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Mumbai, India
18° 58' N 72° 49' E
Apr 15, 2006 10:59
Distance 38km

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Other entries in Mumbai

Rants and Raves

Text written in: English

Some quick notes in the form of Rants and Raves from Mumbai:

Rave: The amount of english spoken in India. Its really impressive. Communication is not much of a problem here, except with cab drivers.

Rant: Vendors (as per usual) who pedel everything from posters, to pashminas, to hashish

Rave: The architechture of Mumbai. Its a truly interesting mix of british colonial (epitomized by the gateway to india), Indian colonial architechture (epitomized by the luxurious taj palace hotel), modern sleek stone surfaces, and of course crumbling decaying 3rd world sheik.

Rant: the fact that this is the dirtiest place on earth, epitomized by an incident I witnessed on the ferry from Mandwa on our way back to Mumbai: A little girl stumbles around the top of the ferry moaning and clutching her stomach, and then she pukes all over the deck. She is recieved into the arms of her father, who wipes her mouth, but does absolutely nothing about the vomit splattered all over the top of the deck. The more watery part of this vomit proceeds to creep slowly toward me and Noah with each gently rocking of the boat, yet people act as if nothing happened. Both Mom and Dad just laugh, and when people get off the boat, they just step right into the offensive mess. No wonder they consider the foot to be so dirty... IT IS WHEN YOU DONT CLEAN ANYTHING UP!!!! also no-one uses trash cans here, and if you do use trash cans, when the trash can is full you do what everyone else does as well. You dump it on the street. As hard as it is for me to do, i have begun to just throw my trash on the largest pile of trash on the street. Otherwise I would just be carrying trash with me out of india. Ridiculous.

 

Rave: Food, even though you have to spend a bit more money to get food that wont give you Gandhi's revenge ( i know, thats wrong), you get fantastic food everywhere. Yesterday I actually got full by eating an all vegetarian dish!

Rant/Rave: To Malarone induced dreams. The Malaria pills I am taking seem to induce very strange and very memorable dreams. As if India werent strange enough, I am subject to the drug induced whims of my sub concious to see my wild fantasies and horrible nightmares played out vividly before me every night. So far no wild fantasies, but I did have an incredibly detailed dream involving me fighting and running from a coalition of enemies camped outside my house. The coalition included Hitler, chairman Mao, Ben Affleck, and Peter Gallagher (of OC fame). Max dreams about Bollywood's biggest star.