David Coats » mumbai http://davidcoats.co.uk Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:23:02 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Slums of Mumbai to the towers of Singapore http://davidcoats.co.uk/slums-of-mumbai-to-the-towers-of-singapore/2009/10/01/ http://davidcoats.co.uk/slums-of-mumbai-to-the-towers-of-singapore/2009/10/01/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:23:10 +0000 David http://davidcoats.co.uk/?p=96 Yesterday morning I finally escaped India. Humppppffffhhh

Ironically, my last day was probably the best. I went on the famous ‘slum tour’ of the Dharavi slums in Mumbai with Reality tours. The biggest slum in Mumbai and the highest earning, dubbed the economic miracle and even visited by Richard Branson, Dharavi has an economy of around $700m a year in recycling and manufacturing and about 1million slum dwellers in a tiny section of the city. The way these guys live and work is truly incredible. Narrow alleys and tiny buildings all perfectly functional like a normal city – running water, electricity – even schools and police, however incredibly incredibly poor.

First we saw the tiny micro factories which make heavy industrial

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]]> http://davidcoats.co.uk/slums-of-mumbai-to-the-towers-of-singapore/2009/10/01/feed/ 1 Mumbai Madness http://davidcoats.co.uk/mumbai-madness/2009/09/03/ http://davidcoats.co.uk/mumbai-madness/2009/09/03/#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:04:22 +0000 David http://davidcoats.co.uk/?p=31 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

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