Wow, what a day. It is going to be hard for me to write about everything I saw today because we saw so much. I will upload some pictures but if you want to see all 100 or so pictures I took today check out this link to the photobucket website where I uploaded all of them.
http://s138.photobucket.com/albums/q257/mvaneps/India/
India is like no place I have ever seen before. I don't want to sound too negative but if I had to sum it up in 3 words it would be old, dirty, and crowded. There are people everywhere. India is a place of extremes, you are either extremely rich and the place you live are extremely nice or you are extremely poor and you live in the worst conditions you could imagine by US standards. There is a middle class but I think it is small. India's predominant religion is Hindu and the traditional Hindu believe in the caste system where you are born into a class and you have to live your entire life there. This isn't strictly the case today but I think when you start out that way it takes a long time to evolve to be anywhere near the western nations are.
All the buildings look really old on the outside and I doubt many of them have had a fresh coat of paint in my lifetime. Once inside many of the buildings things are nice and the exterior seems deceptive. There are poor people everywhere. Our hotel is outside of the city by about an hour and driving to the city I was immediately shocked at the site of some of the shanty towns that had grown as high as 5 stories. They looked a lot like a house of cards and it seemed like they were primed for disaster.
People often go to a new city in the US and say "you wouldn't believe the drivers there, they are the worst I have ever seen". All I have to say is you haven't seen nothing until you have ridden in a car in Mumbai. There are lines in the road to seperate the lanes but it doesn't appear that anyone really cares about them. I mentioned before that everyone honks their horns all the time. You felt like your life was at risk every time you tried to cross a busy intersection. I am sooooooo glad we hired a driver because I don't know how we would have done it if we tried to drive a car on our own.
The first place we visited was called dhobi ghat. Dhobi ghat is an outdoor laundry place where men have these stone pits of water and they take your clothes and beat the living daylights out of them in the water to clean them. They hang them up on lines to dry. Our guide said it was amazing that despite the way the water looks your clothes would come back clean as a whistle. The men pick the clothes up at your house and return them a week later. She said they most they make is about .25 cents per item and usually less. At dhobi ghat we had our first taste of the street people. They seem to be everywhere and when they realize you are a tourist you are their prime target. Many try to sell you trinkets or postcards and they don't seem to understand the word no. One indian girl, who was quite beautiful, kept asking me to buy some postcards. She just kept asking over and over and over until I finally got into the car to leave. Our guide gave us our first lesson on dealing with them and that message is just to ignore them at all costs. It seems very rude and is a little hard to do because you feel bad but even acknowledging them by saying no will keep them coming at you. The sad part is the kids. They come up to your car when you are at a stoplight and knock on the window. It is hard seeing them.
We also visited an outdoor market that was called the Crawford market. It was huge and there were several different sections. There was a section with fabric, a section with fruit and veggies, a section with birds, and a section with spices. It was the first place we really were immersed in the people. The streets were dirty and really crowded. A lot of the pictures I took were from the market because there were so many extraordinary things to see there. Most of the stuff there was really low quality kind of the like the flea market in the US. Many people stared at us because a group of white people really stood out in the crowd. They all wanted us to buy things from them. There was one lady in our group and I saw and older man pass by and intentionally touch her with his hand. In the middle of all these people cabs and other cars would try to make their way down the streets constantly honking their horns. There were lots of poor people looking through the trash and begging for change. I am not even sure why they had dumpsters because there was trash everywhere on the ground.
We visited other places too but I am running out of time and this is probably going to turn into a novel. We went to large monument called The Gateway of India. I think it was the eastern most point of Mumbai and right on the ocean. Mumbai started out as a fishing village so we also went to an authentic fishing village. We visited the Afghan Church which was built by the english to commemorate a battle they had with Afghanistan. All the seats in the church had a place to put your gun. We went to a really old and luxurious hotel called the Taj Mahal hotel. We visited Ghandi's house in Mumbai, a Museum with some ancient artifacts from thousands of years ago, we went to a man made garden on the top of a hill called The Hanging Gardens because it looks like it is just hanging on the top of the hill, we visited the central train stations which millions of passenger pass through every day. Our guide told us the trains are built for 1500 people but often carry as many as 4000 pack inside like sardines. We also drove by many other things.
All in all today was a once in a lifetime experience for me. I ended the day really appreciating life in the US. I will write more tomorrow but I have to head out to dinner and drinks with a couple of people from the company we are visiting in Mumbai.
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