Bandra Terminus Baby! Mumbai's newest tourist attraction
Mumbai 27th April
We had to check out today at 12noon, our train didn't come til 9pm... two people with Masters degrees thought it would be a good idea to go to the train station, an hours drive from the hotel, about 6 hours early, put our luggage in a locker and 'explore' Bandra.
There were no lockers...
Bandra is basically a slum...
We had 6 hours on a train station...
Ok so it wasn't actually as bad as it sounds. Bandra itself is probably fine but we were cut off from it by the train line on one side and the other side was a big stinking slum (as previously mentioned). In fact what we could see of it over the 30 train lines looked kinda leafy and pleasant.
So we took refuge on the overhead walk way which was the coolest point because it caught some breeze, and it stank less up there. We set up camp, sprawled out a bit and made our selves comfortable, but even our fellow homeless Indians had pieces of cardboard to lay on, we just had dirty tiles.
About two hours in it was getting a bit crowded and a fight broke out between two of the homeless teens (one of which we'd been chatting to earlier-- we could've been involved!) but luckily we weren't. Several weapons were used, a prosthetic leg, a crutch, and someone was stomped on while they were sleeping, it was messy. Eventually it died down and one faction moved on.
Later on while another guy slept his mischevious friends unbuttoned his belt, undid his fly and then neatly put a handkerchief over his crotch... kind of defeats the purpose, but the guy looked very sheepish doing everything back up again. We saw one other backpacker the whole day.
Finally the train arrived, we were the first on :) And finally all the middle classes, who had been ignoring or blatantly laughing at us all day, were now our friends. We had lots of people coming and chatting to us in our little curtained off area of 2nd class. I'm not sure the young Indian couple sharing the space with us were too impressed, they were very friendly in the morning when the visitors had worn thin. They bought us a really nice breakfast at one of the stops. yum.
(Breakfast on the train with our friendly cabin mates)
We had more visitors later on, the big muslim family who were going to a sacred mosque at Ajmer- they were all the way from Kerala. And a 14year old we have dubbed Gupta cos we forget his name... he wants to be a model or an actor in Mumbai.... don't give up school Gupta.
We made it to Jaipur only one hour late (Gupta said this is amazing) and we would have been on time but we sat just outside Jaipur for ages, for seemingly no reason... perhaps we caused chaos by the train actually being on time.
Tune in for Jaipur chapter really soon :)
We had to check out today at 12noon, our train didn't come til 9pm... two people with Masters degrees thought it would be a good idea to go to the train station, an hours drive from the hotel, about 6 hours early, put our luggage in a locker and 'explore' Bandra.
There were no lockers...
Bandra is basically a slum...
We had 6 hours on a train station...
Ok so it wasn't actually as bad as it sounds. Bandra itself is probably fine but we were cut off from it by the train line on one side and the other side was a big stinking slum (as previously mentioned). In fact what we could see of it over the 30 train lines looked kinda leafy and pleasant.
So we took refuge on the overhead walk way which was the coolest point because it caught some breeze, and it stank less up there. We set up camp, sprawled out a bit and made our selves comfortable, but even our fellow homeless Indians had pieces of cardboard to lay on, we just had dirty tiles.
About two hours in it was getting a bit crowded and a fight broke out between two of the homeless teens (one of which we'd been chatting to earlier-- we could've been involved!) but luckily we weren't. Several weapons were used, a prosthetic leg, a crutch, and someone was stomped on while they were sleeping, it was messy. Eventually it died down and one faction moved on.
Later on while another guy slept his mischevious friends unbuttoned his belt, undid his fly and then neatly put a handkerchief over his crotch... kind of defeats the purpose, but the guy looked very sheepish doing everything back up again. We saw one other backpacker the whole day.
Finally the train arrived, we were the first on :) And finally all the middle classes, who had been ignoring or blatantly laughing at us all day, were now our friends. We had lots of people coming and chatting to us in our little curtained off area of 2nd class. I'm not sure the young Indian couple sharing the space with us were too impressed, they were very friendly in the morning when the visitors had worn thin. They bought us a really nice breakfast at one of the stops. yum.
(Breakfast on the train with our friendly cabin mates)We had more visitors later on, the big muslim family who were going to a sacred mosque at Ajmer- they were all the way from Kerala. And a 14year old we have dubbed Gupta cos we forget his name... he wants to be a model or an actor in Mumbai.... don't give up school Gupta.
We made it to Jaipur only one hour late (Gupta said this is amazing) and we would have been on time but we sat just outside Jaipur for ages, for seemingly no reason... perhaps we caused chaos by the train actually being on time.
Tune in for Jaipur chapter really soon :)
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