Bombay

So Udaipur topped the charts of our favorite places in India. We stayed through Diwali, the largest, loudest, and happiest of Hindu festivals. It is a bit like Christmas, New Years, 4th of July, Halloween, and spring cleaning all in one. Everyone cleans out there homes and shops, many even give the walls a good paint job, everyone gets new clothes, fireworks are set off for about 5 days and nights non stop, and everyone gives friends, family members, and anyone else around tons of Indian sweets (most are made of milk and sugar, with some sugar mixed in and a little bit more sugar).

We made some friends and so the festival was a lot of fun. On the main day we handed out sweets to all of the shopkeepers we liked and to some other people that we had made friends with. That night we went to a big carnival which was mobbed with people. A rickshaw driver that we had made friends with saw us and we spent the whole time with him, his mom, and a friend. The funny thing is on the biggest night for the Hindus, we ended up hanging out with a bunch of Muslims!

This same guy invited us to go and meet the girl that his parents were trying to set him up to marry. He hadn't met her before, and we were not quite sure why we were invited. We went with him, his mom, and friend to meet the girl. We sat down with the girl's family and listened to them speak Hindi for about 15 minutes when our friend told us that the girl was at the market, and said shall we go? So all that and we didn't even get to see here. In the end I think our job was as eye candy/ status symbol. Even though we are just grubby travelers, they think we are rich and funny looking. If anything the kids enjoyed staring at us!

We decided that two weeks in Udaipur was enough so we decided to forgo staying two more days to spend Eid (the end of Ramadan, one of the biggest festivals for the Muslims) with our new (rickshaw driver) friend who had invited us to spend it with his family in their one room house (where he, his mother, father, brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew all live). Stupid move, but too late now. So we jumped onto a bus for the 16 hour overnight trip to Bombay. This was like being in a bounce house made of rocks, not fun.

We found a hotel that is right on the Arabian Sea (the cheapest in town, but the most expensive of the trip at $9 a night) . Bombay is a beautiful city of colonial architecture, tree lined streets, and black-and-yellow Premier taxis everywhere you look (India's version of 1950's Fiats).


We have seen some interesting things here. The funniest is the local Laughing Club. There are more than 30 groups all over the city that gather every morning at 7am to do laughing exercises for their health. They stand in a circle, ha ha ha, ho ho ho, he he he, and people just walk by like nothing weird is happening. I think Natalie and I got a better laugh out of it then they did. http://www.the-tidings.com/2001/0817/laughing.htm

I get offered to buy hash about 10 times a day, I have been offered to be a Bollywood extra for $10 a day, and to do an hour of voice over work for $10 (the guy hadn't even heard my high pitch pipes in action). We saw the local Dhobi-wallah ghat. Wallah means man and Dhobi means wash, and there were 5000 guys (according to our book at least) banging the crap out of tons and tons laundry from all over Bombay. There were clothes hanging everywhere.

Yesterday we went to the house where Gandhi lived while in Bombay. It has been turned into a really nice museum (http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/) with a photo gallery, his room which has been preserved as it was, and a funky series of dioramas depicting his life. I always liked Gandhi, but this museum brought tears to my eyes several times. He was a living saint.

Last thing I wanted to mention is food. I don't think I have really talked about it yet. Overall, it is good, not mind blowing, but good. We have had some meals that were moaning fests (like the tree bark in Jaisalmer), but most of the time things are just passable or pretty good. The Indian food is very heavy and oily. Afterwards you just want to have someone ring the oil out of you and go right to sleep. The cool thing is lots of restaurants are veg (no meat) or pure veg (no meat or eggs). Even the places with meat have tons of veg options and everything is very well stated if it does have meat. Most areas we have been we have had access to lots of western food. This is almost never what you think it is, usually it is pretty good, but never what you think lasagna, or pizza, or salad should be like.

The ice cream rocks, "special tea" is good (code word for beer at places with no license), and something called a bhang lassi is kind of tasty. A lassi is a yogurt milk shake and a bhang lassi is a lassi with pot in it. It is illegal, but widely sold. One town we were in had a government authorized bhang lassi shop. We figured if it was legal, it was our duty to try it (true be told I was afraid, Natalie made me do it). She ordered a medium strength lassi and we split it. I got smashed and she fell asleep.


To end, here are some things that Gandhi said that I found interesting and relevant to the US today and for the terrible current state of women in India:

The science of war leads one to dictatorship pure and simple. The science of nonviolence can alone lead one to pure democracy.

Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment.

Exploitation and domination of one nation over another can have no place in a world striving to put an end to all war.

A woman’s intuition has often proved truer than man’s arrogant assumption of superior knowledge.

If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman.