Meandering through India

I have not written in a few days because I have been struggling with a head cold and tried to get to sleep - the past few nights - as soon as we finished dinner. Nothing serious - just annoying. We stopped at a pharmacy today and - after much charades - got some prescription cough mixture and a tablet decongestant. The total bill... for 2 prescriptions AND a tube of toothpaste ... $3.22. You'd add two zeroes to that price in the US plus need a doctor's visit and a prescription. Here's hoping our charades were understandable and I'm not taking anti-worm medication. To get caught up I'll just hit the highlights of the past few days. If you want more detail, read my sister Heidi's blog at heidihutchblog.wordpress.com (she's been doing a much better job than me of staying current).
The last few days have been amazing. We arrived in Mumbai from the North by hopper flight (easy peesy). The next morning we set out to see the city. We hired a tour group to take us all over so we could see the sites quickly (and with some explanation). We started the day with a tour of the Dharavi slums. Our guide was a kid who was born - and has lived all of his life- in that slum. He's now a university student, his english was excellent (he also speaks 4 or 5 additional languages - it's so humbling) and he was very open and informative about what we were seeing.

We started off in the industrial section where he showed us how aluminum is recycled, the slum bakery which supplies most of the expensive pastry shops in town with puff pastry (made with an extra flavoring of sweat as the men kneading the dough are working in 100+ degree weather and without gloves or hair nets or anything), the entire process of recycling cardboard, plastics, oil drums... you name it and it is cleaned, repaired, re-used or broken down and turned into something new in the slums. Every person works. There is less than 1% unemployment. The daily wage is $2.50 US. The conditions are horrendous but the sense of community is impressive. In this slum, Muslims, Hindus and Christians live and work together - side by side. There are 1 million people in an area half the size of New York's central park!!! It is impossible to describe the sights - and the smells. Let's just say that human feces is a common finding. It's stunning to appreciate that thousands more arrive every day because this slum life is better than the village life that they have where there is work at all.
After that rather sobering experience, we went to the house where Gandhi lived during the last few decades of his life. It is now a museum and even has a room filled with dioramas depicting the most important events in his life. Gandhi's principle philosophy was that no man should be discriminated against because of his religion, color of his skin or what caste he was born into. Basically: since we cannot control where we are born or who are family are, no- one should judge us for that. We can only control what we do with our lives and what we become. It is seems simple but it is really a core message of love / acceptance and the foundation of a peaceful life. To see - in one setting - all the ways Gandhi embraced that philosophy was inspiring.
Interesting fact that I did not know before: One of Gandhi's staunch supporters was a man named Nehru. His wife died when his only daughter was little so he brought his young daughter with him whenever he stayed / visited with Gandhi. Her name was Indhira Nehru. After Gandhi's murder, Indihra married a man whose last name was Gandhi (although he was no relation to Mahatma). Many say she married him only for his surname as she separated from his soon after the wedding. She became the prime minister of India in the 1980s - Indhira Gandhi - and was the first Indian leader to try and address the awful over-crowding through the use of public education campaigns on birth control. She used a symbol of FOUR monkeys to get her point across... see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.. and the fourth monkey had crossed arms over its crotch to symbolize restraint in the number of children. Sadly, we all know the end of her story... shot and killed by her own bodyguards.
Then it was on to the Dbhobi Ghats where men stand in concrete stalls -knee deep in dirty water all day - washing by hand thousands of pounds of hospital uniforms and bedding, hotel sheets and towels, household clothes etc. It is back breaking work. Every article is first scrubbed with large cakes of soap on a steel table, then the clothes are beaten against the concrete sides of the ghat to dislodge all dirt, rinsed, wrung out, hung to dry on rope lines on the roof (Segregated according to type and color of clothing) and finally ironed with an iron filled with hot coals (no electricity used). No one seems to appreciate that when you wash and rinse in water that is muddy brown, clean is not actually going to be the outcome. Washed - yes. Ironed - yes. Clean - no.

We then went for a walk in the hanging gardens. There was a whole busload of school kids on a field trip having lunch in the gardens. Whereas I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my lunch box, they all had .. you guessed it.. curry !!!

Next up, we drove by the Tower of Silence. The Tower of Silence is a holy place for Pharsees (not sure on spelling) where their bodies are taken after they die. For a few days, the body is cleansed and prayed over by the family within the Tower of Silence complex. Then the body is taken to a marble slat over a well, the bowels and torso are cut open and the body is left for the crows and vultures to dispose of it. You can see the Tower of Silence's location from almost anywhere in Mumbai because it's got a black cloud of circulating carnivorous birds above it.
We did quick stops at some of the historic buildings including Victoria Terminal (the main and central train station which 7 million people use each day: traveling from the suburbs for work). It has a new name (like Mumbai has replaced Bombay) but I can't remember it. The train station is like a English manor house ... rising out of the squalor of the city. What a conflict: whole families living on the streets and in the gutter right outside this stately mansion.

Then - just to really blow our minds - we had lunch at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel (one of the most expensive hotels in the world). We walked by the Dior and Prada stores in the lobby to go into the fancy restaurant and spend - literally - a year's salary for a man in the slums on lunch. (Shamefully, I must admit that the food was great). What a city of disparity... from gaudy wealth to startling poverty.
That afternoon - right after we got back to the hotel - our Tuk Tuks came driving in... fresh from a "tune-up" at a local mechanics. The boys had dealt - the evening before - with getting the Tuk Tuks out of the hands of the truckers (even refusing to pay the "as expected" ransom demands) and had taken them to a mechanic's shop for some much needed maintenance. I have to say, it was great to see them show back up... ready to set off for the rest of our trek.
We ended the day by going to a local cinema to see a real Bollywood movie. The ticket counter clerks could not imagine why we would be buying tickets for a Hindi-only movie and laughed and laughed when we said we were there to see the dancing. Quick fact... the cinemas sell a wide array of food including pizzas, wraps, full curries, popcorn and .. the best of all... warm corn (taken off the cob) and drizzled with butter, lemon juice and salt. You eat it with a spoon - so good !!! Our movie selection was "Daabang 2" - a completely over-acted action movie where the cops, bad guys and all random people in the street repeatedly burst into song and dance. There is also heavy audience participation as everyone in the theater talks back to the screen.
Sunday morning we set off early - to beat the Bombay traffic - and headed south. We had planned to put in a long, hard day and hoped to get to 260KMs. An hour outside of the city, RunAroundSue broke down.. dead, not turning on, nothing. With it being a Sunday, we were nervous we'd not get much assistance.. wrong again. First, a group of trucking clerks came running over from a trucking depot just across the road and called for a mechanic to come from his home to help. Then a man in a fancy car stopped to help. He told us he was a cop (and showed us his gun and badge to make his point... a somewhat alarming experience) and insisted on staying with us the 1 1/2 hour that it took for the mechanic to get there and fix Sue. Total cost... $8. The cop even drove down the road a bit - at one point - and brought back Chai tea and biscuits for us and refused to accept any money in return. People all around the world are surprisingly kind and generous. I hope to think I'd be as gracious. We even had another Tuk Tuk team stop and chat... a 3 man team from Australia. They've been doing 16 hour days to get down here (on the road by 5 AM and finding a place to sleep by 10 or 11 PM). We were all too embarrassed to say that we'd trucked our vehicles for part of the way... especially in the face of their dedication. But it was nice to chat with another team and hear their stories.
After another few hours on the road, a surprising find...we drove by an open air restaurant that seemed decent. We haven't had lunch yet on the open road as everything so far has been beyond dodgy. But there it was .... a normal looking place filled with people out for a Sunday drive. Very simple - and only Indian curries to choose from - but the food was outstanding. Spicy as hell (my mouth may never recover). We ate and ate and the bill was ridiculous. Just as an example, the cost for one large butter naan (a flat tortilla styled bread) was 21 cents.
The landscape is now so different than the north... greener, hillier, some rivers, less homeless, more people with shoes, towns (instead of villages) with booth-styled shops selling expired potato chips and hot drinks... altogether a more prosperous area.

And some amazing sites that you just wish you could capture on film: A flood of monkeys that jump into the road in front of you and stare you down refusing to move so you have to maneuver around them; a woman walking - miles from any sign of civilization - with 2 1/2 tons of bundled firewood on her head; dozens of school children beside the road who dance and sing and wave when we go by with delight as seeing something so unusual as white people in decorated tuk Tuks.

The roads were good enough that the girls drove again for some of the time... and my niece Savannah drove for much of one day (even though some of her stint was downright scary). She has nerves of steel. In the mornings, we drive through soft fog but it warms up quickly.

Last night we stayed at a very "humble" hotel right on the beach. Note to self... when an Indian hotel has the following on its website, expect less than luxurious accommodations: "comfortable," "casual, " "home-stay like quality." The place was not bad from the outside and was virtually alone on this bay, but the bed were thin pieces of foam on top of wooden boards and they provided no bedding beyond a coarse blanket. Luckily there was enough hot water dripping from the tap that you could collect it in a bucket and scoop the warm water over your head for a shower. We had fun walking on the beach ... a nice respite from being shaken, rattled and rolled in the Tuk Tuks.

And Chris lounged on the hammock after a heavy day of driving AND navigating.

Amazingly, at this place we ran into an incredible woman: Sandy Robson. She's an Australian kayak instructor who has decided to - on her own - retrace the path of a famous explorer and paddle from Germany to Australia. She started down the west coast of India a month ago and kayaked into our bay last night at sunset. Rainey got a great shot of her in the light.

We spent hours chatting with her and hearing about her adventures. And this morning we were part of her send-off party (which included almost everyone from the nearby fishing village - none of whom had ever seen a kayak before, far less a caucasian woman traveling alone in one). And we thought we were a spectacle. If you want to read more about her travels, look up her website: www.sandyrobson.com. I thought I was adventurous but I've got nothing on this woman.

We've had three relatively easy driving days in terms of mileage although the roads have been awful and we've been winding our way up and down hills (I had no idea that India was this mountaineous, we'd excepted a flat coastal road). We're heading for a town in the state of Goa: Anjuna as there is a "you are 2/3rds of the way there" party by the Adventurists (the people who organize this rally) on Wednesday night in that town. We are planning on being in Anjuna by tonight as there's a big market there tomorrow and the girls want to shop and buy some memories from the trip. (All fingers and toes crossed for no engine trouble or breakdowns).

This little cutey has never seen anything as weird as us....