Mumbai

After 20 hours of travel we arrived in Mumbai to find out that Air France has lost my baggage!  But, at least Peter's backpack arrived...so for the first two days I have been wearing his clothes patiently awaitng the return of my backpack.  But, it has been 3 days and the airline STILL does not know where  it is.  For all I know it may still be at O'hare.  I am trying to be understanding though, because it is very easy to misplace a big yellow backpack!  On the bright side, I had an excuse to break our budget and buy some Indian clothing.  Tonight I will try to learn how to wear a sari. 

So we arrived in Mumbai at midnight, spent another hour or so haggling with Air France and then were off to our hotel by prepaid taxi.  The city was quiet, full of strange odors, the streets were winding, confusing and literally everywhere there were people sleeping on the streets...women, men, children, and dogs.  The poverty is overwhelming. 

Me with huge Mumbai tree wearing a Salwar Kameez.

Our delicious vegetarian meal.

Peter buying a delicious drink extracted from sugar cane.

For the last three days, we have been walking around the city in a jet-lagged daze.  The 12 hour time difference is brutal and the city is a lot to handle.  There are so many people and the cars loosely adhere to lane markings and traffic signals.  Cars, people, and motorcycles push ahead filling every free space on the road.  So, crossing the street can be quite a challenge.  We even saw a guy riding bareback on a horse in the middle of traffic!  We have visited Fort, Colaba, and Churchgate, the main downtown areas.  We visited Crawford market where you could buy pretty much anything from fruit to pets.  We even took a taxi to Juhu Beach, which is where all the Bollywood people live.  We also drove through Bandra, another well to do suburb.  Even in these rich areas, slums and beggars were abundant.

Mumbai is so overwhelming to the senses.  There is one particular strange smell which we have not identified...kind of smells like burning grass and pops up every once in a while.  There is also, of course, the smell of urine and poop and animals.  The city is very loud.  Cars are constantly honking, mostly as a warning to people crossing the streets, but sometimes it seems like they are just honking for the heck of it.  And there is so much to see...people, buildings, shops, animals...people are constantly trying to sell us things.  The food is spicy and delicious!  And everything comes at you at once.  There is so much to take in and it is quite a challenge when you are tired.  Also, we stick out like sore thumbs.  There seem to be very few tourists.  The only ones we have seen were at our hotel and at one cafe which apparently is the gathering place for all tourists!  They all fit into one cafe! 

The one other thing that we have done in the last two days is buy an Indian cell phone!  It was quite a challenge.  In order to buy a cell phone you need copies of your passport as well as a passport size photograph.  Thankfully, I had brought some passport size photographs because I don't know what hoops we would need to jump through to get one of those.  Then you have to get a sim card...which is sold in a different place than the cell phone.  Oh, and in order to purchase wi-fi access, you need a cell phone!  After running around to different shops trying to figure all this out, we got help from some guy at our hotel.  So, I think we got a bit ripped off because I am sure he got a kickback from the cell phone shop!

Street Snack.

Street food preparation.

Tomorrow we leave for Goa.  The word is that it is a very quiet beach ares.  We will rest here for a few days and hopefully kick the jet lag.  Mumbai has been a challenging, sad, and yet a wonderful experience.