Colaba

October 19

This morning I learn that auto-rickshaws are not allowed in the southern sections of Mumbai. I assume this is so because the tremendous traffic jams all over this city of fifteen million people are almost uncontrollable. As I leave the Jewel Hotel, they offer to call a cab, I accept and then an hour-and-a-half later find myself at Churchgate Station. Lugging my suitcase and backpack, I am misdirected four or five times until I finally find the police office in the station where they direct me to the Government Tourist Office across the street. Since this is such a large city, they seem to have more travel literature and are able to inform me of train schedules and hostels and places to see in Mumbai.

I make my way back across the street, find a pay telephone and call the Salvation Army hostel where I’m told that they have an opening in their dormitory. As I look around me, I see a funeral pyre being carried up the street with the body decked out in yellow flowers. An elderly gentleman comes up to me and asks me “where are you going?” and “where are you coming from?” This is the first of many times I will hear this question…I reply from “ Boriuli and am headed to the Salvation Army dormitory.” When I realize that this is not his question, I explain to him that I’m from the U.S. and am heading to see my niece in Mettupalayam. “Oh!” he exclaims, stopping a taxi and making sure the driver knows where to take me. He hops in with me telling me that he is going the same way but will get out before me. I thank him and ride to the hostel.

Later on that day, after having walked around the city taking pictures of the Gateway to India and the Taj Mahal hotel, I return to the hostel and take a cold shower. (Every shower I take in India will be cold.) I find a girl from Sweden with whom I eat in a good, cheap vegetarian restaurant and she shows me Leopold’s (a tourist bar), the main street where there are a million shops spilled out on the streets, and a good shop in which I buy water and some toilet paper…