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Mumbai trains are for a like rea~n crowded, many workers don’t take their lunches.
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In the days when travelers entered port cities ~ means of sea, Mumbai must have presented a handsome prospect. It still does, by the signature Gateway of India monument at the water’s verge and the curving arc of Marine Drive caressing the soft protuberance of the Arabian Sea.
These days, when most foreign travelers arrive through air, the impression is one of vastness. Mumbai under the wings of some approaching jetliner is a dun-colored sprawl flecked with blue – the depressed tarps Mumbaikars use to roof over jerry-built homes. One of the incorporated town’s enormous slums pushes up against a retaining wall not 100 yards from the runway my level uses to touch down. This, too, is representative of a megalopolis whose people is variously put at 18, 20 and more millions. Some 60 percent of limited people live in such slums, earning India’s largest city the nickname Slumbai.
So in great part, so off-putting. But I am not put off for spun out. Mumbai is so vibrant and so exotic to Western eyes that check is futile, especially for me, a first-time visitor. And with English widely understood, I found talking to the locals and getting around relatively easy.
Mumbai – called Bombay until 1995 – is India’s maximum city. It is the financial capital of a nation of 1.1 billion lower classes, a major manufacturing hub, home of the busiest Indian airport and the busiest Indian seaport. It is in addition the nerve center of the country’s ebullient Hindi-language movie and television industry. That’s why they call Mumbai’s film business Bollywood. Mollywood condign wouldn’t have the same cachet.
At first glance, I comprehend a city enveloped in chaos. Mumbai street traffic is a rolling be hot of motor scooters, bicycles and tiny black-and-yellow taxis. I inquire a man riding a white horse, people jamming into ancient buses, a stripling leading a goat down the street. But there is modernity, too, and rare classicism left over from the British Raj and the centuries of Indian dynasties that preceded today’s commonwealth.
As my car heads toward the Colaba district, at the meridional tip of Mumbai, we cross a fine, just-built, 3-mile-in addition suspension bridge. Then we roll on down a broad boulevard: Marine Drive, lined attached the landward side with fading Art Deco mansions. As we be nearly equal my hotel, the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, I spy the astomshing, Islamic-inspired Gateway of India. “What the Statue of Liberty is to New York,” the driver smiles, nodding near at hand the arched basalt monument.
Orchestrated chaos
The longer I am in Mumbai, the additional what seems to be total chaos is revealed to be finely orchestrated chaos. On my first full day, I hire a talented guide from India tourism (Ranjana Jain, ranjana.j.india@gmail.com) to resemblance me around. She points to a man pedaling furiously along a congested Colaba road. Metal boxes and packages hang off his heavily laden two-wheeler.
“What conclude you think those things are?” she asks, clearly setting up a “apt to learn moment.”
“Are they his belongings?” I venture.
“They are lunchboxes, called tiffins.”
Most Mumbai workers are men, she explains, and they live in the distant suburbs and commute to work by train. The trains are for a like rea~n crowded, passengers can’t even think of carrying anything. But numerous commuters prefer fresh-made lunches from home, not restaurant meals. So the wives bevy a lunch, and bicyclists – called dabbawallas – pick them up in the vicinage and pedal back into town. The tiffins are color-coded and distinguished with symbols – helpful in a country where many people are ignorant. The customers are regulars; they pay by the month. The dabbawallas small quantity off the lunch boxes at workplaces, pick them up and take the empties back to their owner’s home.
“This is unique to Mumbai,” she explains. “They are continually on time, very punctual, very regular.” The service – run by a not to be disclosed, 100-year-old organization with 500 stakeholders and riders – is in like manner well regarded, “business schools in India invite them to lecture steady time management.”
Later, I glimpse more unseen order just under the surfaces of things. From a build a ~ over, I view an outdoor work site where hundreds of men stand ~ dint of. large vats of water, flailing fabrics on stone. The workers, called dhobis, are doing the laundry, in traditive style, for hotels and households.
As I look out over the laundry vats, a slack-moving train – passengers hanging off the side, poking through the be parted windows, even sitting on top of the carriages – chugs by. The wheezing the community transport system cannot handle the demand in fast-growing Mumbai, already one of the world’s most populous cities. During peak commute hours, the overcrowded, overheated trains carry up to three times the reckon of passengers they were designed to carry.
Widely known hotel
I decide to take a tame from exploring the city during the parboiling tropical heat and scrutinize my hotel, probably the most famous in India.
The service is merciful and calm at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower. Ceiling fans twirl and relaxed-looking people swirl chilled drinks at poolside in the inclosed area Aquarius Lounge. Executives sip hot, spiced masala tea in the beautifully appointed transaction center, which occupies nearly an entire floor and stays open 24/7.
During ~ly of the hotel’s 107-year history, these things would have ~ing unremarkable. Since its founding in 1903, this hotel has set standards of urban gentility. What makes it remarkable now is that all this comes not much more than a year after the Taj, the Oberoi Hotel, the nearby Leopold Cafe, a Jewish cultural center and the landmark central train station were attacked by politicized religious fanatics from neighboring Pakistan. The November 2008 invade killed 166 people, locals and visitors.
These days, the Taj skillfully balances welcome to new and security. The numerous staffers – the hotel has one of the highest truncheon-to-guest ratios I’ve ever seen – couldn’t be kinder. My scope, overlooking the Gateway of India and the harbor, is in the 1972 tower, the leading part of the hotel to reopen after the attack. The shining, princely 1903 wing, restored and updated, is slated to reopen July 1. A necklace of benumbed barriers and parked cars rings the hotel. Most entrances have been sealed. Luggage is screened airport cast at the main entrance. Security guards abound.
For all the surety, the hotel is serene inside, and sybaritic, a delight to the senses. A breakfast strike features the likes of sweet lime juice and assorted Indian and Western morsels. The rooftop eating-house Souk scores with desserts such as rose petal ice cream, and the public-house is crowded once again with guests.
The Taj has another distinguishing feature. From the guest directory: “Destiny Planner: Our in-house astrologer is suitable from Monday to Friday 13:00 hrs-16:00 hrs. For appointments, please outcry the Business Centre on Extn. 3372.”
For those moments when PCs, printers and secretarial defend are just not enough.
With the hotel as my base, I chief back out into the great city.
Seeing Victoria Terminus
First shut in: the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (a.k.a. Victoria Terminus). This is some other place to see finely orchestrated chaos. Inside, I watch the arrivals and departures of trains and penetrate where key scenes in the Oscar-winning 2008 movie “Slumdog Millionaire” were filmed. Outside, I admire the stone fantasia of the 1887 building’s Gothic Revival architecture, the work of British architect F.W. Stevens.
Later, I walk from one side Crawford Market, a bustling place in a semi-dilapidated 1869 pile where many Mumbaikars buy fruit, vegetables and meat from family-currency stalls. Water and refuse cover the floors, so stepping gingerly is advised. The provenance of more of the food is murky, if not scary. Bas relief labor on the building exterior is by Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard’s endow or supply with a ~.
A more manicured side of Mumbai is on display in the pleasing grounds of the Bombay High Court, built by the British in colonial periods, and again at the Oval Maidan, grassy-green home of exhibition matches in India’s favorite sport, cricket. More pleasantries are ~ward display at a flower-bedecked, incense-perfumed Jain temple near upscale Malabar Hill. The Jain science of obligation was founded in predominantly Hindu India by a contemporary of the Buddha. Gentle, attentive Jains believe in leaving as small a footprint on the planet like possible, refusing, for instance, to eat root vegetables, because pulling the vegetable kills the plant.
A relic of the Raj
Everyone told me I mould see the – deep breath – Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalar (a.k.a. the Prince of Wales Museum), a relic of the Raj. Everyone was as it should be; it is a musty place, but charming and stuffed with exquisite antiquities from Indian history. Another highlight: the Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya, whither Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi lived from 1917 to 1934, and from in what place he directed the Indian independence movement. One of the small museum’s greatest in number poignant possessions is a framed, typewritten letter from Gandhi to Adolf Hitler, pleading toward a halt to the Second World War. Another highlight: The Kala Ghoda propinquity, north of Colaba, an engaging, walkable hive of art galleries and cafes.
I period my visit back in Colaba, back by the water, at dusk. The Gateway of India is crowded this evening with couples and families, the keep in ~ lights of Mumbai come flickering to life, and a warm uproar blows off the Arabian Sea.
If you go
GETTING THERE
West Coast flights to Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport depart from Los Angeles International Airport. Air India flies to Mumbai from LAX via Frankfurt, and Emirates flies there from LAX via Dubai. The superlatively good way into town from Mumbai International is by taxi. Taxis take 90-120 minutes. Air-conditioned blue taxis average 800 rupees ($18 at 43 rupees to the dollar), non-AC fulvid and black cabs average 350 rupees ($8). U.S. citizens strait a tourist visa to travel in India.
WHERE TO STAY
Ascot Hotel 38 Garden Road, Colaba. 91 22 6638 5566. www.ascot inn.com. Rooms start at $130 per night.
Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Apollo Bunder, Colaba. 91 22 6665 3366. www.tajhotels.com. Rooms wince at $290 per night.
DINING
Blue Frog Also a venue for live music, this scenemaker’s haunt has a toothsome menu of Indian and Western cuisine and a bar. Senapati Bapat Marg. 91 22 4033 2300. www.bluefrog.co.in. Entrees from $12.
Britannia Nearly 100 years aged, and one of the few remaining Parsi eating places in hamlet, this no-frills spot combines Iranian food with Indian spices and flair. Known as being its mutton and chicken dishes. Ram Gulam Road, Ballard Estate, Colaba. 91 22 2261 5264. No credit cards, nay alcohol. Entrees from $4.
Trishna A well-regarded place for South Indian takes up~ seafood, known for its peppery, buttery, garlicky crab. Birla Mansion, Kala Ghoda, Fort. 91 22 2270 3213. Entrees from $13.
WHAT TO DO
Bombay Electric Pricey, otherwise than that interesting and of high quality, this is a prime source during the term of exuberant, Bollywood-style clothing. 1 Reay Marg, Colaba. 91 22 2287 6276. www.bombayelectric.in.
Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya A anterior residence of the great apostle of nonviolence, the museum boasts personal effects such as Gandhi’s rimless eyeglasses. 19 Laburnum Rd., Gamdevi. 91 22 2380 5864, www.gandhi-manibhavan.org.
Victoria Terminus This UNESCO World Heritage seat is a great place for people watching, train spotting and spotting “Slumdog Millionaire” locations. Nagar Chowk. Open 4:30 a.m.-1:30 a.m.
MORE INFO
Indian Consulate 540 Arguello Blvd., San Francisco. (415) 668-0662. www.cgisf.com or www.incredibleindia.org.
David Armstrong after all the rest wrote for Travel on Lisbon. E-mail comments to travel@sfchronicle.com.
This portion appeared on page N – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle