Mumbai

I've decided what the secret of successful travel is: Reconnaissance. 

If you've booked a hostel or a flight at a particular airport what's wrong with knowing how to get there or having a rough idea of what to expect?
I used to have a romantic counter view that traveling is only traveling when you rock up in some archaic form on transport to a place you've never been and never seen, not knowing what to expect and really where it is in fact that you are going and then somehow making it all happen.

I've learned from my mistakes.

That time when I got of at the wrong bus stop in Oslo and wandered in completely the wrong direction making Linn come out and somehow find me after about a dozen awkward phone conversations and mispronounced street names.

The time where I only lined up one place to stay on a trip to Scotland and came home after four days.

The time where I tried to travel through central Europe with only a small smartphone for internet access...

By learning from such countless travelers mishaps, I've learned the importance of having some basic information on hand when you arrive somewhere new; how to get local currency, where the transport leaves from, the location of where you're going and for that matter the place you are going even has a place for you. A map pre-loaded onto a smartphone helps too!

I arrived in Mumbai early last Thursday morning, Google helped me find a place to stay and had revealed the location of the pre-paid taxi area and the location of the hostel. A little yellow star marked it's location on my phone, a little blue arrow my location and heading. I knew I could use my credit card to buy some rupees as spending money and for the taxi from the money exchange counters on the right and side as you leave the international terminal. On the taxi ride just after dawn I saw the morning vegetable markets in the roads, women carrying huge bundles of coriander and parsley on their heads and my first experience of the chaotic Mumbai traffic. When the driver got lost and began asking random people on street corners the whereabouts of my hostel I was able to direct him exactly to the location in under 5 minutes. A little research pays off, take note future travelers.

Still, India is a shock: Parrots squawk ask they dart between the bright green boughs overhead, new and strange foliage is everywhere, bright and verdant. The air is so thick even in the morning that you have no chance of seeing the sun rise. A stench is omnipresent, worse in some streets than in others, brown sacking containing indescribable filth lays discarded on the pavement, thread-like maggots writhe in the odoriferous fluid seeping into the street staining it black. An old woman lays, apparently dead, in the gutter, cracked and filthy soles exposed to the sun. Cigarette stand owners burn big cones of incense, increasing the morning haze and driving off the smell. Men and women brush down the pavements with large bundles of fine twigs. Old and new buildings look half abandoned, seemingly unpainted, battered and worn by the heat and moisture of the passing years. 

South Mumbai veiws

South Mumbai is an interesting place, formed from seven islands linked originally by causeways on order of the British governor it now lies at the southern end of a largely reclaimed (from the sea) peninsula. 'Fort' where I stayed for the first few days is where the old fortifications stood, an Indian naval base still occupies the east side of the area. There are surrealistic and beautiful colonial era buildings everywhere giving the place a similar museum feel to central London. Surreal to me as they simultaneously seem so familiar in all their gothic revival victoriana but as if they were built in a parallel universe where the buildings are decorated in Persian imagery (Persian winged bulls-everywhere) crazily overfilled buses and guys walking around barefoot in the 25 degree winter are normal.
Like central London once you have seen the sights it's OK to move on and see where the real life is, so I took a walking tour. I suppose that's the travelling equivalent of gritting your teeth and getting it all over with. However, my Swedish roommate and I thoroughly enjoyed  the 3 hour and something tour and the guide was very open and willing to talk about anything we asked, in fact having to stop the conversation to show us the buildings and to do the 'tour bit'.

Flora Fountain to the left.

The statue dedicated to the martyrs of the struggle for independence.

The Gateway of India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_of_India

The Taj Mahal hotel

Marine drive or 'the queens necklace'

Hostel bed-head

Crazy for cricket

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, formerly know as Victoria Terminus

People

Ladies only car sen through the grille of my train window

There are many things I admire about Mumbai, such as the way in which it all somehow works with twice the number of people it was designed for. There are many things that make me quite sad like the little children who are trained to walk the tightrope as a street attraction to raise money for their wranglers when they should be learning to read or are taken out late at night to beg for money when they should be asleep. Everywhere you look there is poverty and destitution. People just surviving, not living. The need for women only cars in the trains betrays a general acceptance of the inevitability of sexual harassment and assault in mixed sex carriages. The problem is that trains only have two women's cars, so they are often more overcrowded than the standard cars. On the other hand there is wealth and privilege too, you just have to look into the family feuds over how expensive the house they've built is or how much they spent on a birthday present for their wives. 

Of all the things I've seen and heard it is this vast gap between the rich and the poor that is the most troubling.

On my third day I took a boat to Elephanta Island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephanta_Island where there are caves with spectacular carvings and some rather naughty monkeys.

A Shiva Lingam in one of the caves, still being used today

A huge carving of Shiva with three faces, the creator, preserver and destroyer...

The naughty monkeys were everywhere, one was amusingly trying to steal food from a dog while others were drinking from water bottles that they had pinched from the tourists!

Due to the railway network being rather busy I'm in Mumbai and the surrounding area until Saturday which gives me more of a chance to explore other areas and learn more about life here, but for now, that's your lot.