The Gateway of India. Picture taken by my wife with her Nokia 6233!
We touched down yesterday morning at KLIA at 7.05 am (10 minutes ahead of schedule, see, we in bolehland, fly plane also must speed!), after spending 4 days 3 nights in Mumbai.
The whole trip has been arduous to say the least, beginning from the time we landed at the CSI Airport in Mumbai on Thursday night till the time we left Mumbai on Sunday afternoon.
Too tired to write a long story, I will just summarise the ‘mishaps’ here and write more when I am better rested:
1. We were left stranded at the CSI airport (Chakrapathy Sivaji Airport) in Mumbai on the day we arrived because the hotel did not arrange for transport for us; resulting us in…
2. …getting into a cab at an exorbitant price of Rs 380 (the normal price quoted on the board was Rs 250 or less) and we hopped into this tiny cab that looked like it would fall apart any time and off we went….
3. …getting lost all over Mumbai as the driver had no idea where in the world was Nariman Point where the Hilton Tower was located! We stopped at every street corner to ask for directions and…
4. …we clung on to dear life as he (and half the population of Mumbai drivers) jostled against each other for space on the road! Typically, each driver drove with one hand on the steering wheel, and the other on the horn, one leg permanently on the accelerator and the brakes are hardly used! And I did not see a single vehicle without a dent. And we…
5. ..gasped for air as the atmosphere over Mumbai was a permanent haze (if you think the annual KL haze is bad here, imagine it 100x worst and permanent there!). In fact, the newspaper there carried an article the next day titled “Breathless in Mumbai”! We were also ….
6. …shocked (shocked again actually, as I have lived in India for 6 years more than 10 years ago) by the abject poverty there. People were sleeping on the pavements as far as the eyes could see, together with dogs. Sigh! Ten years after leaving India, nothing has changed. The divide between the haves and have-nots seems to have grown even wider if anything. And our nostrils were…
7. …assaulted by the smell of the city when we came out of the airport. The smell is prevalent throughout the day and night. I have been to other Indian cities and the smell is always the same: it’s a heavy mixture of incense, flowers, human sweat, animal sweat, waste products of human and animals, exhaust from vehicles and factories, the smell of the dead (there is a tower for the cremation of bodies somewhere in the city) – basically the smell of a dying city.
The hotel was like a haven after the 2 hour harrowing journey from the airport to the hotel. But that, is another story for another time.
Tues, 051206 @ 1432, having Bombayitis, a condition characterised by severe lethargy and tiredness and profound gratitude for sunny blue skies in Malaysia!
