So I visited this little metropolis called Mumbai... "little" probably being the biggest understatement of all time. The city is huge - both geographically and in terms of population. I've been to several other cities that top the globe's most populated (New York, Los Angeles, Buenos Aries), but Mumbai, home to some 20+ million people, really felt massive. There was no way to take in the complete skyline for instance - skyscrapers stretched for as far as the eye could see and beyond. The traffic is crushing; the sheer number of people moving through the streets is staggering.
Before this journey, my dad's girlfriend (who is from Nepal, and very familiar with India), told me that Mumbai would show me "the best, and the worst" - and she was dead on. The infamous Mumbai airport slums are the size of cities themselves - to see them from the air as you arrive jaw-dropping; to drive past them en route to nicer parts of the city is wholly indescribable. And then, to arrive at the posh hotel where I was staying, showed Mumbai in a different light altogether. We stayed at the spectacular and storied Trident Nariman Point Hotel (one of the sights of the 2008 terrorist attack), where I, grubby and dressed in my sensible no-wrinkle, suitcase-safe rags, was completely out of my league. This hotel is where all the beautiful people of not only Mumbai, but the world, come to gather, and it is also home to a galleria that houses Gucci, Farragamo, Jimmy Choo and other similar boutiques. Bollywood stars floated through the lobby; international businessmen shared the elevators; wealthy vacationers shopped with platinum. And I looked like I should have been camping. And I felt just about as glamorous. Definitely a fish out of water.
At any rate, getting to see the city was a mad dash. I only had a couple of days there, and as it turned out, I was sick for a good portion of that time. So I didn't see as much as I would have liked, and I certainly didn't photograph it well. But what I did see was impactful - certainly memorable! Like....
- The Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat - the world's largest open air laundry (detail, pictured above).
- The dabbawalas of the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers - a massive group of 5,000 delivery men who distribute nearly 200,000 boxed lunches every single day. The homemade lunches are picked up at subscribers' homes in the mornings, delivered to their offices by the lunch hour, and the empty lunch boxes are delivered back to their homes by late afternoon. It takes four+ men to deliver one lunch box; it is frequently claimed that dabbawalas make less than one mistake in every six million deliveries. I didn't get one decent photo of the guys in action though - boo!
- The overflowing Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (Victoria Train Station) - the busiest railway station in India. We were there on a Monday morning, and the swarm of people arriving for work was unlike anything I had ever seen. Just attempting to get near the building was like swimming upstream in a fierce current. No photos allowed inside the station...
- The sprawling warren of shops at the Crawford Market - it's the largest market in India, so suffice it to say, you can literally get anything there. Including endangered species (or so it's rumored...).
Here's just some random photos that I like from Mumbai...
"Your heart is the only place in which you can meet God face to face." (Hindu proverb)
God is everywhere in India. Religion and spirituality are not secondary to anything here - practicing a faith is the cultural norm, and people quite literally wear their religion on their sleeves. Whether it be in the form of a Islamic head covering, to rosary beads dangling from the rear view mirror in the car, everyone practices some form of religion. The top faiths in India, in order, are Hindu, Islam and Christianity, with myriad others filling in the ample space below. (Jaina Dharma anyone?) While here, I've had the pleasure of receiving many faithful blessings for the new year, and I really do want to take them to heart. Even though I don't subscribe to a particular faith, I welcome spirituality in my life. And positive intentions. So for that, I am grateful, and hope that in the weeks to come when the melee of everyday life has returned, I can reflect and draw inspiration from the values and practices that have been shared with me here.
Several days ago, I said goodbye to the majority of my traveling companions in our photography class, and set out for nearly a week of R&R with three friends - all of us ready to abandon the hectic pace of the two weeks prior. We have journeyed to Kerala State here in South India, where we are staying in a village on the wandering backwater canals (dubbed often as the "Venice of India"… but really not so much). We've opted for a home stay, as opposed to a traditional hotel (or as is more common in this neck of the woods - a house boat trip), and boy - was that the best decision of this trip so far. We are at the Emerald Isle Resort, 15 km outside of the nearest town (Allepey), and it's a little slice of heaven. The home is more than 150 years old, and was the working farmhouse to the current owner's ancestors. The room where I'm staying was once used for rice storage. Ten years ago, this place was converted to a home stay, and there are four rooms and a cottage for the likes of myself to come and enjoy. It is still set amongst verdant rice paddies on one side, and one of the lazy canals on the other. The owner's family lives next door, and they and their staff run this place with pride and utter attention to detail. They have taken care of us from the moment we arrived - everything from providing us with boat tours of the area, to arranging massages on premise, to cooking us three meals a day. It's charming, it's secluded, it's serene. It's perfect.
Although tranquil and lazy, this place has probably been the noisiest location we've visited yet - but mostly in a good way. There is absolutely no beep beep toot toot honk honk of traffic outside our doors, but the sounds out here are mesmerizing and amplified by the silence that otherwise permeates the air and carries over the waterways. We hear calls to prayer multiple times a day from different sources - the Hindu temple to my left, and the Catholic church across the way - both broadcast services over loudspeakers, often competing with each other for your auditory attention. Every morning, the sardine fisherman rides his bicycle through the village paths, his booming signature call announcing his wares for sale. Boats large and small navigate the backwater canals with the putt putt of diesel engines, sounding like lawnmowers hard at work in suburban America. There's also the slap slap of laundry being pounded on the rocks canal-side. Cows low, roosters crow. And the birds - so many birds! Their songs and warbles are the music of the countryside, and it's genuinely lovely.
The sites are equally as beguiling. Coconut-laden palm trees line the tropical waterways; locust plants bloom like carpets across the smaller water byways. It's very green and lush, but the canals are sadly polluted - what I wouldn't give for a swim, but there's not a chance in hell I'm so much as dipping a toe into the glassy depths. Typhoid? No thank you. But the locals frolic and play and work and bathe in the waters, seemingly without a care that they are ruining their best resource by chocking the canals with garbage and waste.
As mentioned in a previous post, I got sick while here. Was out of commission for an entire day thanks to a nasty head cold that literally brought me to tears. Couple that with some really random aches and pains, I'm so very glad that our time in the backwaters came when it did - I'm hoping to be revitalized and ready for our last big push of my stay here in India: the wondrous city of Mumbai!
Here's a selection of photos from the backwaters - enjoy!
