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First Posted 27/02/07Well, after 3 and a half weeks in Mumbai I am finally back in Blighty. My house is still standing, my car still works, and it's not as cold as I thought it might be. Although I had really forgotten that it was actually hot in India - most of my life is either in an air conditioned hotel room, in an air conditioned car or in an air conditioned officer so you just assume that the world is 22 degrees C or less. On Friday I went outside at lunchtime and I was honestly surprised that it was absolutely baking. It's funny how quickly you can forget where in the world you are when you spend most of your life in a hotel room...
Going to the International airport in Mumbai is a bit of an experience in its own right. The first thing you need to learn is Never Accept Anyone's Help They Are All After Your Money. This caught me unawares the first time I was there - foolishly I thought people were offering to help because they were being helpful, not because they wanted to be paid for some service that you could really do without. When you fly BA out of Mumbai there are helpful BA staff wearing sashes that are on hand to shepherd the (business class) passengers through the melee. I was flying Jet this time which has no such benefits. First of all I had to get into the terminal - there are security guards who check your ticket before they let you in. This is somewhat challenging if you have an internet booking and they don't have the manifest for your airline at the security desk. When they threatened not to let me in I pointed out that I had a booking and it wasn't my problem that they didn't have the passenger list. After a few moments of tense stand off they decided it would be too much trouble to argue with me and let me in. Key learning in India is that if you are forceful enough you pretty much let you do what you want. If you look at all unsure or apologetic they are fairly firm.Once inside the terminal it was impossible to work out where I needed to be so I reluctantly let a porter help me. He got me through the X-ray queue and deposited me at the Jet check in (for a small fee of course). I find it really stressful to be always worrying about whether I should tip and if so, how much. One of the things I enjoy being back in the UK is the knowledge that pretty much anywhere I go I don't have to be anxious about unfamilar tipping!
First posted 21/02/07Went to out to a meeting today and was reminded about how crazy the traffic here in Mumbai is. Getting from A to B is very difficult due to the sheer number of vehicles on the road so everyone is always late (makes a change from me being the only one that's late!). There are a lot of traffic lights that seem to be fairly optional although they do helpfully have count down timers so you know how long it will be until the lights change. It's difficult for me to describe how wide the roads are here as there is no concept of lanes as I understand them from the UK. The road is as wide as the number of vehicles that can squeeze onto it. Quite possibly the most nerve-wracking part of travelling in Mumbai is when your driver decides that there is more space on the other side of the road and proceeds to pull out over the line in the middle of the road into the oncoming traffic. This attracts lots of flashing headlights but so far I haven't crashed and if I'm honest it does get you a bit further on a bit more quickly.
That seems to be the main incentive when driving - just gaining a few extra metres on your fellow travellers, squeezing into the smallest possible space on the road so that you can keep moving. Given that it is so competitive I'm suprised how good natured it all is. There are so many people sharing the same road space that in the UK I would expect a lot of swearing and arguing and possibly shacking of fists. Here there is a huge amount of horn beeping, which at home I would expect to be accompanied by lots of angry people, but here it is just a different way of driving. Many of the cars don't have wing mirrors and instead of it being your responsibility to check the road behind you before you manuver, it is the responsibility of the car behind you to let you know they are there by beeping. Makes sense when you think about it. So much so that all the trucks on the road have the words "Horn OK Please" painted on the back. The trucks generally are painted to look more like circus wagons than goods vehicles, so they also have a sign on top of the cabins which helpfully tell you that they are a "Goods Carrier".
There are so many different types of transport on the road it certainly makes life interesting. Along with the trucks there are hand carts, bullock carts, pedestrians, cows, dogs, bicycles, two-wheelers (motorbikes), big red and grey buses, normal cars and even the odd elephant (but disappointingly few of these). The pedestrians are worse at playing chicken with the rest of the traffic than people are London - there seems to be a belief that if you put your hand out to the traffic and walk purposefully enough you will probably be OK. Which ususally holds true, but you do get beeped at. And the two-wheelers are facinating as you can have a whole family of 5 riding on one, a woman wearing a sari sitting side saddl
e on another, and a guy riding with bare feet on a third. But my favourite vehicles are the taxis and auto-rickshaws that dominate the city. Everywhere you look is a sea of black and yellow, which are the cab colours here. The cabs all look like Morris Minor type car (although I seem to think that I read somewhere that they are old Fiats) and are black and yellow except for the Cool Cabs that have air conditioning and are bright blue. The cabs are pretty small - I can sit up straight in the back seat but only just - there is less headroom than my little car back in the UK! I travelled in a cab with a guy who is about 6'7" and he was just about folded in half!
But the most fun form of transport are the auto-rickshaws that are not allowed in the south part of the city. They really remind me of the little green car in the Birds Eye advert for peas - if you have no idea what I'm talking about then you can see the advert by clicking here. They are basically 3 wheelers that seat up to 3 people (just) in the back. I'm sure that they are death traps and they don't go very fast but they are lots of fun, as long as the driver knows where you want to go because often the drivers' English is about as good as my Hindi and you can end up anywhere (one once tried to drop me off at a military camp instead of my hotel...).
Driving back in the UK seems very orderly and relaxing after being out here. And extremely quiet!
First Posted 18/02/06Well, I guess you have to join the technological revolution sometime and this seems to be a good a time as any...
I've just been to a Roger Waters concert. He is, apparently and according to my ticket, "the creative genius of Pink Floyd". And he played lots of Pink Floyd music. Which is great if you like Pink Floyd I guess, and the people in the crowd seemed very entusiastic about it all. However it tuens out that I don't like Pink Floyd very much and so it was all a bit boring. Much of the stuff was very political - anti bush and anti blair and anti war and all that. But even though I am pretty anti bush it all seemed a bit much and not very helpful. If the world was a simple place then there would be no war. But last time I checked the world is an extremely complicated place and no one has all the answers, especially not an old bass player who is cashing in on his kudos.
Anyway, they played the one that goes "we don't need no education" and that was really good. But 2 and a half hours is a long time to stand and listen to one song that you know and I have realised that standing up for any length of time is actually quite uncomfortable (must go to the osteopath when I get back...).
Going to a concert here in India was, rather disappointly, mush like going to a concert in the UK. The biggest difference was that there wasn't a load of stalls selling overpriced t-shirts and programmes and there was no really obvious bar with queues of people waiting to get served, oblivious that the band they have paid a large amount of money for the privilege of seeing are half way through their second song. However the pushing and jostling were the same, and there were the same quota of annoying people holding up their mobile phones to get photos and videos of the concert. I don't have any problem with this per se but you do find yourself looking at the phone that is right in the line of sight between you and whatever interesting thing that is happening, which isn't really the reason why you went in the first place. But on the plus side you can size up different models of mobile phones if you are in the market for a new one.
The other thing that was a bit different was the way they spit up the standing area. We were in the area closest to the stage with our Rs. 3,000 tickets (about £35). This is a lot of money out here so it's reasonable to assume that most of the people at the front were rich locals or foreigners like us. And at this concert I did see a higher concentration of westerners than I have almost anywhere in Mumbai. And it was generally ironic that everyone in the front bit was wildly cheering the song "Money" which I understand is about the evils of materialism (or something). Anyway, back to the standing arrangements. Behind where we were stood was the enclosure for the people with the Rs. 2,000 tickets and then (I presume) the Rs. 1,000 tickets at the back. I can't make up my mind if this is a good thing or a bad thing but on the whole it made being near the front somewhat easier as there was less surging forward when there was a good song. Having juest re-read this entry I realise that I sound like quite a miserable so-and-so, but I guess that's just a product of getting old :-)
So key learnings for the day?
- I think Pink Floyd is quite boring (controversial I know - please don't tell my Uncle David that I said this!)
- Pop / Rock concerts are pretty much the same in the UK and India
- Roger Waters looks a lot like Richard Gere
So there we go...
