A shorter blog today as the monsoon made an unreasonable return to Mumbai today, which curtailed our activities as the rain set in and the roads started to flood. Added to that, the guide I thought I had for three days failed to materialise today. It seems there was some misunderstanding and he was only available for one day. This left it to the driver to take us to some of the places we hadn’t seen yet.
Our first stop was a part of the Dharavi Slum. The slum was created in the 1860’s when the British expelled all the people who lived in the central city so they could build all the british institutional buildings (courts, railway stations etc…). Over time, rural migrants have also come to live in the slum, swelling its numbers to over 700,00. It has its own ‘cash’ economy and many goods are manufactured for the export market (textile and leather goods in particular). The houses are small and often in poor condition and there are open sewers traversing the area which present odour and disease problems. We didn’t take any photos as we both felt that we’d made a choice to experience the slum, but also wanted to respect the residents’ rights to some privacy. (Well maybe one photo)
It was one of those experiences that makes you value the basics that we take for granted, like running water, flushing toilets and a solid roof over our heads.
From there we drove to ‘Lands End’. This is a very exclusive area, where many of the Bollywood actors live. It also has a park at the point where you can see Mumbai’s famous Bandra Bridge, which is 2.3 kilometres long and takes about 40 minutes off a cross-town trip.
At the park there was a clear example of the way Indians like to pay heed to the signs placed for safety reasons.
We then drove through the shopping district and as the rain got heavier and the roads started to fill with water, though it best to head back to the hotel, where we have rested up for the afternoon. The music is blaring outside and the fireworks are going off for the Gansha festival, so good to see the rain isn’t putting a dampener on that. It remains to seen whether we’ll get much sleep!
Until tomorrow!
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