June 7th, 2009 -- Bombay is Cool .... actually HOT!

Ramesh is now a professor at ITT Bombay which is also where he lives. The campus is located in the Powai district of Bombay. It's pretty isolated from the rest of the cities noise and pollution and pretty nice. The first morning, even before taking a shower, we all went for a walk up a huge hill behind the campus (which apparently has no name) and saw a wonderful view of the city. Took panoramic pictures of the view.

We wasted no time and this very first day went down to the bay area. Keep in mind that we are in India during the summer in one of the hottest summers to record. We first went near the Taj Hotel where the part of the November 2008 Bombay shootings occurred. We ate at the famous Leopold Café. It is a cafe known for tourists to visit, hence why it was also targeted during the shootings. The walls and frames stilled showed the bullet holes! I can't help to think that it was an Indian business decision to keep the holes … it will attract more tourists! Predominately a white crowd at the café.

We decided to take a boat onto the bay to go to a small island in the bay called Elephanta Island. The boarding of the boat was guarded and watched by the “911 Security Squad” lol. Not kidding … just reading what the uniforms said! But, they serve a very important function … securing the loading dock and boats in one of the busiest international trading ports of India so we took it seriously when we approached the dock. The "911 Security Squad" told us to stand in line to enter the boat. They were very serious and professional. Then out out of the blue they proceeded to sell everyone in the line bags of chips and snacks! Indian enterprise at its best! So the "911 Security Squad" runs an emergency snack service!

So finally on the boat and the bay is great! It busy with boats from all over the world! There was a sign on the boat … “Photograhi is not allowed by order of the Indian Navy”. I know how to spell Photography … I’m just spelling it how it was spelled on the boat. I took a picture of the sign … ironic? No … everyone was taking pictures and no one seemed to care. Could be just my opinion … but I don’t think the “911 Security Squad” was going to stop anybody from taking pictures ... they’ll probably start selling disposable cameras soon.

The island we went to housed ancient caves called The Elephanta Caves where carvings of many gods was done in the 4th - 6th century! It is one of 60 or so Unisco's National Heritage sites of the world! Being over 2000 years old … one of the oldest artifacts I have ever seen live and up close! Although the it seems the identity of the original builders is still up for debate, the estimated time of building crosses over the time the Gupta Empire ruled all over India (The Golden Ages of India). Was an amazing site!

LEACH or BE LEACHED
We all know about Indian driving … it has no rules nor guidelines to follow. Drive anywhere there is open space is the principle. Well … that also seems to apply to boats! As observed on our way back to the bay, these boats literally fight for rights to dock. There is no concept of waiting in line to dock. Every boat for itself. In fact, when one wins … other boats “leach” off the one who just won “docking rights”. The crew on the “runner up” boat jumps onto the “winning boat”, tie them together (all the while fighting off the crew of the winning boat). Then all the people from the second boat spills over to the docked boat to quickly empty their boat quickly. It was much like pirates taking control of a ship! Not only that but if you looked further back … there is a “second runner up” leaching off the “first runner up” and a "third runner up" leaching off the "second runner up" and so on. It's an ego trip and everyone wins! It's an interesting phenomena that we observed and we had plenty of time to do so … it took 30 MINUTES of all this rambling and fighting of boats for even the first boat to win the docking rights!

Our driver was not aggressive enough to be the winner … we got pushed back 3 times. We got into it and started rooting for our driver! Wasn't our fault ... our boat had to slow down as one of the other boats leached onto us and unloaded its passengers onto our boat and left even before we were able to dock so we were carrying double the people! But was kinda exciting little game ... we sure had a lot of "facetime" with a lot of people we didn't know on our crowded boat!

We finally got off and ended the day exhausted from the heat. But what a way to go!