We just made it into Mumbai. We're now sitting at Café Universal a few buildings down from our hotel which is called Hotel Traveller’s Inn (yeah, two L's) in an area called Fort. I think. Everything that I have said about witnessing poverty on this trip should now be multiplied by eight. The car ride from the train station to the hotel area was greatly eye opening. The buildings into town were more like continuous tin construction projects that held everything from egg shops to machine shops and looked so rickety that it was shocking beyond words. There were piles of garbage and families living on the street most everywhere we looked. I saw kids chasing a rat. I stared in disbelief at it all but it is definitely real. Kevin put it best and brought to mind something that I always do when I travel somewhere new which is wonder if I could ever live in the city that I am visiting. Most places you think, “I could probably get along here if I needed to.” Mumbai, not so much.
In Mumbai there is the craziest snarl of traffic that I have ever been in. City streets are crammed with cars and trucks and motorcycles, none obeying traffic lanes and very few obeying traffic signals. Cars literally travel within inches of each other and horn honking is an almost constant drone. It is really miraculous that there isn’t just one big accident happening on the streets at all times and that people can get anywhere without ending up locked in a snarl of twisted metal. We did see a motorcyclist with a woman on the back skid out on some oil or something and eat it but everyone was okay. For a moment traffic actually yielded to the smaller vehicle and several people ran out into the street to help the man limp off the roadway and get his motorcycle out of the middle of the street.
Fortunately, well fortunately for us only I guess, the area that we are staying in is a lot better than the slums on the way in although it still has that very lived in Indian feeling to it. There are huge multistory stone buildings on streets lined with massive trees. I am excited to have a look around but we are going to relax now with a beer in the open air café that we are sitting in for a bit longer. That’s right, I said beer! Legal I guess. Thanks Mumbai.
We just made it into Mumbai. We're now sitting at Café Universal a few buildings down from our hotel which is called Hotel Traveller’s Inn (yeah, two L's) in an area called Fort. I think. Everything that I have said about witnessing poverty on this trip should now be multiplied by eight. The car ride from the train station to the hotel area was greatly eye opening. The buildings into town were more like continuous tin construction projects that held everything from egg shops to machine shops and looked so rickety that it was shocking beyond words. There were piles of garbage and families living on the street most everywhere we looked. I saw kids chasing a rat. I stared in disbelief at it all but it is definitely real. Kevin put it best and brought to mind something that I always do when I travel somewhere new which is wonder if I could ever live in the city that I am visiting. Most places you think, “I could probably get along here if I needed to.” Mumbai, not so much.
In Mumbai there is the craziest snarl of traffic that I have ever been in. City streets are crammed with cars and trucks and motorcycles, none obeying traffic lanes and very few obeying traffic signals. Cars literally travel within inches of each other and horn honking is an almost constant drone. It is really miraculous that there isn’t just one big accident happening on the streets at all times and that people can get anywhere without ending up locked in a snarl of twisted metal. We did see a motorcyclist with a woman on the back skid out on some oil or something and eat it but everyone was okay. For a moment traffic actually yielded to the smaller vehicle and several people ran out into the street to help the man limp off the roadway and get his motorcycle out of the middle of the street.
Fortunately, well fortunately for us only I guess, the area that we are staying in is a lot better than the slums on the way in although it still has that very lived in Indian feeling to it. There are huge multistory stone buildings on streets lined with massive trees. I am excited to have a look around but we are going to relax now with a beer in the open air café that we are sitting in for a bit longer. That’s right, I said beer! Legal I guess. Thanks Mumbai.
No comments:
Post a Comment