Welcome to Mumbai
And so, we finally find ourselves settling into Mumbai life. The first thing we did, having checked into our hotel, was to go for a little wander to get our bearings. We found, within 100 metres of the hotel, a rather busy little area (actually quite big!) which we spent a little while exploring. There were shops selling fruit and veg, shops selling electrical goods, shops selling medical services, in fact shops selling everything one might imagine. We did get a few looks in there from people obviously not used to seeing westerners but it was a friendly and happy place which was bustling with people, street food sellers and the inevitable bikes ‘honking’ as they made their way perilously through the croups!
It turns out that we had inadvertently wandered into one of Mumbai’s many slums. Don’t get this wrongly, a slum is merely an area where millions of people live in very close proximity and who share a degree of poverty that many westerners would find uncomfortable … but they do not. Generally, the people living in the slums are happy and have great communities in which they live, work and play. One of the largest slums in Mumbai is very close to the airport. It can be seen just as one is landing (if one is lucky enough to do so without an unanticipated trip to Ahmedabad!). It is huge! The Government wanted to clean up the area so they built several blocks of purpose built flats very close to the slum and tried to move people out of the slum and into the flats – the project was a disaster … nobody wanted to move and they all felt a real loss of community. The flats stand empty while the slum is most definitely not!
So, having explored the nearest slum we went for a wander to see if we can find the hotel in which the conference is taking part where I am to speak later today and again tomorrow. We didn’t find it, although I thought we had from a photography I had seen but it appeared to be a private apartment block instead. It turns out now that I was right and that the private apartment block is in front of the hotel which is accessed from the adjacent road. Oh well, at least we know. The hotel where the conference takes place is adjacent to the number one shopping mall in Mumbai. Apparently there are 3.3 million square feet of retail space and over 500 brands. It is also, apparently, one of the best places to go to eat in the evening with many reasonably priced restaurants and bars to choose from.
This latter piece of information is good. We ate in one of our hotel restaurants yesterday evening. The food was OK but the bill for one main course each, a beer and a very small glass of wine was nearly £100! We won’t be regulars in there! In fact, the cheapest scotch in the hotel is £10 a shot, so even Captain Clarke went to bed sober last night! We were so tired that we didn’t need much persuasion to go to bed and I recall nothing until I woke an hour later and realised that (unlike Captain Clarke who was doing his impression of a warthog!) I was finding it difficult to sleep because my body clock was telling me that it was only 7pm and a little early for me to be in bed. Although I had a little trouble sleeping, I seemed to get the hang of it and eventually awoke this morning at 9.30! It is a good job I am not due at the conference until 2pm!
We took a leisurely breakfast with some delicious Indian fare including Kulche (a speciality of Mumbai which is a steamed bread), samosas, poha (a kind of crushed rice dish with spices) and dal shorva (a kind of Indian lentil broth). There is a full range of international foods too so we followed that up with eggs Benedict, just because we could! The tea was good (black, of course, I am not risking milk with my delicate constitution!) and the fresh orange juice was … freshly squeezed and quite delicious!
I now have to answer 550 million emails from participants in a panel I am chairing tomorrow (none of which will be interesting) and then Captain Clarke and I will go out exploring! We aim to procure some water (the hotel charges £2 for a tiny bottle) and a bottle of ‘Black Dog’ – whisky only available for purchase in India but actually made in Scotland that would give any UK based whisky a good run for its money but is really cheap here in India! The temperature here today is currently 26℃ and due to reach 28℃ a little later on. It’s tough being here!!
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