Mumbai - Day 3

Not much to report today. We stayed at home to watch the torrential rain instead. There's nothing like watching 20cm of rain come down in one morning. Even the thunderstorms are different here... one minute the sun is obscured by dark brown smog, and then the smog seems to get darker as the clouds come in over the top. By comparison, Canberra thunderstorms are tiny - here you actually seem to be in the middle of them because we are surrounded by new constructions that have, guess what? thousands of rods of reinforcing steel pointing up to act as lightening conductors. I'm sure a few workers got blown off the building sites. But who cares - plenty more workers available - and apparently they only cost $3 day.



The buildings here are designed for rain. You step down about 8 inches into the balconies - although they have drains in them, they look like they are designed to hold about 1 thousand litres of rain water before there's any risk of the water coming into the apartment.

Because we didn't go out today the cleaner had to work around us. There's nothing like putting your feet up and watching a woman work. And especially one that can't talk English or nag. The cleaner comes in every day for two hours. A young lad comes in to scrub the bathrooms. The girl sweeps the marble floors then washes them, wipes over all the furniture, puts the washing on, hangs it out to dry, mops the balcony floors, wipes over all the balcony fences, etc.... its lovely to watch a woman work so diligently (without complaining).

Some kind of festival period finished today, so we have been subjected to the Indian equivalent of Kylie Minogue being played through loudspeakers all day. It was ok for the first hour or so, but the enjoyment soon wanes. Especially when you have a 5am start because of the Muslim call-to-prayer that starts around then, followed by somebody in Canberra calling my mobile at 10:30am your time forgetting that its 5am here.

Now that the festival is finished I expect that our driver will put some shoes on. My brother said on the first night not to comment about his bare feet - apparently he is fasting and can't wear shoes until it finishes. Different customs for different places.

Reminiscing about the roadside accommodation we saw yesterday, it was interesting to see that most people were spotlessly dressed with razor-crisp creases in their clothes. My brother says that they are extremely clean regardless of their situation. Their houses/shacks will be immaculate, however they have no problem with throwing their rubbish onto common property. Its a different spin on "not in my backyard".

In the next day or so, we hope to visit of the busiest slums in the world. Apparently there are 200,000 people per square mile.  I just can't imagine how tightly the people must be packed together, remembering that this doesn't include high-rise buildings - everyone lives at ground level.

Because travelling here is so difficult (it could take 4 hours just to get to the other side of Mumbai), it looks like we aren't going to be able to tour like we expected. However in hindsight maybe that's a good thing - what we are seeing it the real India - warts and all. Looking at the guidebooks there are actually very few tourist trips or places to go to - and you can see why when travelling is so difficult. Who could compare visiting some ancient temple with visiting the world's largest slum!


The pictures I've included today are scenes from our apartment. There is a playground and park direcly in front and the building site out back. The playground could be anywhere in the world if you ignore the fact that the women are all wearing saris.


Out the back, it was good to see husband and wife construction teams making the concrete. Bringing the kids along also saves on the childcare.


I'm not sure if I mentioned it already, but our apartment block is in a group of 8 12-storey apartments arranged in an oval surrounded by a 12 foot security fence with big metal spikes on the top. There's a guard in the foyer of each building as well as a couple on the gates to the compound. There are guards stationed on each corner of the complex as well so that they can monitor the service entrances there. There are also guards that patrol the various walkways - these guys carry big sticks that I think they use to beat any children that walk on the grassed areas. You certainly can't complain about the security. One of the roles of the foyer security guards is to search the cleaners so that they can't steal anything.

Anyway, I think that that's enough of my ramblings today.

Mumbai - Day 2

Hi all,

Another memorable day in India.

Did I mention that it's hot and humid?   Well it is.  Forget my previous comparison to the Gold Coast - at least it cools down there occasionally - here it seems unrelenting.  It was a real shock to open up the balcony doors at 6:30am and get a blast of hot, humid air.  Subconciously I'd been expecting to open the door and get a lung full of crisp, cool, morning air.

Last night we went on our first shopping trip to a supermarket.  My brother said that it was "just around the corner" vaguely waving in one direction.  I was expecting to walk, but outside was the chauffeur with the car.  In Mumbai terms, "just around the corner" means half an hour of continuous just-misses and much blowing of horns.  We were warned not to sit too close to the side windows - apparently the potholes can cause to to smash your head against the glass.

Our driver, with incredible patience and bravery, would take any risk to avoid the big potholes and give us a comfortable ride.  Even though this meant crossing the road into the oncoming traffic.  I think that Hummers would sell well here.

When we got to the supermarket, we had to climb over the piles of building rubbish to get to the front door.  We didn't realise that we were in the up-market part of Mumbai because the piles were so small.  We only realised this today - but more about this later.  In the supermarket, the fresh vegetables look like the stuff that we would throw out.  It appears that this is just because they don't use fertiliser or pesticides.  So the fruit and vegetables are often small and discoloured.  The best carrots were about 4 inches long.  Everthing however was fresh and still tasted OK.  Another disturbing thing was the people standing in each aisle trying to sell you things.  It seems that in India, labour is cheaper than colourful retail displays.  Imagine rows of smiling people suggesting that you would like this brand of chocolate or this brand of soap powder as you walked around the store.  When we wanted some frozen chicken, there was a man standing at the freezer just to get it out for you (probably so you couldn't stand there with the door open and enjoy the cold for a minute).  

Then back in the car (and airconditioning) for the 100 metre trip to the bread shop where you buy toasting bread 1 inch thick in packets of 8 slices.  Apparently Indians don't eat bread in the shape that us Westerners do, so it's a "specialty" item.

I have now finally got the hang of the water here.  There are 3 types:

• tap water (drink for CERTAIN DEATH)
• filtered water (probable HOSPITALISATION)
• bottled water - SAFE TO DRINK

Can you imagine having a shower and not getting any water in your mouth?  Tried cleaning your teeth without rinsing your toothbrush under the tap?   If I'm 3 weeks late for work you can anticipate why.

Today we went to a shopping mall called inOrbit.  Only about an hour of screeching brakes and honking horns.  When we got there, there were about 10 policemen searching cars for bombs.  Mirrors under cars, searching car boots etc.  There were elevated watch-towers so that they can supervise all the cars.   Must be the safest car park in the world.  I think that people who break into cars just get shot.  That probably goes for kids on skateboards too - I haven't seen a single one.

While there, we sampled the local cuisine.  I particularly enjoyed my feast at Subway.  No surprises there.  My brother warned that Indian curries can upset the stomach if you're not used to them, and he advised us not to try them until he can take us to the right type of place.  He seems to have had experience with others from Australia to visit who eat the food and then spend the next few days in bed, or in the bathroom.

Travelling to and from the shopping mall we saw a wide range of accommodation.   It looks like most people live in blocks of apartments showing a wide range of decay.  From the roads that we travelled on, most of the nearby blocks were in particularly poor shape.  This is a real shock for someone from Australia like me where the majority live in houses even in the major cities.  I guess that with 18 million people in Bombay, bungalow dwellings are too inefficient.

The pictures I could take aren't very good because they were taken through the car window - but I'd rather have air conditioning than take them with the window down.  One thing that strikes you is the amount of rubbish everwhere, especially by the side of the road.  Piles and piles of rubbish.  Some of the building rubble looks like its been sitting there for 10 years or more.

Another big surprise was the number of people walking on the road instead of the footpath.

People walk on the road because:

• there is no footpath, or
• someone has built their house on the footpath, or
• there are piles of rubbish on the footpath, or
• there are great chunks of footpath missing, or
• someone has removed drain covers and left big holes that need to be jumped over

Makes you appreciate what we've got.

Regards,
  Andy

Mumbai - Day 1

Hi all,

Well, I'm finally here in Mumbai. It feels like a million miles away from Canberra. It's very hot and humid, but probably no worse than the Gold Coast on a bad day. My brother's place is airconditioned, but we reckon that it's best to try and acclimatise because you can't stay in the airconditioning forever.

I don't recommend 12 hour plane trips. You bum goes numb, especially when, like me you don't get an aisle seat like you requested so you can't get up to stretch your legs regularly.

The Airbus aircraft had entertainment systems built into the seats in front of you. Problem was, they run Microsoft Windows CE, so an hour into the trip the software crashed. They tried to reboot the system a few times, but ended up having to reinstall the software which took about an hour. Unfortunately, it ran for a few hours and then hung again, with another hour while they reinstalled the software again. Not a good advertisement for Qantas, Airbus or Microsoft. I'm sure glad that the aircraft flight systems don't run on Windows. At least I hope they don't. Here is a picture of the screen that I had to look at for a few hours.

When we arrived at Mumbai, as we expected, it felt hot and steamy after a long time in the airconditioning. Visitors aren't allowed in the terminal building, so we exited the building to be confronted by a sea of dark-skinned, dark-haired Indians. My brother was there somewhere. Under circumstances like these, I can recommend being picked up by a person about 6'2" with red hair.

Driving from the airport, we almost ran over a dozen pedestrians and just missed a few major crashes. Apparently they play Dare with cars. People seem to walk across roads and dare cars to hit them.

There seemed to be about a million pedestrians between the airport and our apartment. When we asked why there were so many people milling about, my brother was surprised and said it was just the opposite. Apparently the streets were almost deserted. I realised then that we were in for a few surprises in India, and it wasn't going to be a bit like clean and orderly Canberra where you can occasionally see people actually walking on the footpaths.

Overall, I got to go to bed 25 hours after I got up on Sunday morning. It had been a long day.

When I woke up this morning, I was delighted to see (and hear) lots of buildings being constructed next door. It was fascinating to compare the building techniques to those used on the construction site next to where I work.

No safety rails for these guys. They pour the concrete slabs on formwork held up by wooden posts.

They make the cement by hand and send it up the lift to the roof level in large wheelbarrow loads. No concrete pumps for these guys. And no cranes either.

Next to the construction site is the workers' accommodation. "No frills" is the best way to describe it. The stuff on the roofs consists of large rocks to hold the corrugated iron down, and general rubbish (out of sight - out of mind !).

While walking around our accommodation complex I saw a power cord snaking out from one of our buildings over the 12 foot security fence and into the luxury worker accommodation. If you looked carefully you could even see the occasional satellite dish. Interestingly, even though the shanty village was predominantly corrugated iron held together with string and pieces of rock, it seemed to be systematically laid out and not anarchistic.

And no, my camera lens isn't dirty. Its the smog. I guess the 18 million inhabitants of this city can give Beijing a run for their money.

Anyway, I have to go now. Indian Idol is about to start.

Regards,

Andy