Having Fun as a Tourist in Mumbai

I’ve had a fun (and much less emotional) couple of days. I had one informative business meeting on fair trade distribution (and due to traffic here it took me FIVE hours to complete it – crazy, how do you get anything done here?). My other meetings were cancelled and I got stuck here an extra day (it is Diwali this weekend – the Hindu version of Christmas – and plane ticket prices skyrocketed before I bought a ticket home) so I decided to enjoy some sightseeing in Mumbai.

I did some shopping, ate at McD’s again (yum! I prefer the McVeggie to the chicken version of the Big Mac that I tried last time), watched the local fisherman haul in their fish (again, not a sight that makes me want to eat fish here), visited a Gandhi museum, the Gateway to India, the outside of the Taj Palace hotel (which has been closed for the past year since the tourist shootings), the Hanging Gardens (very pretty) and the Jain temple (which is the best temple I’ve probably ever visited). My tour guide said that devout Hindus visit the temple every day!An interesting sign at the temple said “Ladies in monthly period are not allowed”.
I also viewed the outside of a tower where Parsi (a unique group of people in India) take their dead to decompose in the open and be eaten by eagles and vultures. Parsis are into that method, while Hindus still burn the bodies of the dead and Christians… I think they just bury or cremate them.

India is so fascinating because the diversity is like nothing you’ll experience anywhere else! I also visited the city Laundry area. Apparently when I turned in laundry at my hotel (and thought they stuck it in a machine somewhere), it ended up here at the city Laundry – being washed by hand on rocks with dirty water. Nice…. Glad I paid for that service. And I was wondering why I didn’t smell any laundry detergent : ) (thankfully my host family back in Bangalore DOES have a washing machine and they use detergent – but no one owns a dryer so everything is still hung to dry). While I’d prefer my clothes to not be washed here, witnessing the hundreds of people doing laundry by hand at this place was a really interesting experience – one that I definitely recommend if you’re ever in Mumbai.

Later I caved in when I ran into a spa. I got a mani/pedi (sans polish) and a massage. The mani/pedi not half as good as home (but boy did my feet need it since the streets of India are GROSS), but the aromatherapy massage was incredible. Ahhhh – what a treat!

Tonight I met Padmini’s brother-in-law for a nice dinner (Padmini is a coworker and friend from back home who kindly put me in touch with her friends and family in India). Indian hospitality is so incredible that even though he had never met me, he drove 2 hours to come take me to dinner!!! Amazing… We had a very interesting conversation on why arranged marriages (such as his) tend to work out. He said that if you fall in love first you have high expectations that you’ll always be treated well and you are often let down. But in an arranged marriage, you go in with absolutely no expectations so you can’t be disappointed (and you may be pleasantly surprised). While I still would choose the love option, I agree with him that much of happiness is dependant on where you set your expectations.


Tomorrow I head back to Bangalore, so I’ll miss the big night of fireworks – they call them “crackers’ - here in the city for Diwali (the festival of Lights).