A Day in Mumbai

Mumbai is a much different city than we had encountered previously.  We walked out of the airport at 9:30 at night, into a wall of hot, thick, humid air.  We made contact with our driver and made the 45-minute drive to our hotel in the old British colonial part of the city.  We dropped our bags in our rooms, walked the sea wall and enjoyed a pizza and beer by the water.  As we relaxed it hit us that here we were looking out at the Arabian Sea.  There was something magical about the whole experience.

We All Had Water View Rooms

 Our two nights and a day barely scratched the surface of this historic city.  It is one of the most populous regions in the world with the city itself numbering 20 million plus.  It is also India economic capital and is the wealthiest in all of India.  We chose to stay in the colonial area and much of the architecture could have been pulled from urban 19-century England.  It is easy to imagine what it was like before the British left in 1947 as we strolled by the parks, garden and cricket matches.

Cricket On The Common

Of Course the British Wouldn't Allow Honking

Our day in Mumbai started on a somber note as we received word from back home that a friend passed away suddenly just weeks past his fiftieth birthday.  Such events remind us about the tenuous nature of life and how we need to take our opportunities as they come.

Kal and Doreen were our guides for the morning as we embarked on a walking tour of the Colonial District with map in hand.  First stop was a street vendor and a purchase.  Stan and Doreen negotiated a fair price and the vendor began to wrap the items.  As he began to wrap there was a distraction.  In a previous post I mentioned the large number of birds in India and that fact came back to haunt me.  As I stood observing the purchase not one but three bird bombs from above hit me.  I jump aside when hit by the first one on the shoulder, only to be hit by another on the head and finally, took a last hit in the chest.  Stan and Doreen told me it means good luck to be shit on but I think they were just pleased it wasn’t them.  It turned out that the final hit was not on me.  As the group was distracted, the vendor dummy wrapped one of the purchased items and substituted something he probably couldn’t sell.  We never new until we were back at the hotel.

Vendor Helping Me Clean the Bird Shit (and Smiling)

Further along the walk a man selling balloons approached us.  He held an inflated balloon two-thirds the size of a man.  Stan, Jinder and Deborah all bought a package after a full negotiation.  He played hardball but the savvy travelers wore him down.  The purchase was made and off we went.  We then met a man who appeared to be selling the same balloons, complete with the two-thirds human size inflated sample, except the balloon in the package were four times the size of the ones we purchased.  Six intelligent travelers had been had.  We saw the big balloon and bought a package of small ones.  Jinder ran back to the original location but he was gone.  I am sure he was smiling at the hard bargaining tourists.

Purchasing over we turned to touring.  The streets are full of grand buildings and the Gateway To India stands at the waters edge.  Adjacent to the gate is the Taj Hotel.  This is the most famous hotel in India and has hosted heads of state and entertainment stars from around the world.  It is also the hotel, along with our own Trident Hotel, Pakistani terrorists targeted back in 2008 that resulted in deaths and fire to the Taj.  The sole-attacking Pakistani-state survivor was tried and executed last November.  Tensions still run high between the two countries and just yesterday, the international Cricket Test matches between the two countries were cancelled.

Gateway to India

Members of the Dairy Association in town for Conference

The Taj

We enjoyed tea in the Taj lounge and continued our walk.

Pinkies Up

After much shopping and standing around we arrived at the famous Leopold Café.  The Leopold appears in many movies centered in Bombay/Mumbai and is referenced in many fictional stories written in India.  It too was a target of the Pakistani terrorists and still has bullet holes to prove it.  Great food and well worth the visit.

Lunch at the Leopold

Our one-day in Mumbai ended with a dinner in celebration of my birthday.  Bollywood was our first choice until we found out is was a two to three-hour drive and that was not even in the outskirts of the city.  We also discovered you cannot dine with open toed shoes in many Mumbai restaurants.  At the end of the day we finally found a place in our neighborhood and I enjoyed my first Bombay Gin and Tonic, courtesy of Stan.

I think those arms spell a Sixty-One