Sovereign Nations

I shot this from our internet balcony at the Hotel New Bengal in Mumbai…

I think it is the tower at the Crawford Market, we’ll see I guess, I mean being as though we will be living on the trains for a month and that will be our starting place…

It’s not actually midnight – it’s actually about 2am. With my time difference, it makes it midafternoon to some part of my hind brain, but the rest of me feels like going to sleep – again.

I haven’t been able to do much yet. Once we got off the plane (the less said the better about that), it was all about overload. I’d heard this before, but since I have no experience in traveling outside the US, how could I have guessed what it meant?

We tried to find the driver from our hotel. (Paid dearly for the luxury of being picked up by someone who knew exactly where he was going.) After a few minutes of waiting, I got put into the role of stupid tourist by a vendor who was giving me change. He gave me 400 rupees in change for a 500 rupee bill, and when I asked for the rest of the money, he went all blank faced. Well, I wasn’t about to start crying or yelling that he was a thief or anything, but it did start me off on the wrong foot.

The next happening was wonderful, though. The driver walked by and I got his attention. He was from the right hotel, but had the wrong name on his board. After a few minutes on his cell phone with the hotel desk, he loaded our bags onto a cart and took us to the car. The wonderful part was the drive. It was terrifying in some part of my mind, but most of me was absorbed in trying to make sense of what I saw.

I saw:

burned out buildings that had been resettled

travel businesses that looked open at 11pm

traffic that melded and separated in a dance that mesmerized

people sleeping on the ground

people gambling on a 20 foot tall bridge support without a bridge

And more, of course. My overall impression of Mumbai from the drive from the CSIA down to the Crawford Market was of the Mission District in SF with fewer building codes. It was awesome and overwhelming. It was definitely not where I came from.

James and I slept until about 7am after settling in a little after midnight. We got up, wandered around, showered, had breakfast (delicious), and went back to the room for our bags before taking a walk. Instead, we crashed again. We slept another 10 hours, got up about 8pm, had another fabulous meal, and now I’m on the internet. In other words, I still haven’t seen much of Mumbai.

I love the smell, so far. I love the sights. It’s a lively city, and I can’t wait to go walking. I’m still intimidated by the opportunities to be misunderstood, but I hope that I meet more forgiving people than unyielding people, and that I meet more teachers than dismissing people.

As I’ve been saying for months now, we’ll see!

…25 hours on a plane with a screaming child behind me was the longest flight I’ve ever been on.

We showed up and our driver from the Hotel New Bengal was not there.

We waited, called and waited some more.

A driver from our hotel showed up but he was after another fair but when he called the hotel to find out where the other guy was they told him to bring us back with him…

There is no way for me to accurately describe the 30km drive from the airport to the hotel. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it before. They have no traffic cops and their insurance establishment doesn’t run their country like in the U.S. so people just drive any-ol-way they feel like and it seems to work some how.

…We slept, allot!