Finally a day in port.
We are now in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, India.
The first thing we had to do is wait to be called to the
lounge as everyone was made to go to a face-to-face meeting with the India
immigration officials before we would be let off the ship.
Once finally off the ship, we took a shuttle to the main
terminal gate, walked a little bit and met our guide.
To start with, this
tour by Reality Tours with Sunny as our guide was absolutely the best tour that
we have ever taken. Everything they
promised they delivered and more so.
We had been told that the traffic would be horrendous and
that was an understatement. Horns and
horns so loud and so many you could hardy hear when you were walking. There are no lanes in either direction on a
street, you just fill the gap and keep driving.
Somehow everyone makes it but we saw a lot of cars with a lot of
scratches.
They have 5,000 busses on 400 routes and 60,000 cabs and all
with very loud horns and they seemed to be all on the same street.
We started out with a short trip to the sea area where the
massive arch that is the gateway to India stands. Right behind it is the hotel where many
people were assassinated in 2008 in a terrorist attack. Then we stopped and had some street food
before going to the main railroad station.
This station handles 2.5 million people a day and it is
massive. We went onto the main train
platform and the sea of humanity coming off the trains was amazing and almost freighting
as they pressed toward us. They were on
the roof of the trains and hanging onto the sides of the trains they are so
crowded! Apparently 8 people a week are
killed riding the trains into the city.
Our guide rides the train every day 1 ½ hours each way and a lot of the
time he starts his trip to the city by hanging on the outside until a space
opens up inside. The train has compartments and he told us that in the space of
a small SUV, 24 people are standing, very tightly!
We also found out that most of the marriages are arranged
marriages; however, he said it is not too bad as the families first exchange
pictures and you can say no. Then they
meet and soon afterwards they marry. Our
guide has a girlfriend; however, he doesn’t feel he will ever marry her as her
father does not approve of him. So, he
is waiting for his Mother to provide him with a wife, probably soon. There is also virtually no divorce in India.
Next we stopped at the house in Mumbai where Gandhi lived
for a lot of his later years. It was
very interesting as they had his life and sayings posted throughout the house.
The city is extremely dirty and there are thousands of
people who are living on the streets, just on blankets, under tarps and just
shacks built right along the road. This
is the dirtiest city with the most poverty that we have ever seen.
The average working class family earns $350.00 a month.
Contrasting the poverty, we then saw the 2nd most
expensive private residence in the world.
The 1st is Buckingham Palace in London. This house is a very modern house that is 27
stories tall and holds a family of only 6 people and cost 2.5 billion dollars. The garage on the lower levels holds 168 of
the family’s cars. There is also a
helipad on the roof. In addition, they
have 600 people working for them in the house.
Every month their electrical bill is $10,000.
We then stopped overlooking the Dhobi Ghat which is the
largest of many outdoor washing areas in Mumbai. They have over 5,000 people working in this
cleaning business in 282 stalls and they wash, dry and fold over 200,000 pieces
of laundry every day from the hospitals and hotels and other businesses in the
area. When we are in Singapore I will
post a video of these cleaners.
Then we went to lunch.
We had asked the guide to take us to a non-tourist place where we could
eat local food and we also invited the guide and drive to join us so they could
explain what we were eating.
The picture only show part of the vast amount of food we had
for a wonderful lunch, including an amazing desert and the total cost converted
into US dollars was only $16.38.
Mumbai also has a company called Lunch Box Systems and they pick
up lunches from your mother at their home and delivery it to you at your place
of work. When you are finished, they
pick up the lunch box and take it back to your home while also taking any food
that was not eaten to the poor. They
transport over 250,000 lunches a day.
The lunch boxes are picked up and taken to staging areas in massive
interchange systems all over the city.
They make 1 mistake per 6 million lunches. It cost $15 a month for this service. It is a FedEx system for lunches only they
are using scooters.
After a short drive we arrived at the largest “Slum” in
Mumbai. Mumbai is a city of 33 million
people and right in the center of the city is the biggest slum. In .8 of a square mile live 1.2 million people –
yes those are correct numbers. A total
of 9 million people live in a slum in this city. This one is a city within a city as they also
produce an amazing amount of goods there, mostly recycling as every bit of
garbage in the city is delivered there and hand recycled. The meld down the metals, chop up the plastic
and do everything by hand. They produce
655 million dollars worth of goods in a year out of this area. It is dirty, dirty and then dirtier. That have one bathroom for every 1,200 people. We spent 2 ½ hours walking in
this area, including being on the roof tops.
This is where Slum Dog Millionaire was made and the movie doesn’t show
how horrific this area is.
They are totally self contained with schools, banks, barber
shops, stores, and everything they need to barely survive each day.
We were told to wear clothes that we didn’t care about and
when we got back from the tour, we put them in a bag and sent them to the
laundry.
At 4:30pm we once again had some snacks from the buffet and
went back to the room to relax before going out for the show and dinner.
The show tonight was a cast production show called “Land of
Make Believer” and it was very good.
Last night at dinner, we had met the couple from London again
tonight as we having so much fun and still had tales to tell each other.
After dinner we went to the casino where Barb didn’t play
and Ed lost.
Tomorrow we are in the second of four port days in India -
Goa – this is going to continue to be interesting.
