I have spent a week in India on business earlier this month. It was my first visit to that country and boy, what an experience that was..I’ll start by writing about my first impressions of Mumbai.
We arrived in the wee hours of Sunday and headed towards our hotel – the Intercontinental, in Andheri East – which is very close to the airport after waiting for a long time until our bags turned up in the baggage reclaim. I remember leaving the air-conditioned airport and into the Mumbai night, feeling the humidity, the heat and the smell in the air, thick with a mixture of sweat, food and pollution. It was so loud and chaotic there, hundreds of taxi drivers waiting for people or trying to get business.
We were picked up and dropped off at the hotel. As I was waiting to check-in, I got a bit upset with the hotel staff for not making it any easier for us, as we were so tired after a long trip. After a long wait and lots of questions – “What is your ‘good name’, ma’am?” – we finally managed to get a room.
After sleeping for a couple of hours, we decided to go out and have a look at the city since that was the only day we could do anything touristy. I have always wanted to visit India but have read/heard a lot of conflicting stories about the place, so I decided to just not expect anything and have an open mind to the new experiences.
We took an air-conditioned taxi and headed towards the city centre, which is about 20km from the hotel. For a start, the driver decided to charge us 500 rupees (when the normal price would be Rs 300) for the ride. He then tried hard to get us into a souvenir shop with the promise of a discount in the fare – later Mark tells me this is an old trick – and we insist to just carry on.
We asked the driver to pull off at Churchgate, so we could have a look at “VT” – Victoria Terminus station, now known as the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus – a huge gothic train station built during the days of the British Raj and where the last scenes of “Slumdog Millionaire” were filmed.
After that, we continued walking under the brain-melting sun and visited the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Gateway to India, the monument built for the occasion of the George V’s visit to India – and often recalled as the place where James Bond entered Mumbai in “Octopussy”.
A lot of people loitered around that area and looked down at the sea, so I got closer to the barrier to see what was so entertaining. A bunch of guys were swimming in the water full of debris and pushing their friends in and having great fun. It was fun to watch that too, but I am not sure if I would be able to jump in there myself.
We continue walking around and I’m told the area around the Taj is one of the smartest in town. I stop for a minute to have a look at a clothes shop, which had some beautiful, unique satin clothes, with exorbitant price tags. My buying power is bigger in India then in any other country I have ever visited, but that shop was totally out of my league.
It was so hot and I really needed a cold drink. We stopped at the Leopold Café, which was attacked by terrorists last November, as well as the Taj Mahal and VT. The window nearest to our table still had a bullethole.
We then visited the markets of Colaba, where I saw dead rats on the street, women sitting on the pavement, peeling prawns and fish to sell and surrounded by hundreds of flies, people eating their lunchtime thalis with their hands on the street and a lot of dilapidated buildings.
After a taxi ride to Bandra (and getting ripped off again), we got off at Juhu beach, which was my first hardcore Indian experience. The place is full of food stalls and people selling all sorts of things, as well as the beachgoers themselves – there is no beachwear to be seen here, everyone bathes fully clothed.
I got my camera out to take a quick picture and in the next minute, I was surrounded by kids begging for money. My chest tightened when I saw that little girl, four years old at the most, carrying her baby brother clumsily in the arms, the little boy with his monkey hoping to get some cash …they were so dirty and so extremely poor…but how could I help at that moment? Giving money is certainly not an option. Getting food for them, maybe? I was overwhelmed though, and couldn’t do anything, sadly.
We then walked away from the beach and started looking for the first place we could get some food. I really didn’t want to eat something out of one of the stalls as I had a long working week ahead and didn’t want to take any chances. So we went into the Marriott hotel and ordered some curry.
It is funny how dishes such as chicken tikka masala and vindaloo curry are not part of the typical Indian menu. Instead, what you normally see is what is served in the UK as side dishes, like saag panir (curry with spinach) and saag paneer (curry with cheese).
After that we tried to walk around a bit around the Juhu area – where apparently a lot of the rich and famous also live – but after a while dodging the crazy traffic, cows, dogs and people, we decided to get back to the hotel in an autorickshaw, which was by no means less adventurous.
I fell asleep second after I got to the hotel room, my head buzzing with all the new sounds, smells, tastes and sights of this crazy place. Still a week to go, I was looking forward to it.
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