May 27-29, 2011

After my class on Friday, I waited around until Vaibhav who came at around 1:30 pm to pick me up and drop me at the bus stop to Mumbai. Instead of catching a bus, I actually got into a nice SUV van with 5 other people who were also heading to Mumbai. The cost was the same for bus (300 rupees) and actually taking a cab is much faster than the bus as I soon found out when I took it from Mumbai back to Pune.

There was nothing to rave about in Mumbai. It’s just a metropolitan with a number of tall buildings and offices and the city still has a number of years to go before it really looks anything close to a modernized city. Many buildings, including those of Bollywood actors, need a fresh lick of paint and many buildings need to be demolished to make room for skyscrapers. I saw lots of run-down buildings even in the very expensive part of Mumbai. There were also many scaffolds that look like rectangular ladders patched together since there were no planks whatsoever for construction workers to walk on.

All apartment buildings lack a fire-escape; windows are barred...not sure the reason for this but people use this to dry their clothes and to provide cover from the sun.

We had to wait in line for about 30 minutes to go see a 3D movie theatre. The theatre and the seats, in my opinion, were probably 20 years outdated. The Nehru museum was also pretty lame and really can’t be compared to any science museums in the US. There was a 30 minute video on a round screen (very much like the California Science Academy in SF but much smaller). The video again seems like it was made 20 years ago: there were westerners having 80s and 90s hairdo.

 I am not exaggerating when I say that Indian people do not sweat even in temperatures that are in the upper 90s into the 100s. This thermal vision proves my point. While I stepped in, my neck and parts of my body had patches of blue which showed that the sweat was cooling my body. On the other hand, Indian people actually absorbed all the heat...I am not kidding when I say this. Their head and entire body were orange and even though I tried very hard to detect any blue patches, I could not find any. It's quite an incredible feat. Indian men do not wear any hats to protect their heads and faces from the sun. And here I am trying to protect every part of my body from the UV rays. My legs have been so tanned from wearing shorts that now I'm not gonna go outdoors without wearing a dhoti that covers all of my legs and a long sleeve shirt. I still need to buy a big hat that covers all of my face instead of the orange baseball cap.

Prince of Wales museum is by far the best museum I've seen so far

Two very redeeming places in Mumbai was the Prince of Wales museum which have some incredible Buddhist statues and many other priceless Indian artifacts. The entry fee was a whopping 350 rupees and to take any pictures I needed to shell out another 200 rupees for a photography permit. I didn’t bother because our tour only spent half an hour for that place. I wish we hadn’t wasted two and a half hours at the Nehru planetarium and lame 3D theatre. However, as my housemates informed me, even though I hardly find it interesting, all of those places were definitely new to many ppl who come to visit Mumbai for the first time...b/c you can't find them anywhere else in India. 

A family going about having lunch despite their surroundings.

 I like how carefree families can be; they just plop down anywhere and have lunch while others were hustling and bustling around them. My group were standing in line to get on the ferry. We took a 40 minute ferry ride around Mumbai’s bay. Even though I understood nothing what the young guide was saying in Hindi, I enjoyed the slow ferry ride very much and the warm breeze blowing and cooling my body.

Gate of India...where we waited in line for the ferry.

 After that we went to a small park and then to Juhu beach where there were lots of people. While waiting for the bus to come and pick our party back to the dropping point, I spotted a group of kids drawing in the sand oblivious to everything around them. Both girls realized that I wanted to take a picture and they were very curious. Every time I clicked, they all swarmed around me to see the picture and got even more excited when I showed it to them. Finally I wanted to take a picture of the entire group and it was nice to see how the boys all got into the picture quite nicely. 

This one is a keeper!

This Mumbai trip made me realize that I didn’t come to India to see tall buildings or science museums...there are plenty of that at home. However, the beauty and simplicity of Indian children and their happy faces made this whole trip worthwhile.

I had a great time staying with the boys in the group. Indian's hospitality is really something to experience firsthand. I've never seen any group ppl that are so kind and welcoming, but then my Mumbai housemates cautioned that I should really have to be careful b/c in some parts of India where poverty is rampant it can be very dangerous for women and men.