Driving from Mumbai to Nashik we passed road construction chaos. If I had to guess I would say completion on this project will be sometime between 550 and 750 years from now. It had the appearance of having been worked on for decades with little progress to show for the effort. What appeared to be total chaos for kilometers included piles of rotting garbage, lengthy sections of broken pavement, stones everywhere, partially paved sections covered with thousands of burlap sacks obviously placed by hand, random pieces of steel strewn about, and piles of dirt. And very few construction employees. It took more than 3 hours to go less than 80 kilometers.
Now I am staying somewhere in the middle of Nashik at a guest house; it was only a few dollars per night. Upon checking in, I made the obligatory entry into their guest book listing basic details of my life. I began casually thumbing through the pages; every entry was noted as an Indian citizen, except mine. Curious to find other international visitors I went through every single page with multiple entries on each page and never found another non Indian citizen.
I am staying in the middle of a metal working neighborhood, with bandsaws running at all hours of the night right below my room and the affiliated sounds of sparks flying while welding. At night fires burn in parts of the streets to keep workers warm. I smell the smoke drifting up into my room. I stumbled into a hole in the wall restaurant (they all are like this in this neighborhood) and quickly noticed everyone was eating with their hands. I did the same, finding some beef hidden at the bottom of my plate of rice.
After spending several days here, I still have not seen any non-Indians despite always crowded streets. The chaos is somewhat relaxing, something I would have never said on my first trip to India many years ago. The incessant honking and noises of the street, sort of fade into the background and have a calming effect when I am walking around this city. I expect it and perhaps that is the difference from one’s first time to India where everything is a sensory overload if one is not used to it.
People here are friendly and helpful. Wandering around Nashik lost, but not really at all, I was approached by a man who came out of the shadows and told me, “India is a powerful country, we are powerful people”. I stopped and looked him in the eye and said, “I believe”, loosely quoting a lyric in a Lauren Daigle song, one of my favorite Christian music artists. Soon about 10 men slowly meandered over my way and wanted to know if I needed help; they were curious about this rare foreigner wandering through their neighborhoods.
Today I decided to visit a key maker. I was first asked for my Indian id. Then I was asked for any id. They took a photo of it and also asked for my phone number. I’ve never been queried about this before when making a duplicate of a key.
I changed cities, hotels and scenery. Now its Mumbai, always flowing like a river. Controlled chaos. The latest fleabag guesthouse delivered an experience I’ve never had before. When I turned on the shower, instead of the water flowing from the showerhead, it began flowing from the ceiling. As a result, I took a slow drip shower. There were no towels provided which leads me to Dave Levart budget traveler tip: most of the fleabag guesthouses have pillows with pillow cases. Remove one of the pillow cases and use it as a towel and then dry it overnight and place it back on the pillow.
At one point while attempting to cross through a crowded intersection, remarkably I was unable to do so because the vehicles were so tightly packed together. I backed out of the short ‘inroad’ I made into the traffic and had to cross over to another section, passing over raw sewage and human feces and what looked like the remnants of a murder scene. An ouchie for sure, but not unexpected. I did eventually cross to the other side of the highway.
While wandering through a neighborhood which looked exactly like the Waterworld set at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, I discovered another neighborhood with narrow alleys. I stopped to take a photo of a cute cat and the owner popped out and said hello. I kept walking but about 10 minutes later he caught up with me and asked me if I would come back to his home and have tea with he and his wife. I obliged and had a pleasant conversation with both while we watched a parade happening in Delhi on the TV.
I could totally feel the whirlwind of chaos in Mumbai through your story, and will definitely keep Dave Levart’s on-the-fly travel solution in mind if I ever find myself in the same situation!
Thanks Teh – too many flea bag accommodations over the years!