After a great 10 hour flight, we started our decent over the Arabian Sea and touched down in the city of Mumbai at 11am, which up until 1996 was known by the name of Bombay and has a population of 16.4 million people.
Things went smoothly with our rucksacks containing all of our belongings for the next 12 months appearing on the airports carousel. What a bonus at least we could get showered and changed today once we had found somewhere to stay.
A one hour pre paid taxi later we stepped foot onto the Mumbai street in the district of Colaba, which is situated at the southernmost peninsula and after sweating our way around a few hostels one being full and the other having the largest cockroach we had ever seen (not on the first night!) we checked into the Indian Guest House.
Not a bad place, basic and clean with partitioned walls that reminded me of the film The Beach, the only thing left was for Ducky to poke his head over and say hello! It was a funny start to our time in Mumbai where we took our Malaria tablets and passed out for a couple of hours. We did however manage to wake-up and get organised before heading out into the Mumbai night.
We found ourselves in Leopold’s Cafe with two things on my mind food and a beer. It was time to sample for the first time what India had to offer and I was shocked of what I first saw on display at what looked like the bar area, Peroni, Corona, Tsing Tao, VB and Bacardi Breezers. Confusion took over and I wondered if I was actually in India or still in Leeds with the beers on offer. The menus arrived and we ordered two mugs of beer. It was cold and went down extremely well. It was easy drinking, thirst quenching golden amber nectar, or maybe that was just what my mind was telling me with the heat and dehydration knocking me for six since we had arrived. This beer ironically will have to be called The Beer with No Name with the menu stating that it was a mug of beer but I am pretty damn sure that it was Kingfisher Premium Lager Beer. More research will be made over the coming days I am sure.
Now you don’t have to worry this blog is not going to run like a day by day diary entry, but I do have to explain day two because if the rest of my travels carried on like this I think a book might be on its way. Surreal doesn’t even get close. On the way back from my first shower at The India Guest House the guy on reception out of the blue said ‘good morning sir would you like to be in a Bollywood film today?’ The answer was of course yes and off we went with some other western travellers to appear in our first motion picture. Our travel to and from the set was all paid for along with food and drinks plus 500 Rupees each. It was a great experience with lots of waiting around as you would expect, but once on set after wardrobe, hair and make-up it was so much fun. Some of us got put in suits and looked pretty dapper but not me oh no. I looked more like the late Steve Irwin when my character was supposed to be a member of the press in Scene 95A, Shot 8, Take lost count. The acting debut went well I had to turn my head once in amazement. De Niro has no need to worry and Scorsese won’t be calling but ‘Dil Toh Bachchia Hai Ji’ is due for release in 2011 and I will keep you all in the loop, with tickets for the premier.
We got back to Colaba very late at night after an auto-rickshaw ride, train journey and a taxi ride. A pretty out of the ordinary day, but what a day and some friends made along the way with Felix from Germany, Jenny from good old England, Edward from Zimbabwe and plus Peter and Rasmus from Denmark to name a few, who just like myself had one think in mind, beer time. The day kept its theme for we ended up in The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, which is the best 5 star hotel in Mumbai, with security checks just to get in the door. It was a good job they had a relaxed dress code because you have to remember that we had been working for 12 hours with no shower and had travelled through Monsoon Rain so we were splattered in mud. The place was gorgeous and just another funny experience to add to the day as 350 Rupees of the 500 Rupees we had been paid went on a single beer each.
A nice cold 330ml Kingfisher Premium touched the spot after a long days graft and to be honest there wasn’t much choice. Kingfisher or Kingfisher! It did however give me the opportunity to peel off the label and gain some knowledge about this huge beer brand of India. The beer is known as the King of Good Times brewed with the finest malted barley and hops and not exceeding 5% Abv. It is brewed in the city of Bangalore by United Breweries Ltd and is India’s best selling Premium Lager where is it a rare pleasure, colourful and revered with prestigious international awards being further proof of its widely acclaimed taste and quality. Personally I thought it was OK, with the nicely frozen branded glassware helping it along the way. Not very challenging, the taste had a lot of sweet malt but lacked a nice hoppy bitterness of a pilsner style. It was however a light beer with a nice golden colour and grassy, citrus aromas. In terms of a pairing with food it was a little late at night to be eating but I think it would struggle with the more traditional complex spicy Indian dishes. In true beer loving German style Felix after naming me the beer master helped me out by purchasing an apple strudel at 1 am which paired very well, with the citrus notes complementing the strewed apple and the pastry bringing out a biscuity note in the Kingfisher. Overall it was a great day with a happy beer and food ending.
Over the next three days we learnt to love Mumbai which is the capital of the Maharashtra State. It turned out to be everything that we expected and much more, once we managed to open The Lonely Planet and get some serious sightseeing accomplished. A lot of ground was covered by foot where there was a distinctive mix of colonial and Art Deco architecture as well as the Gateway of India which is a colossal arch built to commemorate the 1911 royal visit of King George V. It was completed in 1924 and was where the last British regiment was paraded off, as India moved towards Independence. Nowadays it is a gathering place for locals, tourists, crazy balloon sellers and photographers who take pictures for people, charge them and print the picture out right there and then. This moves us onto more bazaar situations where we were surrounded and had maybe 30 people waiting to have a picture taken with me and Kate. I think we must have been good for business and it was a quick insight into how stressful it must be to be famous, and being hounded by the Paparazzi. This was something we would have to get used to but it is all about settling into a new culture and what a vibrant culture especially when we visited places like Colaba Market and Crawford Market. The streets can just be completely crazy with people everywhere, out of control traffic, music, dancing, colour and smells. It overtakes all of your senses in a millisecond and is just so full on.
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Our exploring in Mumbai did bring us across many different areas including the famous Chowpatty Beach which comes alive at night with local families. The atmosphere was like a carnival with fairground rides that were small plastic children’s cars stuck to a metal frame and pushed around by the rides owner, very old school. Chowpatty was a great place to see the sunset over the city’s skyline and was a must to sample some of the local delicacies at the evening stalls of Bhel Plaza where you sit out on rugs eating the famous bhelpuri and panipuri (small crisp puffs of dough filled with spicy tamarind water and sprouted gram).
Sampling what Mumbai had to offer did include passing what were known as beer bars or lounges and some of the bars during the evening like the sports bar which served your beer with bowls of popcorn and salted nuts a nice concept to increase your alcohol intake. The beer drinking highlight though must have been upstairs back at Leopold’s where the gang took the challenge of the 3 Lt Kingfisher towers. This was a fun and very sociable way of enjoying a drink with new friends, with all of the Europeans seeming to have a passion for beer. The Dane’s enjoyed Tuborg at home while Felix was very excited about arriving home to Munich for the opening day of Oktoberfest 2010. The general feeling was we can’t wait to get home for a proper beer! I will reserve this thought for my final day in the Indian subcontinent. I was confident that over the next 10 weeks many different beers will cross my path. One thing that I was unsure about was the rats roaming the dark streets. While walking back to the hotel one evening I did manage to jump and land on a gigantic rat while trying to get out of the way. Terrifying and I only had a pair of Haviannas on my feet. I think that I now have a phobia of rats!!!
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We were getting close to moving on after booking our first sleeper train south to Goa and just before our departure we were lucky enough to see the beginning of the Ganesh Chaturthi Festival, which is Mumbai’s biggest annual festival. A 10 to 11 day event in celebration of the elephant headed deity Ganesh. The festival builds and builds until the final day which sees millions of people descending on Chowpatty Beach to submerge a giant statue into the ocean. It would have been nice to stick around but we are backpacking after all and a time will come in every new place where we have to move on.
So in as few words as possible Mumbai has been a mix of Hollywood, crazy traffic, colonial relics, ancient bazaars and poverty with a smattering of swish bars, restaurants all surrounded with mayhem and order. A great place to start and I am sure from this moment on wherever we travel will seem more relaxed and easier. The place however is addictive and mesmerising, which is why there is no excuse for people visiting just to dive into the madness head first. The city has everything. You just to get under its skin and find out where, what you are searching for is.
It is time to wrap up Mumbai so apologies for its some 2000 words. I can safely say that the Reed about Beer blog entries will get shorter but I think a good detailed introduction is a positive way to begin.
