Yesterday was an interesting day. We spent the morning at the High Court admiring the building and listening in on a few cases. We wanted to fly the flag for the aphorism  “Justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done” (Lord Hewart CJ, 1924 apparently) so we went to court to see it “being done”!

Although we could certainly “see” justice being done we couldn’t actually hear much of it. The courts were incredibly busy, people going in and out all the time, lots of standing up, huddling and sitting down again and to make matters worse the judges and barristers generally spoke too quietly for us to hear. Shame really because some of the judges comments we did catch were quite memorable. “Look, I’ve ruled, you’ve lost, learn from it”, “You come here ill prepared, you fail to make your point and you attempt to make another point instead. This is not the first time I have seen you act this way in this court. Case dismissed!”, “This is not advocacy, this is not nice, I will not continue this discussion.” Almost made me wish I was a Judge!

In the afternoon Leishia went for a sleep (something to do with those G and T’s perhaps?) so I went for a three hour walk around the back streets of the city. Luckily it was a sunny day so I mostly knew which way to go. These are some of the sights I saw along the way…

(click on a picture to blow it up)

  ornate facade

  more people than windows

 fantastic old building lucky it was dry!  more meat! the local kite shop  and more meat! mostly bananas  great carts  the local car breakers  could you fix this Kev?  the girl is washing pans, the guy laundry  look at that trolley, fantastic! I’ve got a bike just like this!

 smiley little lad 🙂

The last picture above is another of the pigeon feeding stations. Apparently they are  “Kabutar Khana” which translates as “Pigeon shelf”, the belief is that pigeons are unable to take care of themselves without human intervention and so to feed them creates good karma. I might spoil my own karma now but it seems to me these Indian pigeons must be a lot less self-reliant than hardy European pigeons!

The building in the background of the picture is the local maternity home!

Well that was Tuesday. Today (Wednesday) we are leaving Mumbai on the night sleeper and heading to South Goa for nine days where I suspect we will do very little to blog about, at most I foresee a story about me running along the beach or Leishia lying on it.

So this could be the start of ten days radio silence!

So Monday proved to be another fun packed day in Mumbai. Fun like meeting our shipping agent and our vehicle insurance agent that is.

Our inbound shipping agent is Yatin Ganatra (end2endglobal.com). His office is barely 50 metres from our hotel which was helpful, as was Yatin. He helped us organise the inbound process and even arranged our accommodation in Bangalore and Chennai! He was very excited when we met him because Diwali is coming up (Sunday Nov 3rd) and he has ordered a new car which he collects on the Sunday.

We arranged our vehicle insurance through the West India Automobile Association whose offices are also a short walk away. Abdul Kahn was our contact, he was very thorough and made sure we left with exactly what we needed. Here’s a picture of an unusually serious looking Abdul:

The afternoon was given over to watching cricket, there is a huge cricket area in the central city area and there seem to be two or three games going on whenever we walk by.

I should probably wax lyrical now of the satisfying thud of leather on willow and of ladies preparing cucumber sandwiches for tea but since neither of us qualifies as a cricketing aficionado I’ll resist (Leishia doesn’t know how many balls make up an over and I don’t know my gully from my silly mid off!).

One of the teams playing was from the Kishinch Chellaram College and as we were waiting for the cricket to progress (not the most dynamic of games!) we read through an examination paper the students happened to have with them. I thought my English was OK but what about this for a question (number 20 if you care):

“The world won’t care about your old defeats”. The figure of speech used here is a) Simile b) Metaphor c) Metonymy or d) Synecdoche.

I’ve looked it up and I’m still not sure what the answer is, thank goodness I’m not eighteen!

So after the English lesson we trundled off to dinner and shared quite simply the best Indian starter either of us had ever tasted, special prawns. Look at these little lovelies:

followed by a very acceptable mixed vegetable dish:

and a very colourful finale:

all washed down with a bottle of Kingfisher. Well, truth be told, Leishia enjoyed one too many G&T’s (i.e. two!) so she was on form for the rest of the evening.

And that was that, shipping, insurance, cricket and dinner!

Sunday – a day of rest – not for us it wasn’t! We decided to tour some of the better known sites around Bombay but before that  a quick technical point:

The email alert does not distinguish videos from pictures so if you are looking at the email not the website you may not see the videos. In future there will be a prompt to click on the video but for the ultimate experience – open the blog!

(There were two videos in the Super Saturday post so you may want to go back a day and take a look at them – especially the street performer!)

So – to the tour …

First port of call was the famous Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat, a huge outdoor laundry village. The people work there and live there. The place was a hive of industry, laundry arriving, being washed, dried, spun, sorted, packed and shipped back out, much of it on sturdy locally manufactured Hero bicycles.

Video, click-the-pic:

As we were walking around the laundry we heard singing which turned out to be coming from a small church room, I could have stayed all day but Leishia was worried I might be converted (not sure what to).

Video, click-the-pic:

We went from the laundry to a nearby Fishing village. Leishia had read about the village before; apparently the fish stocks are severely depleted so not much fishing goes on – which probably explains why all the boats were on their moorings.

We decided to go to the Crawford market primarily to compare it to markets we had seen in St. Petersburg and Guangzhou (infamous as the birthplace of SARS). I made a mental note to stick to vegetarian fare!

Video, click-the-pic:

Wandering around the market I came across a guy deftly butchering a chicken on a board resting on top of several crates of chickens. Take a look…

Video, click-the-pic:

Made me think about what the other chickens were saying….

“Hey Pete, where’s Fred?”, “No idea, the door opened and he was gone in a flurry of feathers!” , “Isn’t that him up there?” , “I think it is!” , “He’s lucky to get out of here” ,

cue butchery, “Oh No!” , “Fred, Fred!” , “Pete – hide!”.

After the market we went to a small temple, it was extremely ornate but surprisingly quiet. There were quite a few rules:

Leishia said there was no way she could comply with rule 7 “Do not touch the idols” because she has her own irresistible idol! Guess who – answers on a postcard please.

After that came the walk home. Sunday in Mumbai seems to be a day of street cricket. I watched this guy get it spectacularly right:

Video, click-the-pic:

then the assembled throngs watched this guy get it spectacularly wrong:

Video, click-the-pic:

Along the way we spotted this neat little idea:

I might steal it and embellish our Pashley’s when we get back to Cyprus!

So that was our day – laundry, fishing, chickens, temples and cricket – splendid!

Super Saturday started off with a romantic touch at breakfast:

and ended with a romantic touch at dinner:

In between we went to the Western India Automobile Association to arrange our vehicle insurance and to the train station to book our tickets to Goa. The train station is housed in a fantastic building as is the Post Office which we visited later:

Opposite the Post Office was what appeared to be a pigeon sanctuary, a very ornate structure covered, unavoidably I suppose, in pigeon droppings. And here they are (the pigeons, not the droppings – although I’m sure the more observant viewer will pick those out too). Click the picture to see the video:

Later in the day we were treated to an impromptu street performance, reminded me of Covent Garden. Click the picture to see the video:

Then in a quiet moment I developed a working draft of the Mumbai horn algorithm:

But the highlight of the day was dinner at the Radio Club. I could wax lyrical about the setting and the faded grandeur but I’ll save you that. The reality is that the members and staff create a great atmosphere  – the members are from old Bombay families and professions and the staff are attentive and professional (and took great care of us). We ate well and listened to Zend as he spoke about his family and his bakery. A very special evening.

India at last, it only took sixty years! So since this is our first “on the road” post it probably makes sense to outline our plan:

Right, that’s that done.

We arrived last night and took up residence in, aptly enough, The Residency Hotel which is already proving to be a restful haven (thank you Sumeet for the recommendation). We booked our first six days in Mumbai with the intention of clearing our vehicle (Elsie) through customs and getting away to the Pushkar Camel Fair. That little plan came crashing to the ground when our shipping agent informed us that the shipping line had not loaded Elsie at Southampton because of “contractual obligations”. Elsie is now en route to Chennai instead which means a) we don’t have to rush around Mumbai dealing with Indian bureaucracy and b) we get to go on trains. Brilliant!

So we now have six days of peace in Mumbai, top priority today was to get a local SIM (number is +91 9930 934 681) and a couple of internet dongles. Smith at the local Vodaphone shop was very helpful – and very tall!

Smith insisted on completing the necessary forms and was quite creative when he filled in Leishia’s nationality:

Anyway we managed to endure the idiosyncrasies of the process and after a couple of hours became the proud owners of a shiny new microSIM and two dongles – which is probably good given the local post services:

Armed with our new technological devices we wandered off for a spot of sightseeing, the Gateway to India:

and the Taj hotel, very recognisable after it’s world wide coverage in 2008:

Eventually we strolled back towards our hotel and came across the Yazdani restaurant and bakery:

The tea was sweeter than the biscuits and the host was sweeter than the tea. His name is Zend Meherwan Zend, he opened the bakery in 1953 and is still there. He took a bit of a shine to Leishia:

Anyway he has invited us out tomorrow for swimming and dinner at the Radio Club. It will be great to spend an evening in the company of a man who seems to be something of an institution in these parts.