Mumbai - The Gateway to India

Mumbai as a city holds a population larger than Australia’s total with a geographic size equivalent to Melbourne. This is hard to put into perspective, like imagining just how much money a billion dollars is, how many stars are in the sky, or how many trees are in a forrest. As a more accurate analogy, thinking about how many people there are in Mumbai is like how many grans of sand are on the beach. The only way to really understand is to roll around in the sand, feel it covering your body, getting between your toes, in your undies, your mouth, your hair… just everywhere you do and don’t want it to be.

Mumbai is the Sydney of India, boasting a few really amazing Victorian features but operating largely as the financial hub of Western India.

As a money machine, little effort is put into Mumbai’s appearance and one of the most striking themes of the city is the lack of painted buildings. Almost all the structures, whether high or low rise are simply hunks of concrete slammed together and stained black by monsoonal rains. The buildings that have been constructed under international direction stick out randomly across the city, not like Western cities where the CBD is a concentrated mass, but a sprawl, where a couple of unbranded high rises will pop up every 400 meters. It’s also obvious where the wealth in Mumbai live as their mansions jut out of the city with the best view of the expansive surrounding slums.

After landing face first into the disorganised chaos of every rickshaw, taxi and motor bike and person crowding the streets, we made it to our hotel. The “hotel” can be compared to a meal at McDonalds – the pictures made it look a far sight better than it actually was. A few blokes scrambled out of our room as we arrived, with the TV still showing the local soccer match. After a liberal application of aerosol, our room was ready. Needless to say, our two nights of accommodation were cut short as we headed closer to the city.

The city itself is a symphony of rickshaw, taxi, bus and truck horns all competing for attention. To the unaware tourist, this can result in a change of underwear if you’ve recently got out of bed and don’t notice the taxi approaching from behind when they blow their 100db horn in your ear. This is accompanied by the wafting aromas of poo holes, wee spots and rubbish piles, all covered by the thick, addictive flavour of incense. In saying all of this, the city isn’t as dirty as it first appears. While there are piles of rubbish gathered on the street, every shop keeper is vigilant in sweeping their littler area, and the main arterial walk ways are kept rubbish free and primed for walking.

As an introduction to India, Mumbai was both a challenge and a crash course in scam evasion. The first couple of scams we ran into were; being extras in a Bollywood movie for a generous payment of 500 rupees each (about $10 in total) for 9 hours of work, offered by a shady looking dude who approached us in a stairwell.

The next was the Mother who needs milk for her baby, and goes back to the store to collect a cut of the milk purchase later on. Another was a guy who leads with “excuse me sir, you have something on your face” and then proceeds to stick a little metal rod in your ear pretending to clean out tiny maggot like bugs at a generous rate. There were plenty more, but it’s more of a cultural approach to handling white people. And as a victim, it instills a need to question everything – which can also be used against you. As I said, Mumbai is a challenge and we were a bit relieved to make an exit.

However, the last part to this story is Albert and our trusty travel agent who spent 10 years living in Australia (can’t remember his name… he always says it too quickly).

Now, our friend Albert. He’s the embodiment of Mumbai if there ever was one. Standing at about 5’5 he’s a verbal machine. For the remainder of our time in Mumbai, Albert was our escort. Seemingly at first he was just after a commission from the places he took us to buy stuff, but later it almost seemed like he had a vested interest in his Australian “brother” and “sister”. After approaching us on the street, he quickly sussed out our travel plans and lead us to a travel agent to get the best deal on our trip. This whole motion was pretty questionable, but the travel agent was very fluent in English and reassured us with his knowledge of the country and understanding of our travel plans. He drew up a quick itinerary of Northern India that touched on all the Lonely Planet hot spots. Anyway, we were impressed and locked in our next month and a half of travel arrangements, hotels, drivers and everything required for soaking up the Indian culture. As for Albert, we’re still wondering whether we’ve made a life long friend or were just another couple of inexperienced travels who have fallen into his web… and Caroline will never forgive him for not taking us to Chowpatty beach.

As our final hurrah in Mumbai we made a trip across to Elephant Island, which was pretty cool but flooded with tourists, monkeys, street dawgs and smelly cows.

After viewing the island caves, lined with intricate carvings of Indian deities we headed back to Mumbai and jumped on our sleeper bus to head North. Surprisingly, we met some pretty rad dudes on the bus who took care of us (being the vulnerable whities we are).