Mumbai Madness

I arrived in Mumbai this morning; hot, humid, wet, grey, impossibly chaotic Bombay. The air is thick with fumes and the sound of car horns. Sweat almost immediately started dripping from my forehead as I stepped out of the airport. There are people just everywhere. Once through security you are hit with this wall of people touting for your business – from the currency exchange guys inside the airport gesticulating wildly at you, to the young children pawing at you for your ‘english coins’ through the open car window of the taxi.

I met a lovely couple on the plane, Ruth and Simon from Wales, and immediately found something to talk excitedly about. They had just returned from Tanzania and the foothills of Kilimanjaro! We got a taxi together which was not only money saving but stress busting, and gave me a chance to ease slowly into my 4 months of lone travel. The journey into the centre of Mumbai took the best part of 2 hours as there is a crazy festival taking place today. Floats playing loud bangra are full of purple coloured Indians shouting and throwing bags of dye at one another. Even the stray dogs, of which there are about as many as there are people, are covered in yellow and purple paint!

The trip from the airport took us through some scenes of amazing diversity; from the blue tarpaulin covered huts in the slums, past the large dilapidated blocks of flats being supported precariously by wooden scaffolding, the gleaming new glass office blocks and the old temples and palaces of the Raj. The most amazing thing however are the people. So so many of them. All going about their daily business – scratching a living or enjoying luxury amongst such mayhem.

Once settled in my Hotel – the West End Hotel, which is surprisingly nice, I went for a little walk to see what was around. The hotel is directly opposite Bombay hospital and doesn’t appear to be in a particularly nice part of town (not sure if any of Bombay is ‘nice’!) Amongst the horns and buzzing of scooters, people don’t actually seem to be doing much. There were several people asleep under some tarpaulin. Shop keepers just standing outside their shops smoking and kids playing with dirt in the gutter. The smell isn’t as bad as I thought, but the incessant drizzle and humidity is hard to bear. Oh, and the Crows. Weird scavenging Crows. Everywhere!

Jonny arrives in a few hours. Time for an afternoon kip before I venture out into the heat again. Barely slept a wink on the plane.