Chris and I departed Diu on a 10 hour overnight bus to Mumbai. The inside of the bus smelled inexplicably like rotten fish, which unfortunately was concentrated somewhere near or around where we were sitting in the very back. I even believe the odor managed to gradually increase as the night went on. Stepping off the bus in Mumbai felt like completing the process of being eaten, digested, and excreted from a large whale. Mumbai immediately came across as a clean, rich, western city with tons of delicious street food. This is exactly what both of us were looking for after the filthy bus ride and 2 weeks in northern india. A welcome respite from the dusty trail. As a whole the city is not all clean and has one of the largest slums in all of asia, but we stayed in the nicer areas as we had about enough filth and the goal was to participate in minimal tourist activities. Just stroll around the city, eat, and relax.
We wandered around the upscale tourist area of Connaught by the Gates of India, an enormous archway on the waterfront by the glamourous Taj Hotel. After the first night, we moved slightly north to the Fort Area, which was just as nice but more quiet and had less tourists. Soon it was new years eve and as a result of various posts on reddit and couchsuring, we pulled together a group of 12 people to meet up for dinner and bar hopping in Bandra. Bandra is a very rich area in Mumbai full of trendy bars / restaurants. After shopping around, we found and purchased some "real people clothes" to wear for the evening as our backpacking shirts and pants are not the attire you would find on any self respecting human being.
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| Cricket At Oval Maidan - Mumbai |
I found a massive multi story Levi's (Levis is considered high end clothing here) and gave in to buying a pair of 501's for $90 dollars motivated partially by the irony of buying my most expensive jeans in India, which were made in America. After being so cheap for so long and counting every penny spent it also felt great to buy something unnecessary and expensive for a change. After changing and cleaning up in the employee bathroom on the roof of the levis building, we were looking sufficiently presentable enough to go meet our new friends for dinner at an italian restaurant. After many drinks and some delicious food we went out to an indian version of an american punk rock bar where we gathered around a table drinking pitchers of kingisher beer and listening to an eclectic mix ranging from the Ramones to Journey . It was fun to spend new years with people from different parts of the world.
The punk rock place closed down at 2 and we went to a tiki themed bar where we waited outside to get in. The cops had temporarily shut everything down, but 15 minutes later the owner payed a the appropriate bribe to stay open until 5am. This is completely normal. Being the only group of white people in the bar we received lots of attention from groups of indian men, who were fun to talk to as all seemed very well educated and one of them bought me a shot of Jack Daniels. It was all around good times. We walked out around 5 and once i had finished drunkenly calling anyone at home whose phone number i remembered and telling them I'm in the future and we all have flying cars (10 hours ahead here), it was time to start heading back. We split 2 taxis between everyone and got back to Connaught to catch the sunrise at the gates of India. Crashing in our buddy's room we slept until 5pm that day and got a train the day after that to head south to the beaches in Goa and Karnataka. I wish i had some photos to post, but chris has all the new years shots on his camera and he is at a yoga ashram for the next couple weeks.
A little left to fill in and i will be up to date and making current posts. Right now, I am heading to Sri Lanka in a couple days to go surfing while chris stays at the yoga ashram and makes his way to sri lanka to meet up again 2-3 weeks from now. Adios!
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