India

I left Buenos Aires at 1:00 in the afternoon, after a long and semi-panicked journey through Argentine bureaucracy.  I’d overstayed my visa, which wouldn’t have been a problem except that to get the small fine taken care of, I had to retrace my steps back out past the long line for customs and the longer line for security, to visit 3 seperate desks (with accompanying lines) before I received the all clear to go back up and wait through security and customs again.  All of this luckily fit into the 2 and a half hours I had left before my flight but just barely.

My flight had a stopover in London for 3.5 hours, where I am not ashamed to admit I thoroughly enjoyed a tall mocha from Starbucks (argentine coffee is sub-par in my book, and I missed the literally infinite variety available in any Seattle coffeeshop).  I then paid entirely too much to fire off two short emails letting relevant people know where I was, and then caught the next leg of my 26 hour+ journey to Mumbai (formeryly Bombay).

I arrived into Mumbai at 1 in the morning, and after a laughably easy time passing ‘customs’, I set up shop in the terminal to wait until daylight to head into town and get a hotel.  I spent most of the night trying to figure out how I was going to go about doing that, as 1. I had no guidebook nor map nor any idea of the layout of the city other than which two districts were the touristy ones, and 2. was practically hallucinating from having a disgustingly small amount of sleep in the previous 36 hours.  I finally gave in and went to the hotel reservations desk and booked a hotel that provided free transport.  The price was higher than I wanted, but after deducting the 350-400 rupees I would have had to pay for a taxi into the city anyway, wasn’t horrible.

The ride into the city in the early morning light was like a giant chaotic punch to the face, albeit a pleasant one.  Mumbai has Asia’s largest slum, and the driver was careening crazily through it while giving it more or less his best to avoid the other cars, buses, trucks, people, bicycles, and indeed cows that seemed to follow no real rules or regulations when it came to using the public roadways.  The poverty there really is quite astonishing, like nothing I’ve ever seen (even in the backwoods of Bolivia).  Small shacks line the roads, sometimes two or three high, looking more like swallows nests on a cliffside than where whole families resided. Half-clothed indians stood on the edges of the busy street, washing themselves, walking, buying, selling, pushing, yelling, waving, living, all the while cars rushed by mere inches away.  The cacaphony of noise is incredible.  I must assume that the carn horn repair business is flourishing in india as well, because every car must wear out at least 2 of them a year with all the incessant honking at every car, person, cow, and material object that the car passes.  (”Horn OK Please” is frequently painted on the bumper of trucks.  I don’t know what exactly it means, but I can guess.)

As we drove down one particularly long street lined with these hovels, one after the other, the driver suddenly stopped.  “Yes Sir, Hotel Sea Lord Sir.”  Sea Lord was indeed the name of the hotel I’d chosen, but I saw nothing resembling the Sea, nor any Lord thereof.  Instead, there was a narrow building in a gap in the shantys with a narrow alleyway beside it.  I assumed there was some mistake, but in fact I had indeed arrived at my hotel.

While no self-respecting Lord of the Sea would ever stay at this place, it wasn’t terribly bad once you actually got inside.  Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t what I’d call good either, but there was a bed and the room was large.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was clean, but it was tidy, and that must count for something.  The major problem is the location, and that in order to walk into the more touristy areas of town, one must pass perhaps 1000m of hovels, all of whom apparently use the edge of the road as their personal bathroom.  Lovely.

I spent most of the first day recovering, before timidly poking my head out and going for a short trip into town.  Culture shock is a semi-new experience for me, as the only time previously I can lay claim to it was upon my return to the US after spending an extended time in South America.  Indian culture shock is something else entirely, and must be eased into like a 106 degree hottub.

So that is exactly what I’m doing, easing in.  Tomorrow evening I will head to the airport to pick up Geraldine, who flies in at 10, and we’ll head to our new, more expensive and better located hotel so that she can decompress from her flight.

And then, it’s her turn to adjust…