Mumbai’arrhea: Well, the opposite problem

They say that if you can survive Mumbai then you can survive any city on earth.  I don’t know if I would make such a bold and dramatic a statement, but I certainly see where they got the notion from.  The city is home to something like 23 million people (more than all of Australia put together), more than five million people everyday ride the metro rail (roughly 6.5 times the entire population of Columbus, OH), it also has the largest slum in Asia (the world?) with over a million people crammed into ⅔ of a square mile and all of that is packed into seven relatively small, interconnected islands at the western corner of India.

I spent eight days in the city, but I have to admit that I experienced very little of it as I was held up in my room for most of the time doing nothing but being sick.  I arrived in Mumbai Tuesday morning (April 3^rd) after a bus ride from hell and left the hotel room for maybe three hours each day for food and to avoid cabin fever until Monday.  These outings included a visit to the doctor, attending a Passover Seder at the famous sky blue synagogue in Kala Ghoda and short walks around Colaba and Church Gate.  On Monday, Caroline, a friend from pre-school arrived from Egypt and between that and starting to feel much better, things started to pick up a bit. 

Going back to Friday evening, I was planning on going to Chabad for Passover… I didn’t make it out of bed.  Saturday night I was determined, but when I was getting ready to leave I realized that I didn’t have the address for the Chabad house, and they don’t exactly advertise that anymore, especially in Mumbai (knock knock.  Who’s there?  2008). So I decided to Google search for the address and see where it took me.  Ten minutes later I arrived at the old Chabad building that was in the process of being gutted and started asking around to see if anyone could direct me to the new Chabad house.  Unsurprisingly no one had any clue what I was talking about except for one man who just understood, “Jew.”  He didn’t know where the new Chabad house was, but he did tell me where the sky blue synagogue was, so I went.  When I arrived I was greeted by a small contingency of Mumbai’s finest and once I got inside I met an elderly man who was curious how I ended up there.  I told him my story and he told me that I could either stay there and celebrate with them or he could give me directions to Chabad, I chose the former.  The Seder was held in the basement with six, mostly filled, long tables hosting elderly couples, a few families and very small handful of expats.  The Seder took four hours and most of the people left in what I can only assume to be mock protest right after dinner, which took place at 11:30pm, and didn’t even wait around for the end of the Seder.  Apparently the Friday night Seder only took about an hour, guess I missed the boat on that one, oh well.

Caroline arrived in Mumbai at 5am on Monday and we had a relaxing day until we went out to meet a Couch Surfing friend for dinner at 9pm.  I was introduced to Sid through another Couch Surfer with the assertion that I didn’t party with Sid, I just hadn’t seen Mumbai.  Fast forward to 4am and I must agree with him.  I was pleasantly surprised with the turnout on a Monday night at an Irish bar for Karaoke (Oh Brick Street, you were in my heart).  I was also doubly impressed with Sid, who is in his residency training to be a neurosurgeon and had a 24 hour shift in the ICU starting at 9am on Tuesday.  That just bolsters your confidence in medical practitioners, doesn’t it?

The following day Caroline and I hired a cab and went around the city to see a few sights before we left for Aurangabad that night at 9pm.  First we went to Gandhi’s home which was turned into part shrine and part museum and then we went to what may be the largest laundry machine in the world.  By machine I mean a several acre area filled with troughs and workers where almost all of the industrial laundry service for the city is done.  From five star hotels to hospitals to transport services, all of them do their laundry here.  Then we went to Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia.  I know it may be hard to believe, but the people in Dharavi choose to live there and compared to several of the other slums around Mumbai, it’s in pretty good shape.  The reason people stay is because they don’t have to pay any taxes and no politician will touch it because it’s turning into a big voting issue.  Almost everybody there works and most estimates put the GDP of the slum at around half a billion dollars mostly in export goods. 

What a place‽

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Hampi: My Favorite Geological Phenomena

The Hampi landscape is truly one of a kind with its lush palm trees, rice patties and banana plantations in the lowlands and its sparse and thorny desert succulents in the elevated areas.  Huge granite boulders litter the area, precariously perched on one another and forming hills that look like waves moving across an open sea.  The sun spectacularly rises and sets over the hills setting the granite ablaze and washing the landscape in fiery light that no camera could ever truly capture.  The Vijayanagara people that inhabited the area roughly 500-700 years ago took advantage of the endless quarry they had at their disposal and used the granite for all of their structures despite the difficulties presented by its hardness and crystal grains.  The Vijayanagara people filled the entire area with structures of every sort ranging from grand temples and palaces to trivial porticos standing alone in the middle of a field.  The more important structures were grouped together near the center of town, but even the furthest outlying areas had a smattering of seemingly random, painstakingly created, granite constructions left to be viewed and appreciated only by those who ventured away from the beaten path for one reason or another.  In my case, because I just learned how to drive a motorcycle and I wanted to cruise around a little reveling in my new found understanding of why people would risk their life unnecessarily whilst performing everyday tasks. 

The leading theory on how Hampi’s landscape was formed goes back to when the subcontinent plate collided with the pan Asian plate forming the Himalayas.  The bedrock of the subcontinent plate was mostly granite and much harder than the bedrock of the plate it collided into, thus the bulk of Himalayan mountain range being north of the clearly defined southern ridge.  But, as the subcontinent came to a halt there was rippling as the ground scrunched together and the hills of Hampi were formed.  The subcontinent was underwater at this point and rocks that splintered off were held in place be other sediment that eventually eroded away leaving the boulders set atop each other in peculiar ways.  Sorry for the digression, but if you look at the pictures and aren’t curious how that happened… then I guess you just aren’t as big of a nerd as I am. 

Hampi is part of a route through India known jokingly as “The Hummus Trail,” the route that many Israelis take through India after they have finished their military service.  Most all of the places along the trail including Hampi have a certain attitude about them that is perfect for those looking to, not “let off some steam” per se, as much as turn off the flame heating the kettle.  There were several days when I never made it past the small restaurant seating area only 10m from my room.  I simply sat, ate, played various card and board games, listened to music and read the day away.  I don’t know if I’ve ever been more relaxed and care free in my life. 

There were several occasions when I did actually take the initiative to rouse myself and enact a plan for the day.  Seeing as the area was littered with giant, granite boulders, there was some pretty good rock climbing around and there was a party that left at sunrise every morning to seek out the next challenge.  There were the sites to see and empty roads to get there.  That last part combined with the ability to rent a motor scooter for about $2.50 + fuel for the day or a motorcycle for $3 + fuel led to an activity all in itself.  The first two times I rented a motor scooter, they were fun to drive around and kept you honest on speed simply out of their sheer incapability, but it was a nice intro to what came next.  On day seven of nine a Kiwi named Mark taught me how to drive the Honda Hero he had rented and I spent the next 45 minutes moving through the gears, doing hill starts and all together adjusting to control scheme of a motorcycle.  The following day I sprung for the nice, relatively new (the gauges still worked and the tires had some good tread) 135cc Bajaj Discover and a whopping 3L of fuel costing me a grand total of $10 for the day.  I got my money’s worth too noting the odometer claimed I drove over 70km just around Hampi that day (from one end of Hampi to the opposite side is maybe 3km and on the small roads you never get moving that fast, so the 70km was about three hours of driving).

What a place‽

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