Hi!
So here we are in Mumbai! This city is actually incredible. From the moment we arrived we could tell we were thousands and thousands of miles away. This city is just so completely different from anything I’m used to, from huge cities in Europe to small towns in South America, Mumbai is definitely the most breathtakingly amazing and of course, different. Let me start from the very beginning, when we left Jerusalem.
We left very very very early in the morning, actually closer to very late at night for me, at 3 a.m. was when our Sherut would drive us to the Airport. So, I decided that since I don’t do well during early morning car trips, we’d trick my stomach and pretend it was just a late night one, which worked perfectly! I stayed up all night and fell asleep instantly during the car ride to the airport in Tel Aviv. We arrived around 4 a.m. (exactly 3 hours before our flight at 7) and the security was very efficient, though I have to say, they did ask us some pretty strange questions, all for our safety of course. We left Tel Aviv on time, and I was definitely very sad to go. We had spent a whole month in the same place; don’t tell me you wouldn’t be attached to a place after that amount of time! It was also very sad to leave our dear friend and, Nurit. She was extremely nice, funny and very easy to live with. We had a great time together, so you can understand why leaving Israel for India was very gloomy. We had almost 2 whole days of travelling ahead of us, and were not excited about it! When we arrived in London, a little before noon (London time), we had 10 hours to spare. 10 miserable hours. Fortunately, my mom was very nice and bought us access to the internet to pass the time. Once we had that, it almost seemed like 10 hours was too short! Well, maybe not, but it was better. We boarded our plane at 9 and took off for Mumbai. I remember I was so excited, I didn’t know what it would be like… at all. We arrived in India in the morning, got our entire luggage and stepped outside, into a whole different world.
First of all, it was scorching hot and sunny. There were men in full business suits and women in long saris, some of them even covering their whole bodies. For us, we were dying in the heat. The people of Mumbai must find weather in the 30’s Celsius refreshing. To them hot is the 40’s in the summer, though they also have crazy monsoons during that time. It’s very humid here, but the weather is just extraordinary. We had someone drive us to the hotel, and during the ride we definitely got a taste of Mumbai life. The steering wheels are on the right side and they drive on the left side, which is already very strange for us to see. On top of that, there are practically no lanes! Everyone just speeds and drives on top of each other. The car ride was a bit… frightening. We also got to see the outside houses of the slums. This was like something I had never seen before. Houses made out of cloth, scraps of metal, anything they can find. We also saw on the other side of the road, highway passovers with people building houses and living there. Apparently if you are new to the slums, you have to pay an amount of money to live in one of the houses though don’t have to pay rent or anything else, just one payment at the beginning. Though, apparently slum dwellers have made the prices so high, newcomers can’t even afford to live in the slums! Imagine that! People who can’t even afford to live in the cheapest, most low maintenance, shack houses. Those people are then forced to wherever they can have a roof over their head, Highway overpasses work for them. They live in dirt and filth, exactly like the slums, though they have no running water or electricity and aren’t even part of a community. Seeing these people is so extremely heartbreaking. Once we arrived at our hotel we were very tired and decided to just stay in, hang out and rest. My mom fell asleep very quickly, and fell asleep for hours! When she woke up we went for dinner at the Indian restaurant in the hotel. First off, the food was incredibly spicy, not even comparable to the “Indian” food in Montreal. Second, the service was somewhat amazing, somewhat… annoying. The waitresses and waiters (any staff here for that matter!) are very nice and smiley, though a little too much. They treat you as if you’re the King and Queen. At the restaurant they kept on coming back dishing the food onto our plate, asking if you needed anything, asking this and that and so on. They were very nice but after a while it gets a bit annoying and pretty funny! When they started saying “There’s only 3 shrimps left!” or “Are you sure you don’t want any more!?” that’s when we couldn’t help but laugh, it was pretty funny and we definitely were not used to it! After a spicy but very good dinner we went to our room ad fell asleep right away!
Yesterday we went to visit the Dharavi slums, the biggest slum in Asia. It covers 6% of Mumbai’s land, though 50% of the population live in this slum. I don’t think I’ll even be able to describe this experience. We went with a guide, a man living in the slums who knows his way around and a driver to bring us to the different areas. It was a private tour and our guide was incredible! She knew what she was talking about and told us a lot about every aspect of slum life. As I said earlier, some of their houses are made out of anything they could find, though some of them are actually made out of real materials for house building. It seemed almost as if there were different classes, since some of the houses (more like rooms actually) had tiled floors, televisions and real kitchens! We visited the different work areas, the leather making, pottery making, embroidery, markets etc. The conditions these people work in are scary! They cram many men or women (usually never together) in small dark rooms with no air conditioning and just maybe a couple small fans. There aren’t any second exits, fire extinguishers or safety measures. Though, these people smile at you, show you their work! It’s amazing! The kids walking the streets barefoot (Yes, like in Slumdog Millionaire) smile, laugh, say hi and even once asked for our names. The life and energy is exceptional, the living and working conditions is a whole other story. They have hope, love and life in their eyes. They didn’t want our money; they didn’t want anything from us. They just wanted us to acknowledge them, to say hi, to smile. It was as if with every smile and every laugh they were saying “I’m ok. I’m happy.” And that was amazing. Peter, the man living in the slums taking us around even brought us to his house. He had a 2 room house (Bedroom/ living room/ main entrance and the kitchen) with a room upstairs, and a family of 7, not including his brother’s family living upstairs. We just couldn’t even imagine. 7 people and 2 rooms, each the size of my mom’s bathroom. We got to meet his ADORABLE 6 year old twin daughters, his mom and dad and his wife. His family seemed really lovely and they just couldn’t stop smiling. It was great just to see that having visitors was so special to them. The girls got especially excited when my mom asked to take a picture of them, it was adorable. We left after short while and continued walking around. The smells in the slums were almost unbearable. I could have sworn, while walking through the residential district that there was pee all over the ground. There were tons of flies all over the place; I can’t even imagine what kind of bugs they have. I will never complain about the teeny bugs we have in Canada, actually that’s hard to say. Though, I definitely will be mucchhh more grateful of what I have. Seeing these people living in such horrible, gut-wrenching conditions with smiles on their face is… indescribable. I can’t even tell you what it feels like to see that. Our tour was 3 hours long, and the day was extremely hot. It ended around 1 p.m. and we were driven back to our hotel. The whole tour was great and our guide was especially amazing. She really talked to us the whole time and answered our questions thoroughly, and best of all… she didn’t act like the service at the hotel. She acted like she was our friend and it was really nice.
Today, my mom was doing her conference so I got to sleep in, and sat by the pool while writing and relaxing. I thought a lot about what we saw the past couple of days and how Mumbai is just so extremely different from everything I’m used to.
See you next time!