Mumbai
Jetlag is definitely setting in today. I just got a little taste of sleep on the bus back to the hotel, and I think I could sleep for the next twelve hours. Being twelve hours ahead (actually eleven and a half) and not having slept are probably enough, but I twice accepted the Royal Challenge (a local beer) at lunch and that may have pushed me over the edge.
I woke up early this morning (one positive symptom of the jetlag is getting up early and ready to go, rather than dragging myself out of bed), and the first thing I did was look out the window. I expected to see some city streets, but instead I saw the dark gray concrete of a building in progress surrounded by a dense jungle of mostly palm trees. I went outside to look at the pool and got my first interesting smell of India. The air immediately outside the hotel has some kind of funny smell to it. It’s not like anything I’m familiar with, but it’s pretty unpleasant.
Our trip through the city of Mumbai was very eventful, even though we had to scrap our trip to the temple. We saw a nice museum, the Gate of India, and the Taj Hotel, and we had a very nice buffet lunch at a downtown restaurant. Most importantly, we got to know some of Mumbai’s most desperate peddlers and beggars. Plenty of towns have a lot of people walking the streets, but he poor of Mumbai seem more willing to touch you, tug on your clothes, follow you around, and engage you in a one-sided conversation in order to get your money. When Jenny walked out of the museum grounds carrying a coffee drink she’d bought, a little girl followed her around for two or three blocks, usually keeping her index finger within a couple inches of Jenny’s cup. Jenny tried to lose her by weaving through the rest of us, but the girl wouldn’t go away until we walked across a major intersection. For my part, I was hassled by a woman and child who had a fairly elaborate story and were looking for a handout. At the gate, a bunch of people got attention from local drug pushers. Anyone who stayed there long enough was asked at least once if he wanted to buy some drugs. Apparently enough Westerners come by to make this a pretty lucrative practice. As for me, the Mumbaians have accurately read me as more of a giant balloon guy. In downtown Mumbai they sell these giant (about three feet long) light bulb-shaped orange balloons, and the men who sell these seemingly worthless things are very proud of their products. A man walked with me for a block or two touting the many advantages of his particular balloon, and he even banged it against a car to show off its durability. When Chris Shiflett walked by a drum vendor, the vendor said simply, “Big men buy drums.”
On the bus ride through town we saw probably around 30 pick-up games of cricket, plus a few organized games. It’s amazing the lengths they’ll go to to play—one large field had maybe ten games going on simultaneously, and I saw one game taking place in a 10 foot by 20 foot area.
If I die here, it won’t be from the crime (there really isn’t that much), and it won’t be from disease. It’ll be because I looked to the left when I was crossing the street. I’ve already made this mistake twice—once to no avail, and the other time (when I was dodging the beggar woman) I almost got run over by a horse.
Today’s food of the day was the chicken we had at the Chinese restaurant where Kiran took us. Kiran’s family has a favorite Chinese restaurant, and they would just fill your plate up with all kinds of things. In fact, we thought the meal was finished only to find out that we had finished only the appetizers. One of the appetizers was a very spicy chicken dish that had all of us begging for water. It was at least as spicy as anything I’ve had in the United States. The funny thing was that Kiran told us that if we wanted something really spicy we should try all these sauces that were on the table, and they were nothing.
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