Mumbai Madness

My first weekend was spent in Mumbai, the world's most populous city, with a relative stranger. Turns out that Hessam (from Google's Dublin office) is a wonderful bloke and we had a fine old time exploring the city sights.

He's such a gentlemen that he has permitted me to steal an an excerpt from his AMAZING travel journal in order to bring you up to speed:

Since many of you have been asking me this pretty much every time we speak, I would like to go ahead and make an official statement; I’m now finally officially food-poisoned, are you happy now?! For the first time in my life, and it happened at Mumbai’s best restaurant Indigo.

I guess they gave the good piece of grilled fish to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who were among the list of guests this fishy evening. The rest of the crowd was by the way a mix of filthy-rich citizens, maybe not-so-rich but white westerners as well as ladies in hot pants (inappropriate in public anywhere really!) and fanatical cleavages.

To be honest, we didn’t “technically” see Brangolina (I prefer Pittolina), but they must have seen us (!!) since we sat right next to the entrance and were not expecting such an extraordinary visit. On our way out from Indigo the paparazzis asked us if we saw what Brangolina had ordered etc etc, and we went: “WHA-WHAT-WHO!?!?!”. Yes, we didn’t even know they were there…

I found Mumbai to be very metropolitan and clean with many old buildings and fine architecture and had a great time when I was still well. We arrived on Friday night and got to the hotel after midnight. Hotel City Palace is recommended in the Lonely Planet and was the only place with available rooms from the list of 15 hotels in the book. We paid 1650 rupees for a dbl room each with balcony and an excellent view of the Victoria Terminus station. The room itself was quite cramped and smelled of smoke; it did however the job and we didn’t really have much of choice.

We spent Saturday walking around the city in the hot-hot-heat visiting many of the famous spots, least inspiring being the Gateway of India and most memorable the colourful Colaba Market and afternoon beer at the legendary Leopold Café & Bar which dates back to 1871. We went to Chowpatty Beach to see the sunset which was quite an amazing view and the beach came to life after dark with people enjoying the cool air blowing in from the Arabian Sea. We left the beach heading for Indigo for dinner, and you know the rest!

Sunday we went together to Mani Bhavan, the building where Mahatma Gandhi stayed during 1917-1934 which was truly a moving experience. After that we headed to Mumbai’s Dhobi Ghat, where clothes are washed. Here, thousands of men wash thousands of kilos of dirty clothes brought from all over the city every day and I must say it was an original photo motif. We went on to the airport later where the taxi driver, just like any other in Mumbai, demanded the triple fare for the trip, which is otherwise CLEARLY visible on the outdated meter (the fare shown has to be multiplied by 13!). This did indeed call for Hessam’s dark sides, at that moment pitch black due to the added effect of food-poisoning, to come forward for a last row.

Thanks again Hessam... I promise that I'll try and work on some original content and photos!

Check out our Mumbai album here