Mumbai

Maryann and I got off the plane in mumbai at about 7:00pm (Indian time) last night. We called ahead from the airport to book an overpriced room at the Garden Hotel in Colaba near, the Gateway to India.

Mumbai is a city in which 14 million people are doing their best to make a living. A porter snapped up our luggage while we were looking for our Taxi. After throwing our bags in the back of the cap he demanded 100 Rupees from us. "Give me one double oh" luckily I only had Rs 30 in my wallet (our Taxi was pre-booked and already paid for, which I higly recommend if you ever visit Mumbai) so I couldn't give in to his demands, even if I wanted to.

The area around Mumbai airport are all slums. It's a great introduction to this otherwise beautiful country. The hour-long taxi ride from the airport to the city was exhilarating - there are no lanes to speak of and few traffic lights at intersections so drivers cut into any available gap, beeping thir horn so that pedestrians, motorcyclists and other drivers know to get out of the way. Many roads outside of the CBD don't have footpaths so pedestrians walk along side the constant traffic. I'm sure horrible traffic accidents occur quite often because I've seen so many near misses in the last 24 hours. These guys are amazing drivers - a driver from Sydney wouldn't last 10 minutes. If they didn't get wiped out in an intersection, they'd eventually park by the side of the road and hail a Taxi because it would be far less stressful.

When we checked into the Garden Hotel, four bellboys helped us with our 2 pieces of luggage. I'd only just had one of my travellers cheques cashed so I didn't have any small denomination bills I felt that I had to give each of them each one of my smallest denominations (Rs 50) and so parted with Rs 200 (AUS$6.00) for no real reason. That got me in a bad mood.

In the morning, Maryann and I had a long walk around Colabar and the central business district. We saw the Gateway of India and the Chavrajparti Shivaji Terminus (formerly VictoriaTerminus), both grandiose ex-imperial relics.

It took us a couple of hours of exposure until we were accustomed to the life on the pavements of Mumbai here. We haven't organised train tickets to Pune yet (our next destination) but I suspect that this task will involve a very long cue. By about 3pm we were feeling more aclimatised and less ripped-off. Maryann bought a book from a street vendor and haggled him down to Rs 100 from a starting price of Rs 120. I was very proud of her for that (even when a Nepalese-born American named Dhiraj KC [pronounced 'casey' and that is seriously his legal name, I saw his drivers licence] - that I later ate a buffet dinner with explained to me that if you are going to haggle with a street vendor, you can pretty much offer them half the starting price and work from there.).

We had a late lunch at a Chinese restaurant (with all Indian staff) called Ming's Palace. We were really hungry from all our walking and ate four drinks and four dishes (3 of which were delicious, one bland) for a cost of Rs 800. That comes to AUS$24.00 but it was for two and the servings were huge so we thought that to be reasonable and reminded ourselves that we were in the most expensive city in India.

A homeless women holding a baby stopped Maryann, directed her towards a nearby shop and, in fragmented English, asked her to buy a tin of powdered milk. Maryann did so and we left feeling pretty sad about the whole situation. There is absolutely no government funded welfare system in this country. Begging and charitable NGOs are the are some of the very few avenues homeless, poor and maimed people use to subsist but this is no where near enough to support the millions (literally millions) of homeless in Mumbai alone. When we walked down the the same stretch of road a few hours later we saw the women again, and one of her other children (a girl aged about 5 or 6) followed us a whole block with her palm held upward. I eventually gave Rs 2 in coins but she still followed s holding out for more. We kept on saying "No" and "Go away" in English but she eventually desisted when we said jaaou which means "Go away!" in Hindi. First time we tried it and it worked. It doesn't make it any less disressing though. The poverty is the hardest thing to take about this city - I love everything else.
Oh... except for the intense pollution.

It's strange to see huge political billboards bearing massive photos of Bal 'The Sahib' Thackeray - a former political cartoonist and long-time leader of the Shiv Sena. Shiv Sena is a right-wing, Hindu nationalist party that was blamed for inciting much of the mob violence of Mumbai's Hindu-Muslim Riots in 1992-93. Later this politcal party used fear of further riots or bomb attacks to gain seats in the state and national parliaments. They've lost power now but are still popular and it is erie to see billboards displaying a politcal leader that openly admits to admiring both Adolf Hitler and Michael Jackson.

We had only paid for one night's accomodation at the Garden Hotel which was fortunate because it was overpriced and the guy at the desk conned an extra Rs 100 out of us when we were settling the bill. So we ended up paying Rs 3000 for a room which we originally thought would cost Rs 2750. That's only about AUS$7.50 difference but after the crap with the bellboys the night before, it got us both pretty annoyed. We both got a pretty bad vibe from the place too. Too many porters, doormen and bellboys hovering around like vultures and looking for a handout for not really doing anything. Also several reasonably dressed people hanging about outside the hotel asked us (well... me, really) for money "Mister... Sir... one dollar... two dollars". I found this behaviour completely bemusing because these weren't poor people - they were just trying it on with a 'rich' westener. I found t even funnier when I saw one of these guys going into the kitchen of the hotel's restaurant. He was probably the head chef! Anyway...
The one good thing the staff at the Garden Hotel did was to give us directions to a quiet little internet cafe which was off a main road. This place offered email, surfing, "chating", and telephone access for a quite a reasonable fee (less than a AUS$1.00 per hour).

I usd the numbers in my Rough Guide to ring around a few other hotels in the area and, after two "sorry, no vacancies" I got onto the 'Reservations Manager' at the YWCA (The name suggests otherwise but men are also allowed to stay there.) He asked me where I was and when I said Colaba he said that he had a double available for me if I could get there within 15mins. I said 'done' and hussled Maryann away from the computer where she was checking her email and out of the cafe. Maryann asked if had left my name with the Reservations Manager - of course, I hadn't. So we went back into the internet cafe and I paid Rs 6 to make another phone call. Someone picked up the phone and I said that I was enquiring about a double and he said that they were booked out. I said, "Oh but I was just talking to someone else about it and he said that one was available" I was promptly put back through to the Reservations Manager who said, "you are calling from Colaba. Come down here, I have a room for you!" I said, "Great! I'll be there, I just wanted to let you know my name was Stephens." "Fine, hurry!"
So again we rushed from the cafe and scrambled through five blocks of pavements crowded with street vendors and darted across roads lacking pedestrian crossings. Referring to the map in our guide book, we eventually found it. The building looked a bit creepy from the outside but inside it looked very clean, well-kept and recently painted and renovated. We found the Reservations Manager and I said that I had called and said that my name was Stephens. "From Colaba?" he asked.
So we got a room for the night at the Young Womens Christian Association.
We agreed on a price of $1750 ($AUS52.50) which also included buffet dinner and breakfast.
(The jerks at the Garden Hotel only gave us breakfast!).

The room is awesome. It's a corner room on the third floor and has a balcony which overlooks a sportfield, childrens' playground and many trees. I was so pleased with this result that I took several photos of the view. Tomorrow (when the Reservations Manager is back at his desk) I'm going to try to book a room for the day before we fly out (25th Feb). This place is suburb. If your ever in Mumbai, go to the YWCA. Good value for both sexes and all ages but you should try to book ahead.

Over dinner here I learned that the hotels of Mumbai don't rely on foreign tourism as 70% of their customers are from other arts of this huge country.

I heard that there were several bomb blasts in Assam, North Eastern India - don't worry - definitely no plans to go there.

Anyway my hour on this computer is up and I'm going to bed.
It's only 10:00pm here but I think that's about 2:00am sydney time so I'm a bit sleepy.

24 hours down and no problems with my digestive system yet!