India...Ow!

October 18

Large crows are cawing outside the windows of the hotel. It’s 6:30 a.m. and I haven’t slept all night. I look out and there’s movement on the street; the shops are preparing to open. The chai sellers are coming home and the auto-rickshaw drivers are climbing out of their cabs sleepily. And, I’m getting hungry.

By 8:00 a.m., I’m wandering the crowded streets of Santacruz, noticing what the shops are selling and looking for any outside influences such as tourist shops or guides and the only ones that I locate are for Indian sites other than Mumbai. At 9:30 there’s a huge rush of traffic – auto rickshaws, cars, scooters - it’s the morning rush hour and is over in half-an-hour. In front of a shoe salesman’s shop, I sit on the curb and see no other Caucasian faces and this makes me feel intimidated and unable to shoot with my camera -- If I pull it out of my bag, will my camera and computer be ripped off? I buy some puri, which is great, from a smiling man and his female companion.

Return to the hotel and they call the other hotel to come and pick me up and take me to the Classic Hotel on Swami Vivekananda Way. This room is even crummier than the last and I feel pretty isolated, but I leave for a few hours walking almost all of the way to Juhu and still feel unable to take pictures of the traffic, the faces, the street full of school buses and kids, the crowded street where there’s a market with shops in full swing, and the festival which is getting underway. I find a small place and get dinner – chicken sag, nan bread, raita. Tomorrow, I’m going to investigate hotels near Churchgate in. I guess I’ll go by auto-rickshaw…or taxi.