Maximum City

Greetings from Mumbai!

We've been in the-City-Formerly-Known-as-Bombay for a couple of days now, but I'll start from where I left off in the last blog post: Goa. Goa was sand, sun and fun. We mostly kept to the more or less peaceful places that package tourism has not yet fully conquered, where the backpackers and rooted hippies still reign supreme. Not that they're necessarily any better, some of those guys are ridiculously stereotypical: with their rastafari hairstyles and ragged hippie clothing they're every bit as uniformed as the post-retirement package tourists they so despise. Anyway, we hung out, submitted our exams, went diving for a day (us and diving instructor Luther, sixty-something years of age and smoking every minute above water) and planned our journey northward.

We didn't plan it to well, though. As we approached the counter at a Goa railway station, optimistically requesting some fairly decent tickets, we were mercilessly informed that the only thing available was 'general seating' - what may well be referred to as 'worst class'. "How bad can it be", we reasoned, "on a 12-hour train journey they can't possibly have wooden benches or whatever. Let's just go for it". They could. They had. In fact, the benches were made of iron (literally). Furthermore, the train was absolutely completely full, and even with four or more people on each bench - which leaves about 30 square centimeters per person, people were still spooning on the floor and even standing up for hours. At every stop still more people forced their way in, until the passengers at the doors simply refused to open them. The people trying to get in promptly and repeatedly expressed their frustration over this by banging on all the windows with wooden poles, smashing a few. There were infants, surprisingly quiet but not without smelly bodily functions, there were people shouting and yelling, there were people sleeping ON you, there was a steel bar in the back of my 'seat'. Truly, it was an absolute nightmare. We got no sleep whatsoever, and I still have a back-ache and severe emotional trauma.

The Indians had no trouble sleeping though, and in quite imaginative positions at that. On the bench below me (yes, the benches were in two stories, which meant I couldn't stretch my legs over the edge of my seat) two guys were lying face-to-toe, with another 3 or 4 guys sitting on top of them. Across from them, two men were sharing a single seat, one resting his head in the other one's lap, who in turn rested his upper body on the first guy's back. I don't think they knew each other, either. No wonder they have no concept of personal space in this country. And finally, just to dot the i, some fuck stole my mobile from my bag half an hour before we got to Mumbai.

When we finally arrived, tears of joy and fatigue in our eyes, we checked into the first-best hotel and slept for hours. Since then, it's been a walk in the park. We've been seeing the sights, doing a bit of souvenir shopping, hanging out with Oda, Eva and Sara, and dining at some of the finest locations in India (including a spectacular lunch at the Taj, allegedly one of the most luxurious hotels in the world). One of the more curious establishments we've visited was the Go'Kul, a pub where Indian men go to get hammered. There were only urinals in the restrooms, half of which were filled with vomit. Nothing but charm.

Time for a few more words about Indians, this time on a less positive note (possibly because I'm pretty annoyed about the phone theft thing). Being a tourist, 9 our of 10 people who approach you want something from you. Most of them are pretty up front about it, like beggars, salesmen in street-side shops and taxi drivers. These are fairly easy to deal with, and don't bother me much. The ones who do bother me are the people who pretend to make contact for some other reason: to help, to ask about something or simply to chat. Most of the time, it turns out they're tryin to sell you something or cheat you in some way. A couple of examples: two days ago, this man walks up to us on the street. At first sight he looks like a businessman on his lunch break: he's wearing a suit and tie, talking about the Norwegian economy and business trips to Europe. On a closer look, his trousers are filthy and his tie knot is a mess. So, when after a bit of chit-chat he wants us to get into a car and go 'for a cappucino and a beer', we naturally decline. Most likely he was going to take us to some shop and try to sell us something. Yesterday we saw him in a coffee shop, in the same outfit, approaching some other tourists.
Another example: as we were trying to book train tickets yesterday (which is not easy in this country), two guys who sort of looked like railway employees were suspiciously eager to help. This eagerness diminished somehow when we insisted on going with them to purchase the tickets. In the end, we went to get the tickets ourselves. Sure enough, when we overcame the queues and astonishingly complicated booking system, it turned out that the tickets were half the price of what those guys were trying to get us to pay.
These are of course not very dramatic stories, and the bright side is that I feel extremely safe (in terms of violence) in this country (moreso than even in Bergen). But it's a bit sad, not to mention annoying, that you must assume that anyone who talks to you is trying to cheat you. It's certainly unfair to the - many - people who are actually approaching us with friendly intentions.

And with that outburst of frustration I'll end this overly long blog post. Tomorrow we're heading north to Jaipur, then (roughly) Delhi, Agra, Varanasi, Nepal, Sikkim and Calcutta awaits us. Stay tuned.

Go well, dear friends

Sigurd B


"Indians do not have the same kind of civic sense as, say, Scandinavians. The boundary of the space you keep clean is marked at the end of the space you call your own [...] This absence of a civic sense is [...] the national defect in the Indian character"

- Suketu Mehta in Maximum City - Bombay lost & found


PS: if anyone needs to reach me, my new phone number is +91 9967140177