Mumbai

I'm on a train bound for Agra, and so I thought I'd take some time to catch up on the last week.

Mumbai ended up being a bit of a disappointment because the real city is pretty inaccessible to tourists. I mean, I love cities and Mumbai is one of the biggest cities in the world, but I felt like I could only glimpse it through the window of my taxi going to and from the airport. This was true of both the sort of Upper East side looking neighborhoods on the west side of town and the vast, vast shanty towns along the railroad tracks. (Although I did see some places offering "slum tours," which I passed on.)

Anyway, here are the highlights:

*The Prince of Wales Museum, featuring Indian art and sculpture. I don't typically like that kind of flat-looking, highly embellished painting, but this was really beautiful. And Hinduism offers such an extensive array of stories to depict.

*Excellent food, including really good chicken kabobs at an Iranian cafe. (Where I was the only woman and only westerner there.) I have been trying to follow the practice of not using my left hand to eat, but was puzzling over how to tear the bread with just one hand. It appears that there's an exception for bread-tearing. I also had Thai food at a swanky pan-asian place, that was inexplicably playing obscure American country music. (And not good obscure. Deservedly obscure.)

*I saw Babel, which I liked more than I expected to. Brad Pitt was sort of haggard-looking and it suited him. And I love Gael Garcia Bernal, but his storyline didn't make much sense.

*I met a couple of Indian guys (Shail and Sanche) at the Gateway of India and we went and had tea and discussed our mutual dislike of George Bush. Also, I showed them my iPod and Blackberry, and they told me about a serial killer in Mumbai who lures his victims by offering them free Kingfisher. I could not tell if they were serious.

*I found a gym and went for a run. Which was actually pretty pathetic, although it seems like you're going faster and farther when they're measuring in kilometers.

Annoyances:

*Just walking around can be hard.  First, you often have to walk in the streets, which are packed. Second, I felt like I had to study every intersection just to figure out how to cross the street without getting killed. This is complicated by the fact that the traffic seems to operate as some sort of hive mind that will suddenly decide to go against the lights.

*There is inexplicable rubble everywhere. Just piles of dirt and rocks and stones. I have no idea why. Maybe there's nowhere else to put it.

*On Friday, I tried to get train tickets and airline tickets that I hadn't been able to get in the states. Oh my god, what I wouldn't give for the Indian version of my beloved Kayak. First I had to find the reservations office at the train station, which is actually in a differnt building across the street. When I finally found it, I wasn't really sure which line to stand in, and when none of them had moved after 15 minutes, I gave up and went to Thomas Cook. They couldn't sell me train tickets, but informed me that there were no trains between Varanasi and Agra. Which is not true. (I am currently on just such a train -- there are at least 2 every day.)  But then they also said there were no flights to Varanasi. Which isn't true either. In sum, Thomas Cook sucks. In the end, I just went straight to the airline to book my ticket and went back to the train station on Saturday morning, when the lines were a lot shorter. Still, something you could do in the states in about 10 minutes on the internet took several hours here.

As an aside, this sort of echoed my feelings when I was at the Indian embassy before my trip getting my visa. It took more than an hour and a half just to drop off the application. And looking around the room, I had the sense that while the westerners were sort of baffled and anxious about what was taking so long, the Indians were totally resigned to waiting. And this made me a little worried. I know that this is such an American attitude, but I just can't imagine living somewhere where simple tasks take forever. For no apparent reason!