What on earth does
that have to do with a ‘round the world cruise you may wonder. You may also
wonder what diclofenac is. Or not.
India is a very religiously tolerant country (according to
our tour guide, Meherrukh) and there are many religions practiced there. One is
Zoroastrianism, a religion more ancient than most, which among other things
does not believe in cremation or burial. They lay their dead out in “Towers of
Silence” in the Hanging Gardens in Mumbai. The towers are open to the sky and
the bodies used to be desicated by the sun and consumed by vultures (Gyps indicus). The towers still exist in
Mumbai and their dead are still laid out there, but the vultures are gone,
themselves driven to extinction by the use of diclofenac, a veterinary NSAID
that causes kidney failure in vultures when they consume the bodies of animals
dosed with it.
I love travel! I learn so much about so many things!
Our tour of Mumbai using Mumbai Magic tours was magnificent,
especially considering we lost almost 4 hours of the tour! I highly recommend
them to future World Cruisers or anybody coming to Mumbai. Farida and Meherrukh
were our guides in two 20-passenger busses (12-13 in each bus so we had lots of
room).
We had a general tour of the city of Bombay (or Bom Bahia, a
good bay, corrupted to ‘Bombay’ until 1997) with stops at some of the more
famous places and a few not so famous. Our guide calls it Bombay—as she has all
her life—so I shall, too.
We got some sense of how many people live and work in Bombay
by entering the Victoria Terminus (train station) via an underground road
crossing. You would take your life in your hands to attempt to cross one of the
central-Bombay streets where pedestrians, taxis, busses of all sizes and ages,
motorcycles, trishaws, cars, and trucks are all in a supreme hurry to get
somewhere and with an hearing-damaging cacaphony of horns blowing. The
underground passage to the VT was as crowded, just with masses of people rather
than vehicles, although our guide said the crowds were fairly light because it
was a Sunday.
We walked through a fruit and vegetable market (no durians,
however. Durians, if you don’t know, smell so execrably bad that they are
banned in most hotels, busses, and trains. But locals—Thais, Malaysians, just
about anybody in Southeast Asia—adore them! I ate one, once. Never again!),
again crammed with people, buying, selling, moving, packing, cleaning up,
sleeping, eating, smoking, drinking, for all I know some were probably having
sex somewhere in the teeming mass of humanity.
Mahatma Ghandi lived in Bombay for many years, staying at a
house that we visited. He owned very little, his room contained not much more
than a pallet for sleeping, some books, and a spinning wheel. He loved to spin,
he said it relaxed him. It is also the reason that, if you see a wreath around
his neck, it will be of threads to commemorate his love of spinning. It also
reminded him of his people and what they needed to do and to have. Because, I guess,
he had so little in the way of possessions, the house doesn’t have many
artifacts. What it does have are about two-dozen extremely well done dioramas
of events in his life from the early days right up to his assassination.
From there we went to a Hare Krishna temple. Those of you
reading this who lived in San Francisco in the 70s will remember the Hare
Krishna monks at the San Francisco airport, a memory I am not fond of as they
pretty much harassed all travellers with requests for money. Eventually they
would be confined to only certain areas of the airport. But this Bombay temple was
an experience of a whole different sort that has erased the negative memories I
have of the Krishnas in the airport.
It was stiflingly hot in Bombay, and even more so in the
temple where not a breath of air moved and there was a mass of humanity
chanting on the upper floors of the temple. The smells of Bombay permeated the
air. The chanters were separated by gender—although our guide says they didn’t
have to be—and the monks were separated by a curtain from the chanters. We
talked for a very short moment to a monk who sounded American but I didn’t have
time to question him. And so we moved on, gathering our shoes, and heading to
the Gateway of India and the “Taj.”
I think it’s hysterically funny that “The Gateway of India
was built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Bombay,
prior to the Delhi Durbar, in December 1911. However, they only got to see only
a cardboard model of the structure since the construction did not begin till
1915.”
This was a Sunday and it defies description how many people
were at the Gateway! It was also our closest view of the Taj Mahal Hotel, the
one that was bombed a few years back as was the Gateway. The Indians are, if
this is possible, even more security conscious than we (US) are. Almost every
building I went into had an xray scanner in use. (Don’t get me going on getting
back on board the ship!)
We (the Oz and US tourists) were big draws ourselves in the
crowd in fornt of the Gateway. Kim (the
husband of the most prolific tour organizer, Narelle) was asked by too many
Indian tourists to count to pose for pictures. And one resourceful entrepeneur
was charging the Indians to have their picture taken with Kim and then charging
them to print the photo on his portable printer.
We saw the Dhobi ghat laundry men (google it) and we
heard about the Mumbai Lunch Box men (that,
too) who have 100% accuracy. Married women have red in the part of their hair.
Giving or taking a dowry is illegal. It is illegal to reveal the sex of a child
to the mother before birth. A daughter is a stranger’s wealth. So much
interesting stuff! Bollywood is not a place. And the best: there is a private club
in Bombay which will not allow film stars or politicians as members. I so love to
travel!
In the Gulf of Oman with guards
posted
Noon 24° 05’ N
60° 25’ E
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| Flat Stanley at Dhobi Ghat laundry |
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| Flat Stanley in front of Gandi's statue |
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| Pam & Randy in front of the Geteway of India |
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| Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai |
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| Gateway of India |
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| Leaving Mumbai at sunset |
