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.
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We All Had Water View Rooms
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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.
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Cricket On The Common
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Of Course the British Wouldn't Allow Honking
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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.
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Vendor Helping Me Clean the Bird Shit (and Smiling)
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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.
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Gateway to India
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Members of the Dairy Association in town for Conference
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The Taj
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We enjoyed tea in the Taj lounge
and continued our walk.
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Pinkies Up
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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.
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Lunch at the Leopold
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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.
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I think those arms spell a Sixty-One
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