Trains, Rain, Spirit & Splendour Part 1: Insert 2 _____ Mumbai

Trains, Rain, Spirit & Splendour 

Part 1: Insert 2

MUMBAI – Early morning 29^th December 2012

I’m playing a waiting game now, trying to find sleep on cold grey floors in Mumbai airport, fighting with my phone and its inability to contact anyone, wondering if I've missed Lauren's flight, wondering how much longer I'll be stuck here. I’m hoping to glance upward at the right moment to catch Lauren as she arrives. I met an older Indian woman, who had just ‘upped and left’ from a job in Saudi Arabia which hadn’t been feeding her. She journey’s back now, to meet her family in Bangalore.

It’s a bizarre thing here, caught between physical spaces, not having stepped foot in the country outside of the airport doors, wide open to my right. I’ve packed and reorganised my backpack, changed my clothes, washed my hands and haven’t spoken a word to anyone except  goodbye to my four British acquaintances as they made their way out into Maharashtra, India. 

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No signboards to tell me when the Emirates flight from South Africa was going to land, I kept my eyes peeled on peoples bags and ears open for accents. It was four hours on those cold floors until my spirits soared as I saw Emirates labelled bags round the corners and brown beautiful and tired looking Lauren, coming around the corner. 

We flustered and embraced hello’s and stepped foot outside of those be-damned sliding doors. Immediately thronged by taxi drivers, wanting to take us to Colaba beach and Leopold’s Café for a whopping 2000 Ruppees; our senses told us to do better than that and we managed to book a 200 Rupee ‘tuk tuk’ through to our middle-of-nowhere bus-stop (if you could call it that). Lauren's backpack was thrown gingerly onto the roof while mine was stuffed next to us in the small gas run vehicle and we were hit senses first with the noise of blaring Indian traffic and the dizzying, worrying speed of everyone on the road, worrying about the wayward backpack on the roof but oddly ready to accept its dangling fate. 

Our driver didn’t know exactly where the bus depot was. After some middle-of-the-road stopping and direction-asking he wheeled around and left us on a dusty corner beneath a huge highway bridge. Mottled puppies wondered around in the dirt, people sat on the sidewalks watching us and our eyes bulged with the instantaneous shock of not knowing where we were. But somehow we mustered our courage enough to wander across the busy section beneath the bridge and began the long three hours search for an internet café and a place to eat.

 People pointed us in all different directions and our heavy legs carried us down streets lined with drooping Banyan trees, schools where young boys played cricket. We passed shoe repairmen, sweet vendors, a huge red Ganesha whom an old man was excited to point out to us, fruit sellers and a confusing array of places to eat! We found a tiny room with four computers to send out emails and update our social media, letting everyone know we were safe, if not somewhat bewildered and then decided upon a place to eat an Onion stuffed Roti, where I had my first ‘lovely’ toilet experience as well. (See my insert on toilets for a laugh! ) .

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A Glimpse of Ganesha

A Shoe Repairman

We were almost left beneath the bridge in that dusty intersection. If we hadn’t known the name of the coach and waved frantically at it as it  passed our waiting spot, it would have forgotten us and carried on. Not a moment to lose it reversed at a speed, took our tickets, shoved us on and before we had a second to contemplate our surroundings we were already on the main highway out of Mumbai along the sprawling slum city. Our backpacks at our feet, we had climbed onto the second level ‘bunk’ of the sleeper bus onto our two person sized mattress, replete with built in pillows, a rack for shoes  and a small TV already blaring a colourful Bollywood movie. Sleep was very welcome.

Backpacks at our feet