As our plane began to approach the airport in Mumbai (Bombay), India at 10:30PM I noticed something a bit different than I'm used to seeing when looking at a city at night. Normally you see large areas of lights that are in orderly rows. These might be roads with the lamps evenly spaced, rows of houses that are easily or tall buildings in a business district where the lights in the offices are evenly spaced. As I peered out the window I realised that there didn't seem to be any pattern to the spacing of the lights over the landscape. Although it was very dark this pointed to a place where things must not be built according to a plan but thrown up where someone decides they want something.
As the plane was landing the pilot stated that the temperature at our destination was 33 degrees celsius and 88 degrees fahrenheit. This is pretty warm and if you take into consideration that it was 11 at night you realise that the next day is going to be a scorcher!
The airport in Mumbai seems pretty old. In that respect it reminded me a bit of the old Ben Gurion terminal though not as well kept up. I was concerned that I might get some trouble going through customs since the picture on my passport is 9 years old, pictures me with a beard, and is very blurry. The woman didn't even give me a second look. There was a man waiting for us outside with a sign to take us to the Grand Hyatt hotel.
On the way there the streets were far from barren. There were plenty of people wandering the streets and plenty of people working. As we left the area of the airport we past a parking lot which must have easily had 500 of these narrow black taxis. These taxis share the streets with a sort of hybrid of a motorcycle and taxi. It has one front wheel and the driver uses a motorcycle handlebar but it has pedals, two rear wheels and the driver and passengers are all sitting inside. So far I have seen one red light and nobody seemed to pay it much attention. The way to the hotel was filled with small groups of people sitting outside their tin shacks around fires. It seems that this part of the city is a shantytown calle Santa Clara. I was quite surprised and asked how such a Spanish-sounding name ended up here in India. It seems that Western India was actually ruled by the Portugese for hundreds of years, from 1510 to 1961.
This morning as we drove through the city it seemed that everything was under construction, water piplines, underground cables, and everything was done by lots of people without much machinery. I even saw a man moving some stuff around with an elephant! Today I was told that this is not the real Bombay as it is not the actual city. Tonight we'll venture into the city and see what the real Bombay is like.
Posted by David at March 18, 2005 02:04 PM | TrackBack