Mumbai


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Other Posts in this area:
Mumbai Washing Ghats (1 miles) Back in Mumbai (2 miles) A/C tour around Mumbai (2 miles) Mumbai - Post 1 (2 miles)
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Couchsurfing

Nick - Sun 25 November 19.00
Clear
..and a part in a Bollywood movie hopefully!
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Mumbai - Arriving

Anthony - Mon 25 February 15.00
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What a flight........

Actually, we were close to missing it, but that's a different story...

So Air India had the curtesy to operate intercontinental flights on Boeing 767s which are probably as old as the airline itself. There were at least three babies within 5 seats (seats! not rows!) from where I sat, and since the plane was so old, there's no need to mention the inflight entertainment system, because there was none. Fine, who needs VOD if he's got books. And read i did. Everytime i was woken up by one of the babies. And the air in the cabin got so dry that it hurt, i'm not joking. I actually went to the toiled to get some wet tissue to breathe through, in the hope of moisturizing the air i breathed a little bit.

Apart from that, the flight was great...

Arriving at Mumbai airport, i couldn't really believe that we were in india. It's weird, in the past few years, i've flown, been living spread out in several countries essentially, and so got used to all the travelling, i guess. So arriving in Mumbai was really just a question of what language, how long is the queue and what does it smell of.

Speaking of the length of the queue, we cheekily snuck (is that the past of 'to sneak'?) past the long queue by just going through the first and business class passport terminal. What are they gonna do?

Immigration to India, after a few general questions like how long we were staying, and where, was quite easy and pleasant. I've had much more trouble and pain and many an argument trying to get into the UK - as an EU Citizen of Germany!

So anyways, after changing some money for an exorbitant rate at the airport, we got a prepaid riksha to Colaba, the very south tip of mumba.
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Mumbai - On Traffic

Anthony - Mon 25 February 16.00
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So the traffic in india is crazy. Well, it's not really crazy, it's just much more organic, and natural, in a way. It's like a bee hive on the road or a swarm of bugs heading into the same direction. So as messy as it seems, it works. Swarm intelligence 1, regulation 0. Nick rightly pointed out, that due to the large number of cars, the way things worked and the traffic throughput indian roads have, even though they are totally messy, it is probably faster than any traffic regulation could realistically achieve.

Constantly, you hear the horns of cars, rickshaws, trucks or bikes, signalling "im coming, i'm coing". Sounding the horn is not a form of complaint, but more of a warning. And at night, the headlights are used for that same purpose (and not used for lighting the road ahead!).

Everybody goes anywhere, i have been going down the 'wrong' side of the lane numerous times now, either in riskshaws, bikes or cars. it's amazing. I'll post a video of a rickshaw ride in a few days, once our video uploader works!

Due to the ginormous amount of two- and three-wheelers here, the pollution is very very bad. In Mumbai, there is a Sea Breeze every now and then clearing away the brown sticky cloud of pollution that is constantly hanging over the city. In pune, allegedly one of the most polluted cities in Asia (and therefore, the world), the air is much more stagnant, and during rushhour, it's exceedingly unpleasant to have to stop in traffic, or just to be on the road.

While surprisingly few accidents happen here, i've onlly seen two near-accidents so far, people still die on the road regularly. This is in addition to the pollution and ung cancer related deaths, of course!

I wanted to get a motorbike initially, but have scrapped the idea now because it's not quite worth it, too expensive, and also, it's an unnecessary risk to take for my stay in this country. Maybe one day, should i still be here, i'll get a Tata Nano?
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Mumbai - Meeting ANT

Anthony - Mon 25 February 16.00
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So after another terrible night for me, I was struck with some mysterious shoulder pain, possibly induced by the rather unmysterious ways of carrying of my backpacks, I slept in till about 14h.

nikesh arranged a meeting with vaibhav, our first and so far only external developer (and now we are not working with him anymore). He works for Ant Technology somewhere in the north part of Mumbai, which we, of course, will get to by 2nd class train.

After a quick taxi ride to the former Victoria Terminus, we faced something more similar to the image of Mumbai I had in my head. Lots of people on the street outside the station entrance, shouting and mingling, travellers rushing to and fro.

VT is the station so vividly described in shantaram, but we had to keep waiting for the mess or mass of people fighting over every inch of space. Of course we had to queue up and stuff, but really, it's all been ok!

We met Nilesh, Anupam and Vaibhav at their offices, had nice talks about things in general, and finally got to work more in person with Vaibhav.

Afterwards we had dinner with them. Ordered starters, which I thought were already main course, main course and beer. We talked about work/business but then I distracted to talk about politics, economics, india/china, the future... just so that it didn't seem too formal.

A lot of the talk obviously also revolved around how we would work together in the future, and even go as far as proposing future venture capital contacts in India or us meeting clients on their behalf in Pune... But I think despite our young age, we could show them that we are 'mature' and thoughtful. Even more, they totally understood our positions and points of view regarding taking risks and trying out things, and learning. For example, the fact that we took the train to vikroli ourselves, for the first time, seemed to have impressed them (but it's not a big deal really...!

After dinner we appropriately thanked them for their hospitality and went on an amazing rickshaw ride back to the station. From there, we took the slow train back again, which was again different and amazing. Completely empty, apart from one friendly and approachable fellow, and pleasant in temperature. Free to hang out of the open doors, enjoying the wind and sounds of railway travel.

Riding a train with open doors really does feel free!
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Dinner after Chowpatty Beach

Anthony - Tue 26 February 13.00
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For dinner we went to a place called Bademiya, a roadside BBQ-Grill type place with apparent city wide fame. It's like a roadside stand with 20 employees and they even have business cards!

We kindly refused the fried brain, but ordered the usual selection of meats. Amazingly, we're actually having beef, ie cow! How can that be, if the cow is a holy animal?
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