Why Mumbai?

We might not have included Mumbai on our itinerary if it hadn’t been for the cheap flights back to the UK that we’d found from there, as we didn’t really need to see another big city – but Mumbai is a beauty.

We had planned to take an Uber from the airport but the pre-paid taxi guys were on the spot, pushy and about the same price so we set off on the 25Km (can take up to 90 minutes in traffic) drive into the city. Almost immediately it was clear that Mumbai was different to anywhere we’d been so far in India – huge highways, fancy cars, billboards advertising luxury properties, a cityscape not dissimilar to Manhattan – welcome to the City of Dreams, India’s financial capital and home of Bollywood.

Home for 2 nights was the Residency Hotel in the touristy but historic Fort district of the city. This place came highly recommended by both Rough Guide and Lonely Planet and was on Debbie’s radar as a possibility but the price needed to drop first. And then one day, out of the blue, it was available on Agoda at about half the usual price so Debbie snapped it up. Mumbai is a very expensive city, so £52/night including breakfast for their highest room grade was an unbelievable price and absolute steal. Check in was promising – we were brought fruit juice, water and sweet snacks while completing the formalities and signing of the giant ledger. Even with the technology of ‘Digital India’, all hotels seem to still require the manual entry of guests’ details in a physical book, and this was the biggest we’d encountered so far. Debbie asked about a bar, Steve was again mortified, and the manager said that they didn’t have one but his ‘boy’ (actually a middle-aged bloke) could nip to the shop and get us some beers. Our room was beautiful, modern but with a 4-poster bed and luxurious bathroom – it’d have been very good as the more usual £100+ price point, but at our rate it was truly amazing. Debbie wondered why the curtains appeared to be moving, but Steve reassured her that it was just the aircon blowing the drapes, and we nipped over the road to a Persian restaurant for some delicious kebabs before retiring to the lush comfort of the 4-poster.

At 3am all hell broke loose, with Steve shouting at Debbie to wake up as there was someone in the room or trying to break in. Again the curtains seemed to be moving and Steve bravely (foolishly?) lunged towards them, wildly frisking the fabric in an unsuccessful attempt to find the intruder. If he had found someone they’d have got a shock being faced with the very brave, and stark naked, Steve! He looked under the bed – nothing – and then we saw that the wooden flooring near the door had been damaged, leaving a hole and a significant amount of wood clippings scattered around. In Steve’s mind this was further evidence of someone trying to get in to our room, perhaps running a coat hanger wire under the door to pull the handle and gain entry. Debbie thought it more likely to be a creature trying to dig its way out! We called reception, they sent a boy who looked perplexed at the hole in the floor and moved us to another room for what was left of the night just to sleep, leaving our belongings behind in the promise that they’d sort us a proper room move in the morning. After breakfast we were moved to an identical room one floor below, the beer-runner guy collected our bags from the room above, and went out to get more Kingfishers for our new room. Then we went out to explore Mumbai, leaving behind the drama and secure in the knowledge all was now OK and we’d survived and escaped from the mystery intruder.

That’s Not What I Expected!

Steve says that he’s going to get Debbie a t-shirt printed with the phrase ‘That’s not what I expected‘ as she exclaimed it frequently in India. Steve on the other hand had no expectations of anything as he’d not spent hours pouring over guidebooks or researching destinations – at best asking Deep Fake what he needed to know about a destination just as we were heading out of the door! It turned out that the Fort district of Mumbai is a UNESCO World Heritage site with a magnificent collection of Victorian and Art Deco buildings. It very much reminded us of London, specifically the South Kensington area around the V&A and Natural History Museum. The imposing buildings – including the High Court, University, Railway Station – were spectacular, the latter inspired by St Pancras but far more grand (if that’s possible). The streets had the City of London weekday buzz, legal students and barristers were making their way to/from court, red buses were in abundance and taxi cabs zipped from place to place. The Oval Maiden was a big green space in the middle of the city, reminiscent of Hyde Park and where Mumbai residents were eating lunch, relaxing or playing cricket. This was nothing like the India we’d seen to date and the British influence in the former Bombay was clear to see.

We made our way to the Gateway of India, Mumbai’s iconic landmark, a honey-coloured majestic archway at the water’s edge built to commemorate the visit of King George V in 1911. Crowds were boarding boats out to Elephanta Island, with one poor lady slipping between the pontoon and boat and people doing what comes naturally in the face of such an occurrence – videoing on their phones!! We marvelled at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel directly behind Gateway, built by the Parsi industrialist J.N.Tata after he was refused entry to the then-smartest hotel in town. Almost as emblematic of Mumbai as the Gateway of India, the hotel featured prominently in the 2008 terror attacks having been occupied by Jihadi terrorists, with 31 people losing their lives there. Refitted (at a cost of $40 million) and defiantly re-opened within a year, the Taj was restored to it’s former glory and this grand pile is now the chosen hangout of Mumbai’s air-kissing set, visiting nobility, dignitaries and cricket teams, but mere mortals are allowed entry to experience the shopping arcades and tea lounge. Too hot, sweaty and scruffy to partake in refreshments at such a grand establishment we instead headed for the (in)famous Leopold Cafe nearby, another scene of horror in the 2008 attacks, with the terrorists storming the place with machine guns and massacring innocent diners. The bullet holes in the walls are now covered with pictures, but the gruesome past and a location feature in the novel Shantaram have made Leopolds a must-visit destination for tourists – undeservedly as it’s shockingly overpriced with indifferent ‘service’ and the worst coffee that Steve had ever experienced .

Temperatures were not too high, around 32 degrees, but Mumbai was very humid so we whiled away a couple of hours in the air conditioned comfort of the beautiful Chhatrapati Shivaji Museum, also known as the Prince of Wales Museum – another architectural beauty ranking among Mumbai’s most distinctive Raj-era constructions and housing India’s finest collection of sculpture and art. We could’ve easily spent half a day there to truly appreciate the priceless exhibits, but had an appointment to get to – however we did comment that the UK could perhaps learn from India’s approach to entry fees to museums & monuments (almost free for residents, significant cost for foreign tourists).

A Chef’s Tour

Next was a pre-booked food tour with A Chef’s Tour for which we’d been instructed to arrive hungry as there would be 11 stops and 18 foods to sample! We met our guide Ronnie, and 6 fellow participants (Aussies, Americans and an Indian lady), outside Churchgate station at 4pm and the eating began immediately with a Chura Vada Pad (veg burger in a bun, price Rs 20) at the adjacent Cafe xx before taking the local train 1 stop north and getting stuck in to the tour in earnest. The famous sweet curd at Parsi Dairy Farm, the most flavoursome lamb keema at the Persian Kyani & Co restaurant (unchanged since 1904), a selection of puris at a street stall selected as they use bottled water, on to another street vendor for the most amazing cheesy dosa, into the market for a potato/peanut/tamarind delight, Indian nachos from a Rajasthani lady, through the largest fabric market in India to Mohanbhai Pudawala for chickpea-based pancakes and then to Bhagat Tarachand ‘for dinner’!! At this last stop, upstairs in the restaurant, we were presented with a thali of 5 or so vegetarian items, each a little different to the equivalents that we’d tasted elsewhere in India and all delicious. But my god, how much food? They were right to warn us to come hungry!

Bizarrely the Indian lady who was accompanying her visiting colleague from New York, had eaten a big lunch just before the tour and also followed a Jain diet (no meat or root veg, because even plants have souls), so didn’t eat a thing. Stuffed to beyond bursting point (not the Indian lady obviously) we were told about one final stop – for a digestive! A couple of gentlemen constructed betel leaf parcels with all manner of sweet goo and additives, and with some very questionable hygiene standards, which we were to chew to signal the end of a meal. Not a particularly pleasant taste, but we managed, and we survived the night too so the stained fingers of the stall-holders obviously weren’t carrying too many deadly pathogens! Before leaving our group after a fabulous 4.5 hours, in the now dark but buzzing Crawford Market area, Ronnie had a little gift for each of us – a cute traditional stainless steel lunchbox (more about these later) complete with some spices and sweets. A great tour – not cheap at around £35/each but highly recommended and we’ll search this company out in other cities on our travels.

All In A Mouse’s Night

Back to the hotel to raid our Kingfisher stash and get ourselves sorted for departure the following day, Debbie decided to fully unpack her bag and sort things out. Her friend Jayne has suggested she check her bag for the previous night’s intruder – and there, scurrying around in the bottom of the bag that had been zipped closed for at least 12 hours, was an enormous mouse. There may have been a yelp and/or scream, and Debbie quickly re-zipped the bag (not as calmly as this description suggests) and shouted “get it out, get rid of it” to Steve. He asked whether he should actually ‘dispatch’ it (he used to be a biologist so would’ve done the needful in a very matter-of-fact way), but no, Debbie just wanted it out of her bag, the room and the building. So Steve headed off down the corridor towards the hotel front door carrying the bag and tried explaining to the bell-boy what they needed to do. So that confirmed that our intruder and curtain twitcher had been a rodent trying to escape, presumably having been trapped in our room for a while. Ironic that we’d brought it with us to the new room, and amazingly could’ve had a repeat performance that night in the new room if it hadn’t been spotted in the bag. Even more amazing is that it didn’t appear to have chewed the contents of Debbie’s bag or even wee/poo all over them (everything will be washed regardless!).

Our Final Day In India

The following day was our departure from India, with an ungodly 01.35 flight time. We (well Debbie anyway) had considered getting an airport hotel and just relaxing by a pool prior to the torture of a long haul flight in scuffer’s class, but we managed to get a 6pm check out (for a fee) from our hotel so decided to spend another day in Mumbai, have a nice dinner after check out and then head for the airport. We’d not originally planned to return to the UK at this point, but news of Aimee’s pregnancy with our first grandchild due late January changed that and we managed to get absolutely bargain £170 each flights with Lufthansa via Munich to Birmingham – hence the visit to Mumbai that we otherwise probably wouldn’t have bothered with. Steve submitted bids for upgrades to both Premium Economy and Business Class, but we were sadly nowhere near what Lufthansa wanted in return for a bit of comfort.

Slumming It

So, if she wasn’t going to get a final bit of pool time, Debbie wanted to see a couple of other key aspects of the city – the infamous slums and fancy/trendy Mumbai. Steve really wasn’t keen on the former, but Debbie persuaded him with a bargain that she’d found on Get Your Guide – £6.50 each for a 3.5 hour tour. We again headed for Churchgate station, walking from our hotel through the area of beautiful buildings and parks, and met our guide Ganesh, a Saudi-based American couple and 3 German blokes. We were obviously the poor travellers as our fellow tourists were staying at the fancy Taj Mahal Palace and Oberoi hotels respectively. One of the Germans was country manager for Dyson in Switzerland and Debbie felt the need to share that she really wanted the Dyson Airstraight but couldn’t justify the cost – did she expect him to offer mate’s rates or a freebie perhaps??

Our first stop was to see the Dabbawalla operation – an army of 5,000 blokes, dressed in white outfits and Ghandi caps, who fulfil the hunger of almost 200,000 Mumbai workers daily by collecting their home-cooked lunchboxes from their homes and delivering to the recipient’s office or workplace through complex train and bike logistics. There are even train carriages dedicated to the Dabbawallas at certain times of day!

The commuters have to leave home between 5am and 6am to get to work and, unsurprisingly, wifes and mothers aren’t keen to get up at that time to make their lunch so the Dabbawallas call later in the morning to collect each lunchbox. These are tagged with colours/codes to show where they should be delivered. On the train the Dabbawallas swap lunchboxes so that each ends up with deliveries to just the area around a single train stop, where they disembark. They then take the lunchboxes to a secondary sorting location, in our case the pavement opposite Churchgate station where the boxes are placed in numbered locations corresponding to individual addresses and companies. Finally, each location’s lunchboxes are loaded on a cart or hung on a bike and delivered in time for lunch break at 1pm. In the afternoon the process is reversed so that the lunchboxes are returned to the correct homes – all of this for about £7 a month delivery charge.

Airing the dirty laundry

Then onto the local train system, which transports a staggering number of Mumbaikar each day, and kills a fair few of them too (doors don’t close, people get on/off while train is still moving and hanging out of the doors is commonplace) to the Dhobi Ghat – the world’s largest laundry. Dirty washing from all around the city is brought here, separated into colours/fabrics and distributed to an army of laundrymen to wash, dry and iron. There’s people who specialise in jeans, others in whites, medical scrubs are seggregated and given an intensive boil. Some washing is still done by hand in open baths, but mainly now in industrial machines within the residents homes/rented units. This is an area where people both live and work, toiling for a pittance – Rs 20-30 per item is the retail rate, but we doubt the laundrymen see all of that. The sight of thousands of items hanging out to dry under the Mumbai sun, juxtaposed against the skyscrapers, was both unique and bizarre. Very few items get lost as the guys can’t risk having to compensate the owners for (what will inevitably be claimed to be) very expensive items of clothing. We tried and failed to lift a solid iron – it must’ve weighed 10Kg or more – this is heavy work!

The Dharavi Slum

A further few stops north on the train took us to the starting point for a tour of the Dharavi slum, the largest in Asia where over 1 million people live in 1 square mile, and the setting for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Debbie’s ‘That’s not what I expected’ catchphrase was used yet again as Ganesh explained the misconceptions and realities – many slum-dwellers choose to live here, preferring the close-knit community where everyone knows your name and looks out for each other to the anonymous lifestyle of a city apartment. ‘In the slums they know you when you are alive, in the city they only know you when you are dead’ is a saying that many use to describe why they live how they do. Dharavi is effectively a small city where people both live and work. Tiny ‘factories’ churn out luggage, leather goods & beautiful tailoring – much of which is then ‘stamped’ in Europe with luxury brand names and logos. Exports from Dharavi turn over $1 billion per year – this is an important economic area, not a run-down parcel of land where people live in squalor. Well actually it is, but one that generates a lot of money for some. Residents go about their business, recycling plastic for re-sale, having a haircut or shave on a chair in the alleyways, baking, chatting, playing. Houses have a living area probably 10 feet square where cooking and washing are also done, there’s no toilet inside and in some areas the ‘road’ is only 2 feet wide at most and daylight never reaches the ground. The government want to bulldoze the slum and re-house the residents free of charge, but they are resisting – and when people do accept a city apartment, they often sub-let it and move back to the slum. It’s difficult for us to understand but it works for those who live there and they seem happy enough.

A Final Dinner

Mumbai certainly is a city of contrasts and for our last evening we opted to see some of the fancier side of it – or at least as fancy as we dared in the clothes/shoes available to us and clean. We asked our hotel for a recommendation for a ‘really nice Indian restaurant’ and one of the guys duly escorted us to a place a couple of streets away. It looked nice enough but really wasn’t what Debbie had in mind – she was thinking cocktails, beautiful presentation, a bottle of wine – so we took their card, tipped our guy and said we’d be back later after a look around the shops. Instead we went in search of Native Bombay, a well rated restaurant in an old ice factory. It looked perfect but didn’t open for another hour, so we grabbed a coffee and watched the world go by while we waited and at 7pm proceeded to our table. A fabulous menu (small and large plates) combining Indian and Western flavours, with a comprehensive wine and cocktail list, and industrial chic design – perfect! And downstairs the great and good of Mumbai were having a charity fundraiser, so we got to see the Mumbai social elite out to play too. This was unsurprisingly our most expensive meal in India, but excellent value compared to what it’d cost in London (or even Dartmouth for that matter). Tandoori fish marinated in pomegranate juice for Debbie was stunning, Steve’s tandoori mushroom pate on a choux bun an odd choice but his belly pork and mash (with some sort of Indian fusion sauce) was declared to be delicious as was Debbie’s delicately spiced chicken & minced chicken concoction with a fluffy bread rather like a cross between naan and paratha. In for a rupee and all that – we even had desserts, with red velvet cake for Steve (wrong in Debbie’s opinion) and a milky ice cream and vermicelli sundae for Debbie, and a nice bottle of French red to complete the indulgence.

A nice way to end our time in Mumbai and India before we took an Uber back to the airport in preparation for 8 hours of cramped hell and the journey back to reality (albeit briefly)……