More Mumbai

A few more photos of my random journeys.

In India drivers drive with their horns. In the UK we use horns to mean "what are you doing there?" usually in an aggressive manner. In India the horns are used to mean "I am here" and once you get used to that the driving seems to make more sense. There are two exceptions however: the first is at traffic lights where the horn means "I want to get through before the go red so hurry up" and when something crops up that stops all the traffic from moving such as this fallen tree which we met on the way back from Esselworld.

Intersections can look insane especially when paired with a distinct shortage of traffic lights or signs, but again they seem to work. It made me wonder if this is how driving should be and we in the west are too overly safety conscious. Here they just have to focus on the other drivers, we have to focus on them and all the signs telling us how to drive.

Here's a random clip from Youtub and I think whilst looking chaotic the natual choreography that happens is almost a beautiful thing with traffic flowing continuously. The fact that I had seen no traffic accidents in Chennai, Bangalore or Mumbai made me think that this worked. It was only when I got to Delhi and saw way more crashing going on that perhaps I reconsidered.

India has toll roads and traffic on them is significantly reduced. The toll charges are ridiculously cheap to tourists so don't worry about their expense. When hiring a driver you can get on his good side by bringing change and paying these as they happen rather than letting him do it. 

I love how the truck drivers decorate their vehicles.

Weddings seem to be going on all the time and they often spill out into streets.

This made me chuckle, more passport photos of students who had successfully passed a confidence class. I wonder if this was the final test: anyone not happy with having their picture displayed in public clearly hadn't achieved what the course set out to do.

The evening was spent as with the nights before, playing on the trains. Whilst I wasn't quite brave enough to jump between trains, although the thought had crossed my mind, I did indulge in some high-fives with the other passengers (not when the train was at top speed before you ask). This time I took the metro west to Andheri then a mainlnie train down to Charni Road.

This is perhaps the poshest hospital I've ever seen. 

It overlooks Chowpatti Beach which is a popular place for the locals to go when it's dark, unlike during the midday sun when stupid tourists would hit it. Sometimes there's a funfair here but not today but there were some nice food stands and music playing. My favourite food in Mumbai was Pani Puri which are like little bombs of tamarind and vegetables that you put into your mouth and burst releasing all the flavours at once.

Whilst here I did of course dip into the sea so that I could say I'd done the east beach and the west beach on the same trip.

Well if you're going to have tag stupidly, you might as well have a stupid tag. 

I wonder where the inspiration for the station sign came from?

After an hour or so on the beach I headed back to Andheri where the night market outside the station was pretty busy.

This was some sort of immense wedding celebration with an animatronic giant deity of some sort, and loud music playing attracting loads of people to see what was going on.

Really impressive but I'm not sure what relevance it had to a wedding.

Getting back to the hotel and here's some artwork in the Saki Naki metro station which is located directly outside the hotel.

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