Sightseeing with a twist

There's something about Mumbai... It gives you hot feet. Even though temperatures are comparable to those of Switzerland or Canada's Summer never before did I experience that my feet were throbbing, just from walking a few meters in the street! - No wonder the entire nation is strolling around in flip flops.

I woke up early and was ready for breakfast long before 7:30. That's when the place next door finally opened. I stirred up three sleepy looking boys and a moth that had slept underneath the table I picked and was soon put to eternal rest by one of the boys. My breakfast was very... yellowish-green. It consisted of a banana, a hard boiled egg and some sort of cereal, looking like polenta but being sweet like porridge.

In the pursuit of getting a better bag I headed for the bazaar beyond the marketplace that I had visited the day before but soon realized it was too early in the day and that all the stores would still be closed. I went on, feeding my camera with pictures of the awakening city in the morning light. Being the absolutely only tourist around I was more conspicuous than a giraffe on stilts and drew everyone's attention. Finally I reached a place that bustled with life: The temple. There was no way to get inside, at least not within a reasonable time frame, for the line stretched for hundreds of meters. I walked down an alley that featured a market of all sorts of religious items and was harassed immediately. Preschool girls kept tapping my arm notoriously, imploring me with low voices, while a fragile old lady with an unbelievably powerful grip clutched my other arm. Being very persistent
they probably tried to make up for the uselessness of the stuff they were trying to get rid of. A guy with red-yellow string didn't hesitate and simply wrapped it around my wrist, knotted it up and cut it, and regardless of my verbal defense applied red dots on my front and neck, asking 50 Rupees. I gave him 10, and everybody around laughed.

My Lonely Planet tourist guide considered it a rewarding experience to take a ferry ride at the national monument, the Gateway Of India, so I thought I would just walk down to the edge of the Colaba district and get a feeling of the town, just like that and without planning a specific route along tourist sites. - I would do that some other day. Soon I discovered the huge Victoria train station, a former palace, not far form my hotel I. In an underpass I got myself some fake Nike sandals and considered bringing my hiking shoe and sandals back to my room but instead carried on with a stupidly heavy bag, its other ingredients being the formerly mentioned LP tourist guide (a book of epic proportions), my big camera and 1 liter water which I had proudly purified myself. Thus I headed South venturing into the mazelike Bora Bazaar. I took my time and looked around a lot, eventually having lunch in one of the few restaurants. I asked the personnel to point out our location on my map, and after a minute of dispute they came up with a guess that was definitely off. - It is to be said though that orientation is hard as there are basically no street name signs in the city. One reason for that could be that every new prime minister would change the name for places and roads to his or her liking. - I told one guy about my plan to walk to Cobala. He just laughed, as if I just made a fantastic joke. However, it turned out that it wouldn't take me more than 15 minutes to reach the area, where finally I blended in with a fair amount of other tourists. I headed for the Gateway of India. Before long a guy tried to win me for a 3 hour car tour, telling me all the details about it while walking alongside. When I told him about my waterborne trip plans he suggested I chartered a boat for 2200 Rupees, that's around 60 CHF (I'm funding this trip with my Swiss savings, so I'm doing my calculations in that currency). It seemed quite a lot, after all the guide mentioned ferry rides for 30 Rupees and there was plenty of boat action going on in the harbor. He explained these were incoming boats from the islands and that there wouldn't be any outgoing ferries until the next day. There would also be the possibility to wait for a charter to fill up, but that might take a while. I was suspicious, but after asking plenty of questions it all seemed reasonable and true. The car ride he mentioned in the first place would only cost me 1500, and I was intrigued by the possibility of being relieved from my bag by leaving it in the car while looking around. I would be the only customer, so I could actually pace the trip and take my time for my photographs, (and I usually take a long time), without being urged back into the car with a group. Great!

A phone call of the seller-guy made a car appear, and while he probably went searching for more clients I was left with the driver. He was a skinny young guy with a shiny, fingertip sized wart on his front, precisely where the red dot would go. We started chatting. His English was about average in terms of Mumbai English, so very basic indeed. He drove me to the Southeast tip of the city's half-island, where we watched men washing clothes for hotels and businesses all over town. Standing over cubicles filled with water they scrubbed the fabric in the plain sun while the towers of the Mumbai World Trade Center rose into the sky behind them. We continued on. Soon we reached the start of the Marine drive, a street along the water that would get accompanied by a beach further north, very much like English Bay in Vancouver, except that I would rather take a dip in diarrhea rather than getting in the water there. I hopped up on the sea wall and took pictures. The wall had two steps of around 15 inches each, and when I stepped down again, I twisted my right foot.

I remained seated on the lower step, wondering how it would feel once the initial pain dissipated and how it would affect the rest of my trip. During the contortion the strap of the sandal had caused a small cut the skin near my pinky toe, and a bit of blood showed. Seeing this my guide told me to remove the footwear and ran for the car for water. I took off the sandal and continued wondering. A boy with a vendor's tray smiled at me, probably realizing I wasn't much of a customer at the moment. I looked down again and saw that my ankle had grown a fist seized swelling within a minute in the midday sun! Seeing this the returning driver got nervous. Partly supported by his bony body I returned to the car, sticking my foot up on the dashboard. I told him I would like to have it checked out, because I did hear a crack when I twisted it. But first we would need to cool it. After driving a few meters I asked him to maybe get some ice at a nearby beverage stand, but the driver returned empty handed: There wasn't any ice. I sent him again to get a cool bottle of water, a bit pissed because it wouldn't occur to him to do at least that. The bottle brought relief. I just sat there quietly cooling my foot while the driver was almost panicking: "Calm down sir! Don't worry! I am here!" He was going at around twice the normal speed, while dialing and receiving about 2 phone calls a minute. While cars usually miss casually walking pedestrians by an inch, the people on the street now had to actually jump in order not to get hit. This wasn't how they practised their everyday stunt! After a few minutes we picked up "the boss", apparently he had connections to the hospital and would get us trough faster and cheaper. The hospital itself wasn't far either, and soon we entered the building. It has to be said that this wasn't a private hospital but run by the government. In other words, it was as impossible a place for health care as you could imagine. Dark and with an infrastructure that apparently hasn't been upgraded or maintained since its construction a century ago. It was basically vacant of equipment, personnel and patients. The amount of the latter may vary drastically, but at the time of our arrival the gym sized entrance hall held only a couple of waiters randomly strewn across a few chairs. The reception room to the left hosted three nurses two of which were in sort of a meeting with a relatively young doctor in casual clothes. Although the room had a quite generous layout they sat at a table that basically blocked the entrance, and people, injured or not, had to squeeze between the backrests of their chairs while the health care personnel watched on unimpressed. The doctor held a hunched over posture and was busy pressing a piece of cloth onto what must have been a cut or some sort on the back of his left hand. Eventually he would press the swelling of my foot, probing for pain. He sent us to X-ray. The walls of that room were tiled, but someone had put a coat of paint on top, and was peeling rigorously. Everything was gray except for a colorful poster of some saint. I repeated my request for ice while waiting for the X-ray guy, but nowhere in the entire hospital were cooling devices to be found. I was told that a friend was out getting some ice in the neighborhood. The doctor came, mute, not making eye contact. He arranged my foot on the rusty film container, acting quick and apparently a bit angry. Then he vanished behind the shielded controls in the corner of the room and ran the exposure without handing me a led apron or stripping me of my watch and metal items first. The driver, its boss and another friend were hanging out in the room too! I tried to tell the driver about dangerous "Gamma rays", but he though I was talking about the "camera" that we had left in the car. - It turned out there was no fracture. While waiting for the result a 10 lb ice cube eventually showed up and I could cool the swelling until I received a bandage, which I was surprised to see at this hospital at this point. I also received "medicine" (this word was spoken with a certain awe), two pain killer tablets. Back in the car I told the driver I'm not gonna take them, and he replied: "Why, you take, then everything good again!" Cost of the treatment (after insider discounts): 35 Rupee, 1 Franc.

For a moment we sat in the green backyard of the park and had tea. Apparently the the tour boss' friend who worked at the hospital lived in a hut under the trees. Chicken scratched up the soil. - The sightseeing tour was supposed to last 3 hours, about 1 of which was left. We used it to pick up sandals with a toe strap that would fit my foot and some sports injury cream (another cheap deal at 28 Rupee). I also got a ride up to the hanging gardens where shrubs in the shape of animals are "hanging"(?) out in a park like environment. From another park across the street you could get a panoramic view of the city. I couldn't believe it: There were really people wading in the water of Chowpatty Beach!

I checked out another restaurant in the vicinity of the hotel. Ordering "roast chicken" I hoped to get something that isn't covered in the ever same sauce, but crisp, maybe with a bit of skin? But no. And when I cut one of the chunks, it was still raw inside, so I returned it.