The Gateway to India

So after spending a rough day of shopping inside an air-conditioned mall, we decided it was time to get our 'feet wet' in the 'real' Mumbai, so today we hired a rickshaw to take us across town to an area along the water known as Colaba. There we were hoping to find some interesting colonial architecture, the Gateway to India, and various other scenic photo-ops. We were clever, and had already discovered that the Rickshaws won't take you all the way into the city (they're not allowed as they are crazy and don't follow any street rules). So we hoped into a taxi around 9am and off we went!

Three hours of exhaust fumes from the cars of 1 billion commuters spewing into our shrivelling lungs landed us in Colaba. We were hot, tired, hungry and had no idea where to go. The upside was the air felt less polluted, there was a breeze blowing off the ocean, the architecture was lovely and after eating in an air-conditioned restaurant, we felt human enough to venture out on the streets again.

We went and looked at the Gateway to India, a gigant structure built in 1913. Vidhu and I got blessed by a holyman (who gave us orange bindis on our foreheads) and because I chose to wear the Salwar Kameez, some guy came up to me and asked if I would let his friend take a picture of us. I guess I made a bit of a spectical with my bindi, hindi garb and waspy white skin. Here's a picture of the building.

After our picture taking extraveganza, we crossed the street to the Taj Palace, a very
expensive hotel, and looked around at the shops inside, which included me drooling as I stood outside a Luis Vuitton store. Sigh.

The lovely doormen called us an air-conditioned taxi for our 3 hour ride home, and what we got what a very nice English-speaking gentleman who was 87 years old and drove like a bat out of hell. He said Mumbai had changed a lot since 1945, when he first moved here, with so many more people and overall the economy had improved.

That evening we went to visit Vidhu's cousin (of sorts) who she hadn't seen in 25 years. The Mittal family. When we arrived, it was like being back in the US - they are VERY well off. They own a three bedroom apartment in a ritzy part of town (not big but beautifully furnished), and because labor is so cheap here, they have a cook, 3 cars and 3 drivers, a domestic helper (that's the person who brings us tea and water throughout the evening and gets us stuff out of the fridge), a housekeeper, and various other people who come in and out of the house at all hours (a couple of teachers, a doctor, a masseuse, a mendehi applier, a personal trainer, a beautician...those where some of the people we got to know in our time there).

This family is funny, loving, generous and very outgoing. They insisted we get our luggage and stay with them as long as we like. Since we didn't want to put out our generous host Swapan (who we met through couchsurfing.com), we readily agreed. So back into a car we hopped and after 3 hours (2 hours there and 1 hour back) we settled in to a huge Indian meal and mapped out our plans for the next few days.