Joey's - Part II *

Read this if you have missed the first part.

Fell asleep in front of the screen with my head resting comfortably on the keyboard. Now I need a coffee. And a smoke. And her.

Joey's - Part I *

Surfing through the infinities of cyberspace I lost my way. She was sitting in front of Joey's Deli at 217th Main, 160th Cross, smoking,  humming some long forgotten tune when I turned around the corner and spotted her.

Bye Bye Bombay!

My India trip is about to come to an end as I'm flying back home to Poland tonight. I've had - as always - a fantastic time with my family, absolutely delicious food and for the first time I am returning home with quite an amount of pictures. At times it still feels a bit odd to photograph things or people everyone around here considers ordinary, but yet are very unique and special to the Western eye.

Gateway to India - one of Mumbai's major sights

Green Oasis!

Today we've been to two of the very few green as well as calm spots of the city: Hanging Gardens and Kamla Nehru Park. Both of these parks on Malabar Hill (the highest point of the city centre) are a close and welcome getaway from the hectic life of the city and have been equally loved by the old as well as the young.

Hanging Gardens has been set up at the end of the 19th centure and is mostly known for it's hedges that are carved into various animals.

Hanging Gardens

Abandoned 'Ship'

My Dear Readers,

I've just returned home and as I am virtually falling asleep as I write this it will be a rather short post. The below picture was taken at a main road in Powai, North Mumbai.

Rikshaw Wreckage

Touring Mumbai

As already mentioned in my previous post we've done quite a tour around the city yesterday and I thought I'd give you a short overview of the places we've been to. In order to to give you also a bit of a geographical perspective I've create a map with the major places we visited.

View Mumbai Tour in a larger map

Coffee!

Most of my readers from Poland will know that I am a big fan of CoffeeHeaven, a Polish coffeehouse chain which has become very popular across Eastern Europe in the last few years (more on this most probably in a future post once I'll be back in Poland).

Bollywood Record

Unimaginable: in February 2010 the movie "Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge" (English: The Big Hearted Will Take the Bride), also commonly known as DDLJ, has set a record of being played for 750 weeks CONTINUOUSLY in a cinema in Mumbai (having a daily show!).

Starring Bollywood superstars Shahrukh Khan and Kajol it has been one of the most successful as well as biggest Bollywood productions ever - and this inspite or rather because being a typical Bollywood movie.

Still playing for more than 15 years now ...

Choose 'N ..?

Am down with fever, a bit of a cold and overall not feeling very well today, so am leaving you with another single snapshot from the streets of Mumbai.

???

Hopes to be better soon
Memonji

New vs.Old

Colonial Bombay, predominantly observable and comparatively well maintained in the Fort area features typical British architecture of the era with beautiful town houses, villas, multi-storey buildings with elaborate wooden balconies and ornaments as well as unique monumental structures like the old Victoria Terminus railway station now called Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus (C.S.T.), a UNESCO world heritage site.

C.S.T. railway station

Leave Me Alone!

As already mentioned in one of my tweets some time ago privacy seems to be very difficult to maintain over here. Or as a friend has very pointedly framed it: "Here in India the concept of privacy is basically non-existent."

The reasons for this are many: first and foremeost - especially in the cities - it is the constant space constraint. Grandparents, parents, children and sometimes even children's children sharing a single apartment (room, hut, whatever little space is available) is very common. Furthermore the closely knit family concept, children (in the absence of an adequate social security system) being responsible for the caretaking of their parents and finally the very open community culture with it's dynamic impact on society have established an environment which is very adverse to individualism and personal freedom.

 

Happy Dashera!

Today is Dashera, the tenth day of Navratri, one of the biggest religious festivals in India.

The whole country has been decorated and I'm taking this opportunity to publish another themed series, this time featuring flower garlands which are seen everywhere around the city today. But have a look yourself ...

Street vendors selling flower garlands

Food & Shopping

It didn't look like any significant shopping would actually happen today.

In the morning I went to one of the book stores where I have been buying picture post cards since the last 20+ years only to find out that they had one shelf of cards from Mumbai and 12 shelfs full of cards from other places in India. To make it worse not only were the pictures on the Mumbai cards taken in the 70s, they were also lousy :(

Random Pictures II

As planned I managed to get up a bit earlier than usual and capture some more random stuff in and around South Mumbai. I've realised that the title of this (and the other equally titled previous) post is indeed adequate as there is absolutely no order or theme of any sort in these photo collections. What I'll probably should do once I return is organise the pics in categories and re-publish them.

Until then you'll have to live with this rather 'chaotic' way of posting ;)

Towels anyone?

---

Fluke Shot

Despite being out and around quite a bit I didn't get a chance to shoot many pictures today. Nevertheless, while sitting in my cab home I managed to capture the below with my mobile phone. And yes, this is also downtown Mumbai ;)

Will try to get up a bit earlier tomorrow and hopefully will be able to report a higher success rate in my next post.

Not promising, however ... 

Memonji 

A Night Out - Part II

Read this if you have missed the first part.

Staring into the void her sudden disappearance had left me with I recalled us shortly stopping at the riverside: She jumped on a small wall and decided sit on it with her back facing the river and me facing her.

Street Pics

Some more shots from the streets of Mumbai plus a special mini-series on Mumbai cabs.

Another colourful truck

Drowning (Not Singing!) in the Rain

Suddenly, last night at 1am, the monsoon was back with all it's might to remind us that it will only retreat whenever it wants and not when our calendar demand it to do so.


It continued pouring the entire night, as well as the whole day today turning the streets into rivers, making the sidewalk disappear in mud and the disguising the bazaars and markets as strangers covered under a veil of plastic.

Time 4 Snax!

Traditional roadside snacks made out of a mixture of puffed rice, peanuts, cornflakes, onions, tomatoes, green chillies, lemon juice and various chutneys.



'Yummy' .. judges
Memonji

More Pictures

As promised here more pictures all taken today.



Mumbai Central Railway Station

After Work

Glad to have finally reached he slammed the door of his new Suzuki and walked towards the entrance. A tough day at the office with his boss assigning him just another special task to be completed "if possible by the end of tomorrow" was over. He recalled his last performance appraisal discussion and remembered the importance of having a healthy work/life-balance when he suddenly saw her sleeping on the sidewalk - a piece of a cardboard box folded as her pillow.


"She can't be older than eight." he told himself and tried to wake her up as gently as possible

The New Face of Mumbai

Mumbai in the making: the newly built residential twin towers Imperial Heights.

Price per square foot(!)range around 1000Euro/1400USD/4000PLN ...



Shot today at dusk by
Memonji

Queen's Necklace

Here at the natural bay is where I regularly spent my evenings in Mumbai. Sitting at the seaside enjoying either the sunset or the pleasant breeze from the Arabian Sea late at night can be very soothing.


As the illuminated streetlights alongside the 3km long promenade look like pearls on a string the road is also referred to as Queen's Necklace.

Just returning from there
Memonji

Random Pictures I

Just a few pics of what I've seen walking through the streets around one of the major commercial areas of the city today ...





Crawford Market - a large in- and outdoor market hall which used to be the main fruit, vegetable, fish and meat bazaar. Now it has mainly imported grocery products, but some of the older stalls have remained. Some years ago we used to live just around the corner.

Calendar Updates

Here as promised the post I wrote on the flight WRO-MUC:

As the upcoming few entries will primarily be about my time here in India, let's quickly recap a few of the more or less important updates from around the world:

September 29
The Polish government is preparing a framework for the adoption of the Euro (yes, while joining the EU in 2004, joining the Schengen zone in 2008 we still continue to earn as well as pay in Zloty instead of Euro).


Ordinary folks are not very keen on adapting the Euro any time soon as this is believed to increase the cost of living significantly, however some inofficial information has leaked that 2015 is a likely target.

Departure

Finally dates have been fixed, flights booked and - almost - all preparations completed, so that I'll be able to push off to India tomorrow evening.

I'll have a one night stopover in Munich before my onward flight leaves on Monday morning getting me into Mumbai at 23h local time (19.30h CET). The idea is to use this blog as a travel log and hence I'll try to write, post pictures as well as tweet updates regularly. Having said this there are various things that need to be sorted out before that's actually possible: need to organise a mobile internet connection (so far we don't have access at home) as well as get my Indian mobile phone up and running again (my PL number remains active, so you guys in Poland can continue texting to that number to stay in touch).

The temperature for the next few days has been forecasted to range between a minimum of 25°C/76°F and a maximum of 35°C/95°F, humidity around 60% (which is quite pleasant for Mumbai) and the probability of precipitation varying between 10% and 70%, monsoon eventually departing during October.

What a welcome change compared to the falling temperatures and rainy autumn days here in Poland :)

Packing his bags ...
Memonji