethered to it. We noticed that people were coming along giving the old lady some money and then taking two of the balls and feeding them to the cows, patting them and then walking off. I tried to ask several men what they were doing but they couldn’t speak English, however, eventfully one man beckoned to a smartly dressed man who was able to explain that it was considered good luck to feed cows. He said that the lady selling the food made a living out of selling the cattle feed to them so it was a good thing to do for several reasons.
We have since read about her in an article we came across. Her name is Vatsala Shinde (age 65) and for the past 36 years she has been sat in the same spot earning her livelihood from these balls which are called Laddoos. Stockbrokers and business men etc buy it from her to feed the cows for good luck each day.
Indians believe they have four mothers, including Mother Cow, who is the giver of milk and therefore life. Feeding cows is auspicious– good karma, so first morning bread is given to cows. Not everyone can find a cow to feed, so there are centrally located cow feeding stations like hers where you can go feed a cow for good karma.
We found ourselves in the financial district and came across the Indian Stock Exchange. It has a bronze bull just inside like the bronze bull that we saw in the street by New York’s Stock Exchange. We saw lots of smartly dressed men and a few women in black suits and with identical white neck ties. They looked out of place in the grubby streets and sweltering heat. We went up to speak to one and he explained they were all Lawyers.
These, below, had removed their black trousers and gowns.
Another mobile knife sharpening service. Unlike the ones in Goa this man using actual peddle power to sharpen knives. It’s like we’ve gone back in time when walk down some streets.
We have noticed how all of the little babies and children have black around their eyes. I’ve read that Kohl has been used in India as a cosmetic for a long time and mothers apply kohl to their infants’ eyes soon after birth. Some do this to “strengthen the child’s eyes”, and others believed it could prevent the child from being cursed by the evil eye. I can‘t think that it could be good for them.
Unanswered questions:
Why do they walk on the roads here instead of pavements?
How come some people walk around barefoot with filthy clothes but they have a mobile phone!?
We’ve experienced extremes of standards on trains and buses etc but why do airports seem to have a common high standard?
We could smell and see Frankincense being burnt everywhere, by food stalls or just outside of little shops. We assumed is was to keep the flys away at first but I think it could have been for religious reasons. I’ve also read that it activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. Maybe that is why people living here looked so happy and friendly despite the poor conditions some of them live in.
We’ve struggled to do Mumbai justice in this blog, and I feel I’ve failed to describe and capture the atmosphere, sights and smells for you. However, we just want to say that we have enjoyed our short time here and we are so pleased we decided to visit.
Those poor folk! India has some of the most richest people in the world living there! Just awful. ☹️
I agree, somethings wrong with the system
Another fascinating insight into a totally different culture. The pictures of the British imperial architecture were very striking. And in one of the photos with the cattle, I think I spotted the new motor home Glen bought in an earlier episode!
Best wishes, and as you mentioned in the blog: Be Good and Do Good.
Alan
How brave of you to eat the food in the restaurants or on the streets. We could not have done that. We enjoyed your vivid description, but are glad just to read about it.
Love Mum and Dennis x