Mumbai (Bombay)

Friday night - after a rousing game of badminton after work, our flight was delayed 4 hours - I'm noticing a pattern with these intra country flights... Instead of hitting the big city for the night, we went out in Hyderabad to an Irish pub with 70's music and Indian food. Eclecticism creeps in, and works, at random times around here.

gk IN bombay - We ran into a co-worker upon arrival in Mumbai, and she and her driver facilitated our passage to the Google guest house by arranging for the taxi to follow (to not take a roundabout way) and then overtaking the effort after the cabbies tried to scam us with fixed rates instead of the meter. Beware of cabs with 2 drivers!

Saturday - awoke to the sounds of waves lapping up against the coast just below the guest house. The first view of the city was gorgeous. Approaching the ledge and looking down, the second view illustrated the proximate dichotomy of the have's and have not's - shanty towns shaped from recovered materials were built up from the coast line. About 60% of Mumbai's 16 million people still live in poverty while the property prices keep soaring.

We took a cab to down our same coast to Chowpatty Beach and then got cruisy for a while in the Colaba area of town. We ended up at the Gates of India and the opulent Taj Hotel. We then made our way to through the University of Mumbai and the adjoining cricket green and over to the Indian stock exchange.

Before heading home to rest for our night out, we stopped by the Kenneth Eliyahoo synagogue to share Sabbath tea with the hazzan (canter) and caretaker. They explained how the Indian Jewish community is about 6,000 strong, mostly located in Mumbai and Kochi, and arrived from the diaspora. We looked at pictures of Jewish infrastructure in India. They were very hospitable, but we had to leave before evening services. They even looked the other way while I snapped a pic from outside the sanctuary to share with you. My amateur photography don't do the stained glass windows justice!

Since Mumbai was as close as we would get to American nightlife, we dined at Indigo which was apparently good enough for Brangelina on their visit here, probably to adopt;) We then made it to a local hangout called Leopold's, an open-air packed cafe house that served cheap food and drink and was the jumping off point for clubbing. Many of the bars/clubs are in hotels, and our primary option was closed for good, according to the concierge. Our second option was sultry and dark, in a bad way, so we settled at a loungy spot called Karma.

Sunday - We were pretty zapped from the previous 2 late nights and vowed to take it easy. We walked around our neighborhood, past the Nehru Science Center and Dhobi Ghats, on our way to the Horse Races. It was a scene, and the shaded seating was comfortable. The Hindi word for "quinnela" was not in our translation book.

We went back to the Guest house to chill and catch the sunset. Prasad, the house mgr, prepared a terrific home cooked meal which would have made us barely catch our flight... if it wasn't delayed 2 hours. I made it back to watch the Super Bowl. Bear, down.