An Antipodean Adventure

My overnight train into Bombay/Mumbai happened not to actually take me into the city, but instead to a suburban station some distance out of the city. On my arrival at 4am, a group of taxi drivers saw this as their opportunity to make fast buck by ferrying me into the city, but I managed to push my way through to the station next door, where I was able to get a local train into the centre of town.

Considering it was so early in the morning, the suburban train was quite busy. There were similarities to the London tube, but of course nobody bothers to close the doors in between the stations.

After finding a place to stay (three times more expensive than anywhere else I’ve been), I set off around the city to explore. The Gateway to India is one of Mumbai’s main tourists attractions, and my hotel was 2 minutes walk away, so I had to go see that:

Two things that really amazed me about Mumbai:
1/ You hear Indians speaking to each other in English
2/ They have red double-decker buses!

After buying myself a copy of Time Out: Mumbai I really started to feel at home. After three weeks of travelling through villages and small/medium-sized towns, it was quite a relief to come back to a large city, as I’m definitely an urban person!

However, Mumbai does have it’s own beach (although I wouldn’t advise swimming), and sunset over the Chowpatty Beach was quite stunning.

Feeling all urban, I decided to go to the cinema to catch up on some Hollywood movies, and managed to get myself a ticket for Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Before the movie started, we all had to stand up to sing (i.e. listen) to a rather out-of-tune Indian national anthem. The movie was fun as it was good to see a (somewhat) scary movie again. Afterwards I decided to go to a trendy Mumbai bar … alone (shock-horror)!

I couldn’t stop laughing at myself for walking into a bar alone, and for the first ten minutes I was grinning into my glass of Sprite. Then an overly-friendly woman comes along and sits down next to me. After 15 minutes of politely turning down her offers, I managed to excuse myself.

I spent the next two days sightseeing around the city, which was not overly exciting, but fun to feel the vibe of the most cosmopolitan city in India nonetheless. Below, you can see me in front of the Chatrapathi Shivaji railway terminus (formerly the Victoria Terminus).

On my last night, I bought myself a ticket for the Bollywood movie Veer-Zaara. What a fantastic way to spend an evening. It really wasn’t necessary to understand Hindi at all, as the plot was quite predictable, and the actors know how to make the right impression (sort of).

Thoughts:
1/ Bus accidents are quite common in India, as two bus crashes occurred in the movie.
2/ Supposedly well-trained Indian airmen dangle off the end of a helicopter winch waving their arms frantically like an inexperienced actor.
3/ Travelling hundreds of miles to deliver your grandmother’s ashes to a river in her homeland, only to have all the ashes blow into your feet instead of the river, doesn’t seem to matter, as long as you have an Indian airman to hold you … tightly.
4/ The women always seem to get trapped in the monsoon rains, and their saris get quite wet.

The girl in the seat next to me seemed to be crying for most of the movie, but her boyfriend was having great fun looking after her.

Anyway, when are they going to start showing Bollywood in the West End?

This entry was posted on Thursday, 9 December 2004 at 18:25 and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.