Bye Bye Mumbai

Taj Palace Hotel & Gateway to India

 Monkey Theif

Elephanta Caves

Dabba Walla

Jan. 22, 2013-Island Shrine

Our day started with a short walk to the Gateway of India, an arch across the street from our hotel. We got a lesson from Tomji on avoiding hawkers & beggars. The Hindi word "jo" supposedly means "go" but they're persistent. He explained how beggars rent babies to make themselves look more pathetic. He related a story about a working couple who hired a nanny & wondered why their new baby was so lethargic at the end of the day. The mother came home early one afternoon & the baby was gone. It seems that the nanny was drugging the baby & renting it out to beggars. The Indian Mafia lives.

After ogling the landmark Gateway we boarded a ferry at the end of the jetty. Well, we boarded two boats before we got to ours. We leapt from one lurching boat to the next until we got to the third one, ours. Someone asked where the life jackets were. Tomji looked confused & thought there were none.

We were heading for Elephanta Island, an hour away. The boat ride was a good chance to kick back & enjoy the sea breeze. There wasn't much to see since the smog was thick enough to obscure what we were assured was a magnificent view of downtown. It was eerie floating through a blanket of haze going who knew where.

Elephanta Island was so named in the early 1600's  by the Portuguese when they found the island & the elephant statue guarding the temple. They stole the elephant, shipped it to Portugal & either misplaced it or someone stole it from them.

The island is inhabited by about 8,000 people who work in the tourist trade there. We were warned about another hazard, monkeys. They're very aggressive & we were told not to buy sweet drinks like Coke or they'd snatch it from our hands. They're not interested in water. Vendors have trained some of the stray dogs to try to keep the monkeys at bay. It didn't seem to work too well as we watched a dog watch a monkey burrow into a burlap sack of corn.

We boarded a toy train to travel the peninsula to the caves. It was kind of a kick riding the red & yellow rickety open air train pretending we were kids at an amusement park. And this did turn out to be amusing. We had to climb one hundred twenty steps to the entrance of the caves past a gauntlet of vendors. Tomji suggested we shop on the way down. it was good advice because the stalls were all burning incense & it was all I could do not to choke on the smell.

Spelunking

The caves are really temples hollowed out of the black, blue, & yellow basalt first by Buddhists around 3 BCE & then imitated by Hindus from 2AD-1100. The cave we saw took about two centuries to finish. Time has taken its toll & the predominant color is black. Muslims arrived in the 4th-6th centuries & began defacing the statues & frescoes in the caves. The  Portuguese continued the destruction using the images for target practice. It was amazing there was anything left to this World Heritage site. The carvings were massive & the requisite linga was there in all its glory since this was Shiva's temple. I didn't know the name of the platform the linga sat on before, but it's a yoni. That's the depiction of the female sex organ. The linga never goes anywhere without its yoni.

So if the ceilings of a cave are to be painted how do you get enough light in? Glad you asked. Torches leave soot. What to do? The solution was so clever. They flooded the cave floor, painted the ceiling white, & used the outside light reflecting on the water & white ceiling so they could decorate said ceiling. Unfortunately, nothing is left of those decorations so maybe that's another tall tale.

Tomji was a good story teller & filled us in on the depictions of the carvings. The stories are gory & violent with strong moral messages aplenty. He discussed the problem the older Hindu religion had with the upstart Buddhists. Buddhism was stealing the show so Hinduism added Buddha as the ninth of ten incarnations of Shiva in addition to Krishna, et. al. Ah, but what was the tenth? That is to be revealed. They are still waiting for his coming. Sound familiar?

Seats were limited on the boat ride back. I ended up sitting next to a couple from Boston who were in India for the third time. Someone else in our group was next to a Unitarian minister from Tampa. After we debarked, she introduced the minister to David. They chatted a bit & she asked David if he'd come to her church to speak. I hope he told her he'd only come in the winter.

We boarded our bus from Zubin's Royal Fleet (a reminder of Zubin Mehta's heritage) & went in search of dabba wallas. No, they're not the laundry guys. These wallas deliver lunches per my email yesterday. It was all started by the British around 1890 because they didn't like the spices in Indian cooking. When they took their lunch break there was nothing they wanted to eat. We were late getting there but we did see a walla on a bike laden with many & various colors & styles of lunch boxes. Quite the balancing act. Daily, 2,000 meals are transported by 5,000 workers. I know the math doesn't work but what happens is that boxes are sorted by one group, delivered by another, & cleaned by yet more.

Our Exodus

Our hotel rooms were ours until 4:30pm when we left for the airport. We showered & changed into our "up north" clothes. & finished packing. We were told it was a two hour trip in rush hour. They weren't wrong. I fell asleep a half hour into it & woke a half hour later to find us still in downtown Mumbai. When we were finally in sight of the airport on the far side from the terminal I joked it would take us a half hour to get there. I wasn't wrong.

Air India is living up to its reputation as the crown of incompetence. Check in was complicated by our flight being cancelled & our transference to an earlier flight. We were to fly from Mumbai to Delhi, stay on the same plane & fly to JFK. Due to the cancellation of the original flight we had to change planes in Delhi & go through security again. Our tickets were fine but for a still unknown reason the others in our group weren't in the computer or the computer terminal wouldn't work or their names were spelled wrong or some other excuse. We went through immigration & security without them since instead of having two hours until our flight boarded we only had half an hour. I do love that they have a separate immigration line for senior citizens, handicapped, & families with children.

We all did make the flight & sat on the plane for one and a half hours waiting for passengers coming from another flight. It was sweltering. Call buttons went crazy until some flight attendant thought to pass out water. At one point the entire plane went dark. I guess Indian blackouts extend to planes as well. Since this airline was taken over by the government no incentives are paid so no one cares. One of our group flew from JFK to India with a non-functioning seatbelt. They paid no attention when he pointed it out. True to form we had an overflowing bathroom & stopped sink by the end of the trip. Replenishing toilet paper was an issue, but we still had the roll we copped from a hotel early in our trip & kept in our backpack. And that brings me to the Indian handshake. David came out of the toilet of the plane doing it. There were no towels to dry your hands as there are rarely any in Indian toilets. Some provide liquid soap & all have sinks, but few have thought to provide hand towels. Thus people wave their hands about to dry them.

We were a flying day care center. I know there were more than a dozen kids under five on the flight. It was rare that one wasn't crying and I don't mean whimpering. They screamed as if they were being murdered. It wasn't a matter of air pressure on their tender ears since it happened during the fourteen hours we were at cruising altitude as well as during take-off and landing. And somehow the flight crew didn't think it hazardous when they had an impromptu soccer game in the aisle. We took our Ambien & got to sleep for about four hours, then one hour, then two more all interrupted by crying or food service. For some reason they felt compelled to feed us a snack, breakfast, then lunch.  But I felt sorriest for the parents who had to deal with their kids.

Just as we cleared Greenland we hit some turbulence which added to our inability to sleep. One desperate passenger heard us discussing the Ambien & asked to borrow one. We complied although we shouldn't have given a prescription drug out. Hope he's not a narc.

Speaking of the benefactor of our drugs. He was one among many Sikhs. He was a real character and from the moment we boarded he was intent on re-arranging the seating so all the children were in the other compartment & he had at least one vacant seat next to him. He failed, thus the request for Ambien.

Our flight contained representatives from all major and some minor religions in the world. There were the Sikhs, Hindus, a Buddhist monk in saffron robes, Muslims, Christians, & four Jews we know about.

The  day started with our 7AM wake up call & wound down when we got to JFK about thirty-six hours later. We landed in New York at 7:45AM & it was10AM when we got through immigration & customs lines to the hotel. How out of it were we? We went to the cafe for coffee. David went to get a napkin & came back with an empty plate instead.

Why Oh Why?

Although it may not seem as I write in a state of exhaustion, I meant it when I said before that this is one of the best trips we've taken. So, you may ask, why do we do this to ourselves? We asked that question frequently as we prepared for the trip & during our weeks away. The answer lies somewhere in the realm of wanting controlled adventure (hunting for tigers), learning of what we didn't realize we didn't know (how silk moths mate), meeting interesting people (Charles & fellow travelers), being surprised ( by an elephant strolling towards us in a village), being challenged ( remembering not to rinse the toothbrush under the tap), trying new things

(riding standing up in the back of an open pick-up truck), surviving (diarrhea, constipation, bronchitis, aggressive massages), realization (medical care in India is really good), & pushing ourselves beyond what we thought we could do ((climbing a mountain before breakfast to find that tiger). We're not quite home yet.

 And I do it to entertain you. Without you who read these emails, I wouldn't have such a record of our trips, trials, & tribulations. It's all better in hindsight & without the glitches & unexpected adventures there would be no story to tell. Thank you all once again for joining me on this journey.

Toby