Mumbai Morning
I arrived in Mumbai the day before the first rains were forecast for the 2023 monsoon. It was close to midnight when we emerged from the plane to a series of queues. I had applied online for the visa and had a paper copy with me so there was minimal delay after I found my guitars, which had ended up in a different category of luggage, amongst the over-sized items. I managed to load them onto my trolley with the two suitcases and started wandering around looking for a place to have a smoke. There was nowhere.
The airport was all new, nothing like the one at which I had arrived in India in 1979 on my first trip. In those days some people didn’t make it past the airport. I knew of one Australian who had seen the state of things there and taken the next plane out. The latrine was overflowing on my first visit, and it was a short walk out of the terminal to find a filthy beggar who pushed a stump of an arm into me as he pleaded for alms. This new Mumbai airport could have been in any major city in the world. Clean as a whistle, modern, efficient, and, for me, disappointingly so. The old character was gone. The chai wallahs had disappeared, as well as the beggars and clambering taxi drivers. The toilets worker, though.
There were thousands of people pushing and shoving to get somewhere and I found there was one lift I had to take which it seemed several thousand others also had to take urgently and I couldn’t see any way I would be able to get into that lift with all my stuff, heavy and cumbersome, so I set off looking for another way and found a car park.
I lost my way there and ended up backtracking to that same lift which was indeed the only way out but the crowd was a fraction thinner than before and what choice did I have? I joined the disorderly queue and managed to manoeuvre myself and my luggage inside, eventually, and up to the floor from which a taxi could be hired.
There I found a small office with several windows and a helpful lady who gave me a ticket and mumbled something unintelligible while waving towards a car park dotted with cars and cabs. The ticket told me exactly where my car would be, but it wasn’t there. Looking round I located a likely prospect and found out that it was indeed my cab. The suitcases, unfortunately, had to go on the roof as the tiny car had only room inside for two guitars and two humans.
The driver, who spoke no English, was rough and dirty, emitting an odour that almost overwhelmed me in the stinking hot and sweaty pre-monsoonal sauna in the tiny cabin with the usual ornaments celebrating Siva and other gods and we drove through heavy midnight traffic in search of a hotel whose address was a little vague. There was much ado before we finally located the correct place where I was informed that the room was already taken for the night as I had failed to confirm my booking, which was true as I had been unable to send money to India from Vietnam with my limited knowledge of international finance and India’s heavy reliance on its own home-made digital solutions.
Suddenly, in the moment of need, my scant Hindi returned to me and I was able to communicate with the driver, who was unsympathetic to my plight, but nevertheless knew of a hotel to which he took me after another twenty minute battle with the traffic. I felt a little lost looking out at the skyscrapers, freeways and modern vehicles but I didn’t expect much of Mumbai. I had always found it expensive, dangerous and overwhelmed by multitudes of poor people. I had no idea what they all did and why they stayed in that wholly unnatural environment but there they were, all twenty million of them.
That hotel was expensive but it had three stars and good amenities, a view, inside smoking and room service. I got some good photos through the window from which I could see a slightly dilapidated Mosque, some improvised houses topped with soft plastic which was held down by bricks, sticks and old tyres and a busy main road teeming with rickshaws, trucks and brave pedestrians. There was a shopping centre further up and some gardens acroos the road.
In the morning the sun was spectacular, rising as a large red orb in the haze, above a building with a large sign high up with ‘Satellite Glory’ written on it, for some reason. The online maps showed all these wonderful looking places around me, but it didn’t look like that from the ground. It looked like Mumbai had always looked, dusty, crowded and impenetrable. I didn’t bother exploring too much, I wouldn’t be there long.
I set about booking a ticket to Pune early the next morning but there were obstacles. I downloaded the official Indian Railways app, and a couple of others, but they didn’t accept my credit card, despite it being from the largest, most respectable bank in Australia. I realised, as one often does in India, that this wasn’t going to be a simple process. I needed coffee and food and I wanted to get out on the nearby streets and get a feel for the place.
Downstairs I met a genuinely kind and generous rickshaw driver who offered to show me around. Krisna was a real gentleman and spoke English surprisingly well. He exuded honesty and good humour and I trusted him immediately.
Travels to Nepal 