Mumbai

Before I left for India I remember looking at my Frommer's guidebook and being amazed at the rainfall charts for Mumbai. The average rainfall from November to April was 0 mm and 10 mm in May, but then shot up to 560 mm and 650 mm in June and July. So deciding to go to Mumbai during the monsoon season was taking a bit of risk, but with only a couple weeks left in my trip it was now or never.

It poured almost non-stop for the first 24 hours of my visit.

Thankfully, the rain let up during the second day and I explored the Colaba & Fort area, where many of Mumbai's main sites are located.  The luxurious Taj Mahal hotel was  one of the sites targeted during the 2008 terrorist attacks.  Nearby is another prominent Mumbai landmark, the Gates of India.

 

 

The Victoria Terminus railway station, now renamed (like nearly everything else in India) the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, is one of the city's many beautiful British era buildings. Mumbai's suburban trains also stop at this station. The trains are some of the world's most crowded and deadliest - with up to 2.5 times the stated capacity on board and 4,000 fatalities a year from people being crushed by trains, electrocuted, or killed while leaning out of the packed cars.   Fortunately, when I rode one it was a Sunday morning and fairly uncrowded.

Iranian restaurants used to be plentiful in south Mumbai but now are few and far between. I visited Britannia,  one of the oldest (and best). Below is a delicious Berry pulao,  a sweet and tart combination of rice, chicken, fried onions, nuts and dried berries.

In many parts of Mumbai rickshaws are banned but old school taxis can be hailed. The second site of a driver napping in his vehicle - whether it be a rickshaw or a taxi - is not at all in uncommon in India.

This barber set up shot on a Mumbai street, avoiding the city's notoriously high rents. Mumbai was recently ranked 4th most expensive in the world in terms of office space.

On Sunday afternoon I met up with a friend from high school, who is doing an internship in Navi Mumbai.  Navi Mumbai is one of the world's largest planned cities and was created to help ease the space constraints of the overcrowded Mumbai. We caught up and swapped stories about life in India at the Leopold Cafe, which features prominently in the novel "Shantaram" and was another one of the sites targeted during the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

I managed to do a little shopping at my favourite housewares store, Good Earth, and along one of the main roads, Colaba Causeway.

The highlight of my short trip  to Mumbai was the Dharavi slum tour  (photography wasn't allowed but you can see photos at www.realitytoursandtravel.com).  More than 50% of Mumbai's 14 million residents live in the slums. When flying into the city, you are struck by the juxtaposition between the slums and sky scrapers. Dharavi is one of the largest slums in Asia and is featured in Slumdog Millionaire.

While the living conditions would make most Westerners cringe - open sewers, garbage heaps, very few toilets, and most homes are a single, small room - a closer look shows there is much more to Dharavi. Many industries thrive here with Dharavi producing everything from packaged Indian pastries to leather goods to recycled plastic. The slum has an annual turnover of over $600 million US, and the goods are sold throughout Mumbai, in India, and sometimes even abroad. The homes have electricity and many have TVs. Residents value the vibrant  community life of Dharavi, and some even resist moving to apartments even if they can afford to.

For a fascinating look at the underbelly of Mumbai (the slums, gangs, cops, etc.) a must read is the book "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found".

Madurai

Some cities are tourist destinations because they have one superb landmark (like Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal) but the rest of the city leaves something to desired. To me, Madurai falls into this category.

A couple of weekends ago, I took an overnight train south west to Madurai, one of the oldest cities on the Indian peninsula. It is known for its magnificent Meenaski Temple, which attracts up to 15,000 visitors a day and is comprised of 12 goparums (pyramid shaped gateways).  Each of the goparums is covered in colourful and imaginative stucco gods, demons, and heroes. Given that I visited Madurai's other tourist sites - a Gandhi museum (located here because this is where he first adopted his famous loincloth) and the remains of a former palace - in less than 2 hours, I ended up visiting the temple three times in two days!

Pondicherry

In Pondicherry it really is possible to forget that you are in India. As you walk down the tree-lined streets of the old French quarter you feel more like you are in France than India. Pondicherry is located on the south eastern coast of India about 3 hours south of Chennai (formerly Madras). It is divided into two parts, each with a rather un-PC name: "Ville Blanche" (French quarter) and "Ville Noire" (Indian quarter). At one of the temples in the Indian quarter, the resident elephant gives blessings in exchange for a rupee.

Pondicherry is the capital of the Union Territory of Puducherry that was formed in 1962 out of the four former colonies of French India (three are on the east coast and one is on the west coast). It still has a number of Tamil residents with French passports, whose ancestors were in the French Governmental service and who chose to remain French at the time of Independence.

For a bit of relaxation we opted to stay outside of Pondicherry at the beach front Dune Hotel. The architecture and interior design of each of the rooms/villas is unique and ours was called the "Silver Room".

During our stay we also visited the experimental town of Auroville. Founded in the late 1960s by a spiritual leader known as "The Mother", Auroville was meant to "be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities". Although originally intended for 50,000 inhabitants, it is now home to about 2,000 people from 44 nationalities. Here is an interesting article if you want to read more about Auroville. The golden sci-fi  building in the last image is the "Matrimandar" (or the "Mother Temple") in Auroville.

 

 

Hampi

Out of the many places that I've visited, Hampi has been one my favourites. Hampi's landscape - strewn with boulders, ruins, and rivers - is strikingly beautiful and reminded me of something out of an Indiana Jones movie.  The site was home to the powerful Vijayanagara empire during the 14th to 16th century, and is located about 460 KM north-west of Bangalore. 

Hampi proved to be a relaxing weekend getaway. Pearce and I  spent our days wandering around the ruins, biking, watching the colourful sunsets, and drinking lassis (Indian smoothies) and lime sodas. Walking along the main road, we laughed at the variety of animals sharing the street with us: cows, water buffaloes, chickens, stray dogs, and monkeys (one of which jumped down onto our table one meal and stole my toast!). Everyday we ate lunch at a lovely, riverside restaurant called Mango Tree, which served Indian and continental food.

If you ever want to know what it is like to be a celebrity, go to Hampi (preferably in the off season when the vast majority of tourists are Indian). Over the course of three days, Pearce and I probably shook 30 Indians' hands, posed for just as many pictures, and were even asked for our autographs by a little girl!

On the way home, the trains were all booked (train tickets can be difficult to come by unless booked well in advance.) so we opted for the overnight bus. The A/C sleeper bus’ décor was straight out of the 70s.  Surprisingly "sleeper" didn't mean fully reclining seats; Pearce and I  had a compartment with a double mattress! Unfortunately, very little sleep was to be had. It was a bumpy ride and the driver sounded his extremely loud horn every 10 seconds.