Bye bye Mumbai, hello Kerala!

I opened my eyes. Although the two pigeon hole-windows of my small room were shut and had their window panes painted over (and all I would see were dirty walls) I thought: My last sunrise in Mumbai. - I was happy to leave.

I checked out and had a slow and careful breakfast. Slow also because I was waiting for the adjacent internet cafe to open at 10. However, it turned out that due to the fact that it was Sunday there would be a delay of an hour, so I took a cab to Colaba where I could get started already.

The flight departure to Cochin was at 16:50. It was a domestic flight so there it wouldn't be necessary to check in too early, but for two reasons I wanted to get going to the airport in due course: I wanted a window seat. And you never know what's gonna happen next in this city. There was a good chance a gorge would open and separate me from my getaway plane. So around 1:30 I got restless and chartered a taxi.

It's known to be a solid 1 hour drive to the airport. My driver got me there in less than 40, almost at the cost of my sanity. He would zig zag thru the traffic, muscle for space at the lights, fit his car like a bullet in a barrel when passing at full speed between other cars. He pointed at a car in front of him: "He crazy man!" - At one point, when we passed a bend in the proximity of the Muslim church, home to the disfigured beggars, one of those came walking the other way in the middle of the street - on all fours! The traffic was rounding 60, and his head was on bumper level. Nothing happened then, but I don't know how the story ended.

We stopped, I was as pale as linen. Speaking of which: I gave my driver the shirt I bought the other day as a tip. (The store didn't have a mirror and back at the hotel it turned out that the shoulders weren't sitting right. I knew it was a risk... But maybe I bought it just for kicks of haggling it from 500 Rupees down to 200.) He was pretty tall and it looked like it could actually fit him.

After checking in I had a small lunch. Then I allowed enough time for the security check, but that one was fast, too. - The irony of it all was that while waiting at the gate the flight got repeatedly delayed. It was already long after sunset when we finally took off into the sky. Not much to see from my window seat...

Mumbai could pretty well be regarded as the opposite of Vancouver. While people in Canadian city embrace nature, love being outside and are all laid back, Mumbaikers seem to be out for business at all times. Banker or beggar, they all run around in dress shirts and long pants, seemingly always ready to close a deal. They dwell in rooms without windows and pollute their environment hopelessly. The latter of course is also due to the fact that the city is just so densely inhabited. But following the newspaper throughout the week I would read repeatedly about things like piled high dumping sites without recycling and careless city officials. It seems to me like a very greedy or "money mad" (as the LP travel guide put it at one point) place. Poverty is just another result of the priority list that puts profit first.

After a surprisingly short time on the tightly packed aircraft, they announced our approach to Cochin. Out the window I could see thousands of lights, loosely spread out over the dark surface. And they twinkled! I was stunned and searched helplessly for an explanation. Finally, at a level closer to the ground, I recognized that the lights were beneath a layer of black tree tops. Rain Trees. It's peculiar: While Mumbai's massive Ashoka Trees with their crazy twisted, multiple stems and weird hanks of air roots very much represent the city's absolutely messy character, Kerala's Rain Trees stand for peace of majestic dimensions: Generously spaced branches open a sky of evenly arranged leaves.

The baggage claim was incredibly fast, and straight across from the exit door there stood a guy in the crowd holding a sign with my name. Jason led me to a white Ambassador Classic. Now that's a tat better than a black Mumbai taxi!

An hour later we arrived in Fort Cochin. Jason honked the horn and a middle-aged man came out of the building, greeting me cordially: Santosh. The landlord had told me his name already on the phone. He showed me to the room where Vasco da Gama died. My room. It was huge and had a high ceiling. There were three beds in there and it still felt kind of empty. A bathroom with toilet and shower was fitted in one corner. With the deal came also an adjacent room with lots of chairs, big enough to lecture a small class. Space is gonna do me good.