Hi fans
Sarah is typing this as Mr Macleod lays low in the hotel room for as long as possible before check out time. He was a bad case of Bombay Belly. My biggest fans will be shocked - yes Luke is ill and not me!! But maybe I was Indian in a previous life, as I have long suspected.
He is here now so I will have to be serious.
We are leaving Mumbai today to fly to Cochi in Kerala. We were meant to be getting the train to Goa but there have been landslides so we cancelled plans to go to Goa and booked a flight straight to Kerala. Well, this is what a very persuasive and helpful Indian travel agent Babi told us. We don't really know anything for sure except that he thought Luke and I were a couple (as everyone in India does - Luke is thrilled to have found himself with a girlfriend/wife for 5 weeks) and he repeatedly told us he wanted us to 'See the real India, know the real India, love the real India' but this came at a price and also would have necessitated us spending all day in his taxi so we declined.
Unfortunately we weren't so successful at rejecting the advances of a nice Indian man who insisted that we were not allowed to look at Crawford Market (a market set up by the British) on our own so he kindly came with us and spices we bought at a spice stall were about the same price as Waitrose spices, so in hindsight I think we walked straight into that one. We also rewarded him handsomely for his time and also obligingly spent 2 days budget on silk and pashmina products......so we are certainly supporting the local tourism market. In fairness - they guy was in his 70s and had been in the market for most of his life, so he was quite an interesting fellow. I am also glad he didn't take us into the meat market 'I never take women there' because there was enough dead animals around anyway (just generally - there seems to be a lot of dead dogs and dead rats in Mumbai!) so I think I saw enough!
Yesterday we also went to visit Davari slums which is home to 1 million people, its where Slumdog Millionaire was filmed (by the way - I think slumdog millionaire was for Mumbai people about as popular but also as unrealistic as Harry Potter is for British people) and its Asia's largest slum. We paid what we later learned was 3 days salary for the average slum worker for the tour (each) but the company (reality tours) was an NGO and we could clearly see that they do a lot of good work in the slums so it was definitely money well spent. To describe the slum is difficult - Luke and I were both really overwhelmed. The average wage is 140 rupees a day. Luke and I are about to spent 450 rupees on a taxi ride to the airport. I just bought a bottle of coke and a bottle of water and that was 55 rupees. So you get the idea. Its 4 bottles of coke a day. The conditions they work in were hellish. It is so hot anyway and then the work they do is very tough - a lot of the industry is recycling for the big companies and so they were melting metal and plastic in tiny cramped rooms when it is 30 degrees outside. In the residential area a family of 4 or 5 live in a room the size of perhaps a smallish bathroom in the UK. They cook, clean and sleep there. The toilets are either the public toilets or just wherever they can. To get in between the houses there are alleyways which reminded me of the tunnels from the trenches which I visited at Ypres on a school trip. You had to stoop and you couldn't fit more than one person across. It was upsetting but the silver lining is that our guide (who grew up in a slum) explained that when you have nothing you appreciate what you can get for free and the two values he cited as being strong values in the slums are community and humanity. The people didn't look hungry and the children were lively and clean looking and most go to school. It wasn't like slumdog millionaire.
We did go to the Taj Palace last night for drinks, which we hope you won't judge us for.........! It did very much bring home to us the different worlds that exist side by side in India. We had some cocktails in the Harbour Bar, Mumbai's first licensed bar. It was destroyed in the 2008 attacks but the refurbishment is incredible and our waiter was telling us all about the origins of the drinks they serve and the story of the bar. We could look out to the bay and the Gate of India and I could imagine it in colonial times - it was quite amazing.
We have saved our money by buying cheap food - we can eat lunch and dinner for a few pounds and it is incredible Indian food which is, primarily, why we made this trip. Perhaps we might have to be a bit more discerning after Luke's little episode this morning! hopefully not though as we have eaten pretty much as locals do - for example on Chowpatty beach we ate with Indian families on rugs on the sand being served very attentively by the people working on the stalls - and it has been really atmospheric and exciting.
Final thoughts - Never EVER drive in Mumbai. I genuinely think they make all other bad drivers in the world (Mexico, Italy? Greece) seem like safe conscientious drivers. I have feared for my life most of the time I have been in a taxi and crossing the road is literally a case of making a mad dash for it into the face of oncoming traffic and hoping for the best.
Thats it for now - next stop Kerala!
Please send us emails/messages with your news!
xxx
Sarah is typing this as Mr Macleod lays low in the hotel room for as long as possible before check out time. He was a bad case of Bombay Belly. My biggest fans will be shocked - yes Luke is ill and not me!! But maybe I was Indian in a previous life, as I have long suspected.
He is here now so I will have to be serious.
We are leaving Mumbai today to fly to Cochi in Kerala. We were meant to be getting the train to Goa but there have been landslides so we cancelled plans to go to Goa and booked a flight straight to Kerala. Well, this is what a very persuasive and helpful Indian travel agent Babi told us. We don't really know anything for sure except that he thought Luke and I were a couple (as everyone in India does - Luke is thrilled to have found himself with a girlfriend/wife for 5 weeks) and he repeatedly told us he wanted us to 'See the real India, know the real India, love the real India' but this came at a price and also would have necessitated us spending all day in his taxi so we declined.
Unfortunately we weren't so successful at rejecting the advances of a nice Indian man who insisted that we were not allowed to look at Crawford Market (a market set up by the British) on our own so he kindly came with us and spices we bought at a spice stall were about the same price as Waitrose spices, so in hindsight I think we walked straight into that one. We also rewarded him handsomely for his time and also obligingly spent 2 days budget on silk and pashmina products......so we are certainly supporting the local tourism market. In fairness - they guy was in his 70s and had been in the market for most of his life, so he was quite an interesting fellow. I am also glad he didn't take us into the meat market 'I never take women there' because there was enough dead animals around anyway (just generally - there seems to be a lot of dead dogs and dead rats in Mumbai!) so I think I saw enough!
Yesterday we also went to visit Davari slums which is home to 1 million people, its where Slumdog Millionaire was filmed (by the way - I think slumdog millionaire was for Mumbai people about as popular but also as unrealistic as Harry Potter is for British people) and its Asia's largest slum. We paid what we later learned was 3 days salary for the average slum worker for the tour (each) but the company (reality tours) was an NGO and we could clearly see that they do a lot of good work in the slums so it was definitely money well spent. To describe the slum is difficult - Luke and I were both really overwhelmed. The average wage is 140 rupees a day. Luke and I are about to spent 450 rupees on a taxi ride to the airport. I just bought a bottle of coke and a bottle of water and that was 55 rupees. So you get the idea. Its 4 bottles of coke a day. The conditions they work in were hellish. It is so hot anyway and then the work they do is very tough - a lot of the industry is recycling for the big companies and so they were melting metal and plastic in tiny cramped rooms when it is 30 degrees outside. In the residential area a family of 4 or 5 live in a room the size of perhaps a smallish bathroom in the UK. They cook, clean and sleep there. The toilets are either the public toilets or just wherever they can. To get in between the houses there are alleyways which reminded me of the tunnels from the trenches which I visited at Ypres on a school trip. You had to stoop and you couldn't fit more than one person across. It was upsetting but the silver lining is that our guide (who grew up in a slum) explained that when you have nothing you appreciate what you can get for free and the two values he cited as being strong values in the slums are community and humanity. The people didn't look hungry and the children were lively and clean looking and most go to school. It wasn't like slumdog millionaire.
We did go to the Taj Palace last night for drinks, which we hope you won't judge us for.........! It did very much bring home to us the different worlds that exist side by side in India. We had some cocktails in the Harbour Bar, Mumbai's first licensed bar. It was destroyed in the 2008 attacks but the refurbishment is incredible and our waiter was telling us all about the origins of the drinks they serve and the story of the bar. We could look out to the bay and the Gate of India and I could imagine it in colonial times - it was quite amazing.
We have saved our money by buying cheap food - we can eat lunch and dinner for a few pounds and it is incredible Indian food which is, primarily, why we made this trip. Perhaps we might have to be a bit more discerning after Luke's little episode this morning! hopefully not though as we have eaten pretty much as locals do - for example on Chowpatty beach we ate with Indian families on rugs on the sand being served very attentively by the people working on the stalls - and it has been really atmospheric and exciting.
Final thoughts - Never EVER drive in Mumbai. I genuinely think they make all other bad drivers in the world (Mexico, Italy? Greece) seem like safe conscientious drivers. I have feared for my life most of the time I have been in a taxi and crossing the road is literally a case of making a mad dash for it into the face of oncoming traffic and hoping for the best.
Thats it for now - next stop Kerala!
Please send us emails/messages with your news!
xxx
HELLO!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is a "witty comment".
First off: If my flight is cancelled, what rights do I have, and what should I demand? I have always wondered this.
Secondly, I think that the bottle of water you bought was very cheap. In Sweden we have to pay around £5 for our water. Very expensive.
Thirdly, the slum visit sounds really interesting. I was walking around Kibera (one of Africa's largest slums) while in Kenya, and I have been in a slum in northern Mozambique as well. I don't know, but I guess that slums are quite similar around the world. It is strange walking around in a place like that, but what always gets me is the general friendlyness of people. Also, I don't know if you saw this, but the informal networks and service provisions are fascinating; a slum is basically a major failure of government provision of public goods, as well as a cause of extreme poverty, and such informal networks by different groups (indigenous; ethnic or religious) are pretty cool to observe. In Kenya they are often violent, which is sad, but did you see any of this?
London is nice, I am working a bit at the cafe this week and then I am off to Sweden for almost two weeks. I'm back on the 15th, no fear. I miss you both very much. Take care of yourself!
Love,
Henning