Mumbai again, Pune nightmare trip + return to Mumbai 3rd -14th December 2010

The sleeper train from Udaipur to Mumbai went smoothly enough with the help of some store bought Valium , ( you can buy just about anything at Indian pharmacies without a prescription) and some decent conversation with some Dutch girls sharing the same berths as me who were doing the same trip as me but in reverse. Got some interesting tips off them for the Chinese leg of the trip.

Got into to Mumbai in the morning and headed back to the salvation army hostel to take a dorm room for a couple of nights. I then booked a train ticket to the far south of India ( 26 hours in total travel time) a couple of days later. My plan was to spend a couple of days doing extra work on Bollywood sets and try meet up with my Indian friend Bhavana who I had met in Turkey over the summer before heading south to Kerala and working my way back north to Goa for X-mas……things didn’t quite turn out that way.

The first night I was in town I decided I was feeling well enough to go for a few beers and hit the local sports bar in Colaba. First people I met at the bar were two Indian English brothers from Canterbury. Hung out with them for the rest of the evening , was hilarious seeing the locals reaction to them and their British Drinking habits. We tried to get into a local nightclub that wanted to charge us 1500 rupees to get in (about 20quid,) told them to forget it and went to another local bar to finish the night off along with a South African dude we had met. At the end of the night the others went home and I ( being in crissy good-o mood) decided to stay out for another drink got chatting to a couple of girls from Mumbai and ended up going to a night club with them along with some English friends called Kate and Nina. In fact we went to the same night club that I had tried to get into earlier with the guys from Canterbury. The cover charge was reduced to a fraction of the price when I was with locals ( typical ) Got on really well with one of the Indian girls called Kaveri she was a law student who had travelled the world quite a lot with her family and I seemed to have tonnes in common with her. We made plans to meet up again the following night and check out a club night at another Mumbai night spot.

Spent the following day chatting with other travellers in the hostels that now seemed to be full of English people heading to Goa for x-mas. That evening met Kaveri in a local bar and we went to a club nearby called the Blue Frog. Was as good as any night clubs ive been to anywhere in the world. There was an English DJ called Simon Beckford. Playing along with the local psytrance D.J. who was excellent. The night wasn’t cheap though 15quid entry and uk prices for beer, however worth it just for the experience, turned into a great night.

Was having such a great time hanging out with Kaveri decided to stay on in Mumbai for a few days and eventually we ended up booking tickets to go down to Goa for a week with the English girls. Spent the next few days hanging out with her and exploring areas of Mumbai that I would have never seen if I didn’t have a local companion. The Bandra area of the city is pretty happening with a good arts and music scene and a cool sea front view. ( see photo) Mumbai truly is a city of contradictions, some areas extremely poor others extremely modern and developed. It is a good analogy for the modern India and spending extra time there really seemed to illustrate the amount of development that has taken place in India in the last 10 years. Unfortunately it seems that the gap between the rich and poor has also increased just as much as the counties economic growth.. Met some really cool people through Kaveri during the rest of the week and hanging out with an Indian definitely helped to keep costs to a minimum ( e.g. locally priced cabs/ rickshaws). Went back to her house for dinner one night and met her parents ( also both lawyers ) who cooked me a great south Indian meal and had plenty of travel stories from when they were younger + some good tips for me in India. The week was really fun but was basically living like back home , caught a few movies ( bizarre they still have intervals in India and often stand for the national anthem before the show starts) and ate good food at various local restaurants. Felt pretty healthy at the end the week but my budget was in tatters…..

A couple of days before we were due to head down to Goa I heard about an Indian music festival in the nearby city of Pune and decided to go check it out on my own for a couple of days…Along with a bill consisting of Indian Rock and Metal bands some western bands were playing ( magic Numbers/ Asian Dub Foundation ).

The festival was in the Korregan park area of the city that is famous for its yoga retreats. Unfortunately upon arriving after dark I found that pretty much every cheap guest house in the area was booked out and ended up driving around for 2 hours with a rickshaw driver looking for various forms of accommodation. The worst of which I saw was some student accommodation that had a room in a shared flats with a blood stained mattress for 500 rupees a night ( “no thanks clart ill pass on that” ) I ended up checking into a very nice but well over budget hotel near the train station at 900 rupees a night. Was pissed of that I had to spend so much money but the room was clean and had a TV with espn showing premiership games ( some consolation) . That evening I felt physically exhausted and pissed off esp. as all of Pune resembled a giant traffic jam. I did manage to find a local bar/restaurant that had excellent Indian food and really cheap whisky. For around 3 pounds got a curry with 2 chapattis and a cheese pokara with unlimited finger snacks + peanuts to start and a triple whisky and coke…felt so much better after…left a generous tip and went back to the hotel to chill….watched Bolton v Blackburn on espn and ate some Bang cookies from Jaisalmer…slept like a log in a comfy bed .

The next day I got up early to try and find the festival and get a ticket. The directions on the website were typically vague and I ended up getting a rickshaw back to koregon park where no one seemed to be aware of the event. Everyone wanted to point me in the direction of the local Osho ashram ( details on wiki) where many westerners go to practice Yoga and free love…you can see a lot of them walking around the area in red dressing gowns….

“Nah fuck that new age shit man, I just want to see some Indian death metal bands and rock out”

I eventually ran into someone who worked at the festival and was told I could buy tickets from the local hard rock café…no one seemed to know where this was either….after another hour of walking through permanent grid lock with the constant sound of car horns in the air I had had enough, it was around 4pm and my distain seemed to be focused solely on the western new agers walking round in imperial guard uniform, (for no reason other than they seemed really pretentious to me at the time, probably an unfair assessment born out of frustration)…at 750 rupee a ticket for the day and with only half a day left of the festival by that point decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and got a cab back to my hotel with my tail between my legs…..ah well at least I got to watch Spurs v Chelsea on TV that night after another excellent meal at the same bar as the previous evening and a couple of Rajiput cookies for desert to ease the digestion….the next day ended up getting a chicken bus back to the outskirts of Mumbai and then had a nightmare trip back into Colaba on the local trains.

Trying to board an busy Indian train with a backpack as well as British manners and health and safety awareness is hard, the locals simply push in both directions rugby scrum style while shouting at the top of their lungs, with many people jumping on and off while the train is moving . It took me 3 trains before I managed to get on…. ( for those of you who know the Manmud station- “leap of faith/madman in a dress” story from my India 2000 trip, I can assure you my train jumping days are over )

Spent one more night in the salivation army hostel, ( which was now occupied by a different set of pasty British travellers sitting around in their pants to avoid the heat while waiting for trains south to Goa ). After hanging around with some really cool Indians all week was somehow getting sick of talking to other travellers and the toilets in the place were a disgrace, was happy to be seeing the back of it. Checked out in the morning and then spent the afternoon chilling in the local park watching local cricket matches and talking to some college students who had bunked lessons for the day. ( see photo) That evening got the night bus with Kaveri and the rest of the gang to Goa.

So Mumbai my pit stop tuned into an extended visit, largely thanks to hanging out with one of the coolest people I’ve ever met and getting a great local insight into the city…didn’t end up meeting with my friend Bhavna in the end ( who was on the road herself ) or working on Bollywood again. At times the Mumbai hustle and bustle was hard to take…all and all a good section of the trip, though was definitely ready to chill in Goa and do nothing on a beach all day but swim and get some sun on my skin…we headed to the southern beach of Palolem where I had spent some time 10 years ago with Balloon city Rob…will be interesting to see how much its changed………