Mumbai and Goodbye

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...