ew... I think I stepped in a pile of Mumbai.

So it's been a while since I posted. So I figured now would be a good time to go back and revisit a trip we took within India a few months ago. I'm not sure why I didn't post about it at the time. Probably because I was thouroughly unimpressed with Mumbai.

For those of you who don't know Mumbai is the city formerly known as Bombay. Bombay means "good bay" in Portuguese. They took the city to use as a trading port in the 1500s and it wasn't until the mid 1990s that it started being referred to by it's older name which comes from an ancient fisherman's goddess named Mumbadevi.

It is a HUGE metropolis, which is normally right up my alley. Towering skyscrapers, choking pollution, and rampant poverty are but a few of the charms you are greeted by as you step off of the plane. The roads are not as congested as the ones in Hyderabad, mainly because Hyderabad is a large city using roads that were meant for a small town. But also there are no rickshaws in Mumbai. As much as I enjoy riding in tiny auto-rickshaws with the wind in your face and a devil-may-care driver, they cause more traffic problems than they are worth, and I can't wait until Hyderabad outlaws them as they have in a few other large Indian cities. They aren't quite as small as a motorcycle, not as big as a car and slower than both. Their tiny little two-stroke engines spew gallons of smog into the air as they struggle up the tiniest hills packed with as many as 12 passengers.(This is NOT an exaggeration, they are designed to hold 3 people comfortably and four in a pinch). Here’s a picture of one. Try to imagine more than a few people in one of these.

So we traveled by taxi in Mumbai. Our hotel was unimpressive and expensive. Our first room WREEKED of cigarette smoke and the woman at the desk seemed utterly perplexed that we wanted a room that didn’t stink. The non-smoking rooms smelled of mold, but not smoke; you give a little, you take a little.
These inconveniences would have seemed much less inconvenient, if we weren’t being charged an arm and a leg to stay there. The place was supposed to be one of the better hotels in Mumbai.

Our room was up on the twenty something floor and looked out across the city and over the bay. This would have been a great view if it weren’t for the filth that hung so thick in the air you could hardly see two blocks away.

At one point we took a trip out to Elephanta Island, which is about a one hour ferry ride out into the Arabian Sea. The Arabian Sea is even dirtier than the air. The ferry chugged its way though huge slicks of oil, floating rafts of garbage, and flotsam of every kind. You would get hepatitis just looking at this muck for too long.
One of the locals on the ferry with us told me that the water was so dirty, “…because on the other side of this water is the Arabians.” I found this very puzzling because everyone around him was throwing their garbage over the sides of the ferry, and from what I could tell they were all Indian.

Elephanta Island has the oldest stone carvings in the area or some shit. I’m so sick of ruins. Apparently the Portuguese felt this way as well, because most of the carvings are missing appendages or noses from where the occupying Portuguese soldiers used them for target practice.
Even though tourism is a major source of income in Mumbai, the people still managed to gawk and stare at us everywhere we went with that ever pleasant slack-jawed scowl you’d think I’d be used to by now. And before you give me that but you’re so big, of course they stared-crap, let me tell you that when we were in Thailand we were hardly stared at, and I’m practically the size of a building there.

Anyway here is a picture of the Gateway of India, which was built to commemorate Indian independence from the British back in the 40s. As I passed underneath I couldn’t help but wonder if the British were as glad as I was to be leaving.




Betcha can't guess where Heather's going.

Here I am praying to whatever god will hear me that our ferry won't sink into the repulsive Arabain Sea.


There's a city somewhere through all that smog.