I can't believe February is ending and with it, my month in India. Today was my last day, and in the morning I fly to Kathmandu, Nepal. I still have posts coming on Rajasthan and Agra/Delhi, so there's plenty more to be said about India. Apologies for the delay, and thanks for all the positive feedback from those of you who have been reading.
Himalayas, here I come.
This Is Where I Am
Where would you like to go today?
| Goa, India | Agra, India | Singapore | Cambodia, Part 2 | |
| Mumbai, India | Delhi, India | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | ||
| Udaipur, India | India Reflections | Malacca, Malaysia | ||
| Jaipur, India | Kathmandu, Nepal | Cambodia, Part 1 |
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Mumbai... or is it Bombay?
I spent a week in Mumbai, the economic capital of India. Mumbai is the equivalent of India's New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and probably a few other cities rolled into one. Its population is almost 20 million souls, and it's due to become the largest city in the world sometime this decade. Although Mumbai accounts for less than 2% of India's population, it generates more than 40% of India's tax revenue. It's the base of India's financial, commercial, trade, and entertainment industries -- the latter, Bollywood, being the largest film industry in the world, though dwarfed by Hollywood in influence.
Until the mid-90s, Mumbai was known as Bombay, and before that as Bombaya. The islands of Mumbai were a Portuguese possession, then given to England as part of a dowry. The Portuguese named the bay of Mumbai "Bom Baya", for "Good Bay" -- and thus the islands were the Bombaya Islands. The English Anglicized it into Bombay, and the Indians renamed it in the 90s to Mumbai, a name that had been in some use locally for many years and comes from the local name of a goddess -- Mumba. In general it seems that nearly everything in India and especially in Mumbai has been renamed since Indian independence. Victoria Terminus, the airport, the Prince of Wales Museum, Crawford Market, and even the famous Colaba Causeway all now have extremely long Indian names, though nobody seems to use them.
Anyway, my week in Mumbai was a great chance to more fully acclimatize to India, which, especially in the cities, can be seriously overwhelming in its size, pace, and foreignness. Mumbai is the most crowded place I've ever been -- it's like the entire city is made up of one large crowd trying to leave the Verizon Center after a Hoyas victory, including a large contingent of poorly behaved, sore-losing Syracuse fans. Add to this that sidewalks are scarce, traffic patterns practically nonexistent, and everything from carts to beggars to feral dogs are constantly getting underfoot and the first day or two in Mumbai is an exercise in nonstop hyperawareness and persistent mental fatigue. So many of the things I take for granted in the States, like crossing the street, required my complete focus when I got here. I've gotten fairly used to it, but still the frenetic energy of the city is palpable and alternately invigorating and exhausting.
On to the sights! As people who have backpacked on their own know, at the beginning the hardest part tends to be being on one's own, especially at night and especially in one's room. This has certainly been my experience, but I've been fairly lucky to have met a variety of other backpackers and to have had a few friends sprinkled along the route. My first night in central Mumbai I met two Canadians on the last leg of their eight-week backpacking journey across India. I got to know one of them, D, by lending her my netbook so she could check her email. They invited me to join them the next day for a day trip to Elephanta, an island between Mumbai and the mainland.
Getting to Elephanta involves taking a one-hour ferry from the Gateway to India. The walk there was my first long walk through Mumbai, down the Fort business-government neighborhood where I was staying and through Colaba, the central touristic section. Man, this city is smoggy! Combine its extreme air pollution with the humidity and fog coming off the bay, and on this particular morning visibility was probably about 100 meters. Still, I caught my first glimpse of the Prince of Wales Museum, Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, and Gateway to India -- and we were on the boat.
The only thing to do on Elephanta is to visit a set of caves containing ancient Hindu temples, the most famous of which honors Shiva. I could write a page or two about these caves, but this post has already gotten fairly long and I'm still on Day 1. I'll just hit the highlight of the higlights, the central stone carving of the three forms of Shiva -- the Creator, Maintainer/Protector, and Destroyer. Here, Shiva the Creator is seen in his creative dance, arms flailing while his face remains calm and serene. To the left and right you can see the faces of his alter-egos. The rest of the cave is full of magnificent carvings of other episodes in the tale of Shiva, from the creation of the Ganges to his defeat of various other gods to his marriage to Parvati.
Oh yes, and this particular island was crawling with monkeys, which while adorable at first are extremely bold and can be a nuisance. We saw one steal a bag of chips from a small child, and when we stopped for a drink at an on-island bar we were treated to the comical sight of the proprietor rushing out every few minutes to shoo away (sometimes by throwing rocks at) the half-dozen monkeys who repeatedly attempted to sneak up on patrons and steal their victuals.
Getting up and down Elephanta takes you through this beautiful but kitschy market, seen below. One thing I have to say for India is that even at its most touristy and obnoxious, it can still have some serious charm.
People, including locals, often say that there isn't much to do in Mumbai, but that wasn't what I found. However, "experiencing" Mumbai is as much or more about walking the city and eating its food than going to its museums and official attractions, which are a bit thin on the ground. In Colaba, the main tourist neighborhood, I saw the massive outdoor Gateway to India, took a tour of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel (and on separate occasions visited its bar -- the first licensed bar in the country -- and had High Tea in its lounge), visited the Prince of Wales Museum (according to my guidebook the best museum on the entire subcontinent), and visited quite a few interesting shops. I also ate at Leopold's Cafe, the quintessential and charming Mumbai tourist trap; Busaba, a higher-end restaurant where I went to dinner with some American-educated Indian friends; and Kailash Parbat, a 60-year-old Parsi restaurant where I ate sanitized versions of Mumbai street food.
Fort, the neighborhood where I stayed, and its northern environs are also home to Victoria Terminus, Mumbai's grand and gothic central train station; the old Indian Post Office building; and Crawford Market, a classic Mumbai fruit and vegetable bazaar. There are also quite a few good restaurants, arguably the best and most famous of which is a Parsi place called Britannia, where I ate their signature Berry Pulao.
Moving west, I walked Marine Drive, also sometimes called "The Queen's Necklace," which is the long road running along Back Bay (think Lakeshore Drive in Chicago). In addition to taking in the Mumbai skyline and the boardwalk scene, I stopped for drinks at the rooftop bar of the InterContinental to watch the sunset. Marine Drive leads past Chowpatty Beach, a beautiful-from-far-away, horrifying-from-close-up beach where Mumbaikers come to escape the craziness of the city and attempt to grow gills and flippers by swimming in the water, which is filthier than most sewers I've seen. A bit north of that is Malabar Hill, where the rich build their exclusive homes and where I visited a gorgeous Jain Temple, considered the prettiest temple in Mumbai. Again, I could fill an entire entry with pictures and thoughts on each of these sites, and it pains me not to, but I don't think anybody would want to read that or that I'd have the time to do that and continue the trek.
Mumbai was incredible, exhausting, fascinating, disgusting, fun, and at times lonely. It was certainly memorable. It's very cliched to say that India is a nation of paradoxes: extreme wealth coexisting next to extreme poverty; the lifestyles of the past and the future colliding; blah blah. But it's true, and while it's true to some degree everywhere including the States, the striking thing about Mumbai is how unavoidable these paradoxes are. Yes, we have both poverty and excessive wealth in the States, but for better and for worse you can usually go about your day without thinking too much about or seeing those contradictions. In Mumbai, and probably in India, that's not true. You can't step or even look outside without seeing it. When you fly into the city, you fly over Asia's largest slum, Dharavi. When your private car pulls into the Taj Palace, you're feet away from people living like it's the 14th Century. Feral dogs lie rotting alive in the streets; toddlers learn to crawl on trash-strewn sidewalks; grown adults squat in the middle of an upmarket boulevard to relieve themselves; and among it all, the homegrown rich of India and the borrowed rich of other countries do their shopping and sip High Tea and snap their photographs. Not in different neighborhoods, and not even on different streets. Cheek by jowl.
Perhaps what I'll take most from Mumbai is a new appreciation for how deep the depths of poverty can be. Some of my friends will know that my favorite sports metaphor is "Born on third and thought you hit a triple" -- that many of us find ourselves graduates of great colleges, with relatively secure and leisurely lives ahead of us, and think that we can take credit for it, and I suppose to some degree we can. But never have I felt more lucky for the circumstances in which I was born and raised than these last few weeks. What would I have accomplished if I had been born in rural India and moved into a slum in Mumbai to work years towards earning $2.50 a day for the title "room-boy" in a cheap hostel, working 12 hours a day, 340 days a year, sending most of my earnings home as remittance, and living in a clapboard hut on the roof of the building with a dozen other people as roommates? All the talent and skill in the world can amount to nothing (on my Westernized scale) if the circumstances aren't right. Boy, have I been lucky.
Despite all of Mumbai's paradoxes -- invigorating, exhausting; modern, backwards -- there is one adjective to describe it that needs no hedge: humbling.
Until the mid-90s, Mumbai was known as Bombay, and before that as Bombaya. The islands of Mumbai were a Portuguese possession, then given to England as part of a dowry. The Portuguese named the bay of Mumbai "Bom Baya", for "Good Bay" -- and thus the islands were the Bombaya Islands. The English Anglicized it into Bombay, and the Indians renamed it in the 90s to Mumbai, a name that had been in some use locally for many years and comes from the local name of a goddess -- Mumba. In general it seems that nearly everything in India and especially in Mumbai has been renamed since Indian independence. Victoria Terminus, the airport, the Prince of Wales Museum, Crawford Market, and even the famous Colaba Causeway all now have extremely long Indian names, though nobody seems to use them.
Anyway, my week in Mumbai was a great chance to more fully acclimatize to India, which, especially in the cities, can be seriously overwhelming in its size, pace, and foreignness. Mumbai is the most crowded place I've ever been -- it's like the entire city is made up of one large crowd trying to leave the Verizon Center after a Hoyas victory, including a large contingent of poorly behaved, sore-losing Syracuse fans. Add to this that sidewalks are scarce, traffic patterns practically nonexistent, and everything from carts to beggars to feral dogs are constantly getting underfoot and the first day or two in Mumbai is an exercise in nonstop hyperawareness and persistent mental fatigue. So many of the things I take for granted in the States, like crossing the street, required my complete focus when I got here. I've gotten fairly used to it, but still the frenetic energy of the city is palpable and alternately invigorating and exhausting.
On to the sights! As people who have backpacked on their own know, at the beginning the hardest part tends to be being on one's own, especially at night and especially in one's room. This has certainly been my experience, but I've been fairly lucky to have met a variety of other backpackers and to have had a few friends sprinkled along the route. My first night in central Mumbai I met two Canadians on the last leg of their eight-week backpacking journey across India. I got to know one of them, D, by lending her my netbook so she could check her email. They invited me to join them the next day for a day trip to Elephanta, an island between Mumbai and the mainland.
Getting to Elephanta involves taking a one-hour ferry from the Gateway to India. The walk there was my first long walk through Mumbai, down the Fort business-government neighborhood where I was staying and through Colaba, the central touristic section. Man, this city is smoggy! Combine its extreme air pollution with the humidity and fog coming off the bay, and on this particular morning visibility was probably about 100 meters. Still, I caught my first glimpse of the Prince of Wales Museum, Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, and Gateway to India -- and we were on the boat.
The only thing to do on Elephanta is to visit a set of caves containing ancient Hindu temples, the most famous of which honors Shiva. I could write a page or two about these caves, but this post has already gotten fairly long and I'm still on Day 1. I'll just hit the highlight of the higlights, the central stone carving of the three forms of Shiva -- the Creator, Maintainer/Protector, and Destroyer. Here, Shiva the Creator is seen in his creative dance, arms flailing while his face remains calm and serene. To the left and right you can see the faces of his alter-egos. The rest of the cave is full of magnificent carvings of other episodes in the tale of Shiva, from the creation of the Ganges to his defeat of various other gods to his marriage to Parvati.
Oh yes, and this particular island was crawling with monkeys, which while adorable at first are extremely bold and can be a nuisance. We saw one steal a bag of chips from a small child, and when we stopped for a drink at an on-island bar we were treated to the comical sight of the proprietor rushing out every few minutes to shoo away (sometimes by throwing rocks at) the half-dozen monkeys who repeatedly attempted to sneak up on patrons and steal their victuals.
Getting up and down Elephanta takes you through this beautiful but kitschy market, seen below. One thing I have to say for India is that even at its most touristy and obnoxious, it can still have some serious charm.
People, including locals, often say that there isn't much to do in Mumbai, but that wasn't what I found. However, "experiencing" Mumbai is as much or more about walking the city and eating its food than going to its museums and official attractions, which are a bit thin on the ground. In Colaba, the main tourist neighborhood, I saw the massive outdoor Gateway to India, took a tour of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel (and on separate occasions visited its bar -- the first licensed bar in the country -- and had High Tea in its lounge), visited the Prince of Wales Museum (according to my guidebook the best museum on the entire subcontinent), and visited quite a few interesting shops. I also ate at Leopold's Cafe, the quintessential and charming Mumbai tourist trap; Busaba, a higher-end restaurant where I went to dinner with some American-educated Indian friends; and Kailash Parbat, a 60-year-old Parsi restaurant where I ate sanitized versions of Mumbai street food.
Fort, the neighborhood where I stayed, and its northern environs are also home to Victoria Terminus, Mumbai's grand and gothic central train station; the old Indian Post Office building; and Crawford Market, a classic Mumbai fruit and vegetable bazaar. There are also quite a few good restaurants, arguably the best and most famous of which is a Parsi place called Britannia, where I ate their signature Berry Pulao.
Moving west, I walked Marine Drive, also sometimes called "The Queen's Necklace," which is the long road running along Back Bay (think Lakeshore Drive in Chicago). In addition to taking in the Mumbai skyline and the boardwalk scene, I stopped for drinks at the rooftop bar of the InterContinental to watch the sunset. Marine Drive leads past Chowpatty Beach, a beautiful-from-far-away, horrifying-from-close-up beach where Mumbaikers come to escape the craziness of the city and attempt to grow gills and flippers by swimming in the water, which is filthier than most sewers I've seen. A bit north of that is Malabar Hill, where the rich build their exclusive homes and where I visited a gorgeous Jain Temple, considered the prettiest temple in Mumbai. Again, I could fill an entire entry with pictures and thoughts on each of these sites, and it pains me not to, but I don't think anybody would want to read that or that I'd have the time to do that and continue the trek.
Mumbai was incredible, exhausting, fascinating, disgusting, fun, and at times lonely. It was certainly memorable. It's very cliched to say that India is a nation of paradoxes: extreme wealth coexisting next to extreme poverty; the lifestyles of the past and the future colliding; blah blah. But it's true, and while it's true to some degree everywhere including the States, the striking thing about Mumbai is how unavoidable these paradoxes are. Yes, we have both poverty and excessive wealth in the States, but for better and for worse you can usually go about your day without thinking too much about or seeing those contradictions. In Mumbai, and probably in India, that's not true. You can't step or even look outside without seeing it. When you fly into the city, you fly over Asia's largest slum, Dharavi. When your private car pulls into the Taj Palace, you're feet away from people living like it's the 14th Century. Feral dogs lie rotting alive in the streets; toddlers learn to crawl on trash-strewn sidewalks; grown adults squat in the middle of an upmarket boulevard to relieve themselves; and among it all, the homegrown rich of India and the borrowed rich of other countries do their shopping and sip High Tea and snap their photographs. Not in different neighborhoods, and not even on different streets. Cheek by jowl.
Perhaps what I'll take most from Mumbai is a new appreciation for how deep the depths of poverty can be. Some of my friends will know that my favorite sports metaphor is "Born on third and thought you hit a triple" -- that many of us find ourselves graduates of great colleges, with relatively secure and leisurely lives ahead of us, and think that we can take credit for it, and I suppose to some degree we can. But never have I felt more lucky for the circumstances in which I was born and raised than these last few weeks. What would I have accomplished if I had been born in rural India and moved into a slum in Mumbai to work years towards earning $2.50 a day for the title "room-boy" in a cheap hostel, working 12 hours a day, 340 days a year, sending most of my earnings home as remittance, and living in a clapboard hut on the roof of the building with a dozen other people as roommates? All the talent and skill in the world can amount to nothing (on my Westernized scale) if the circumstances aren't right. Boy, have I been lucky.
Despite all of Mumbai's paradoxes -- invigorating, exhausting; modern, backwards -- there is one adjective to describe it that needs no hedge: humbling.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Beautiful Udaipur, Rajasthan
I arrived this morning in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India, where I met up with M. W., an ex-roommate from college and my professional days. My next post will deal with my week in Mumbai, but in the meantime -- here I am:
Friday, February 18, 2011
Mumbai, but not for long
Today is my last day in Mumbai! It's been a mostly great week that I hope to go over in more depth in a post in the next few days. High highs and low lows. In the meantime, here's a teaser: a picture from my visit to the Babu Amichand Panalal Adishwarji Jain Temple here in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
A Jain creed: "Live, let live and live to keep others alive. Keep alive all creatures and live for the life of others." Amen.
A Jain creed: "Live, let live and live to keep others alive. Keep alive all creatures and live for the life of others." Amen.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Getting to India, Goa, and Mumbai
It turns out that India is far away. My trip just to reach the subcontinent began with about 23 hours of travel, counting from when my flight took off out of Dallas. From Dallas I flew to Houston, where I jumped on a Qatar Airways jet to Doha, where I connected to Mumbai. I have only good things to say about Qatar Airways, which really impressed me both with their customer service and the quality and comfort of their economy cabin. Not all QA flights are made equal, I'm sure, but the first jet I took from Houston to Doha was extremely modern and significantly more spacious in economy than other transatlantic jets I've taken.
Once I landed in Mumbai (+23 hrs), I had about 9 hours before my next flight to Goa, a beachy region south of Mumbai on the coast of the Arabian Sea. I wandered around the International Arrivals area in Mumbai Airport for a few hours (there is nothing to do there and it is very sketchy and uncomfortable) before A. D., a friend from college, drove up to say hi. We had a fantastic breakfast at the ITC Hotel and caught up, and then he dropped me back off at the Domestic Departures area of Mumbai Airport, which all things said is pretty great. I bummed around there for another few hours listening to Beatles songs on my iPod, and I was off on my fourth flight in 36 hours.
I arrived in Goa and got to the hostel, where I was to meet my friend N. T. from work. N was in India for a family wedding and had a few extra days, so we decided to meet up in Goa, a place he hadn't been but wanted to experience. Goa was a Portuguese colony until 1961 and for that reason is a bit culturally distinct from the rest of India. A third of the population is Catholic; there are many beautiful churches; and in general their attitude towards life and tourists is different.
Climate-wise, Goa is the most tropical place I'll be in India. There are palm trees everywhere; highs reliably in the 90s this time of year (much hotter later); humidity off the charts; and practically never any rain, including monsoons. The ride from the Goa Airport (which is actually a military defense airport) to the hostel was beautiful, following the coast for a while and passing by Panajim, the Goa region's capital.
I got to the hostel mid-afternoon and after getting my bearings got my first sleep lying down in two days. It felt good. Then in the evening, N arrived and we grabbed a late dinner near the hostel, hung out with a few other backpackers in the hostel restaurant, and collapsed.
The next day was really my first official day of sightseeing in India. Goa is undoubtedly known for its beaches, which were and still are a major attraction for hippies. However, we decided to start the day with a bit of cultural exploration, and took an auto-rickshaw from Calangute, the town / beach we were staying in Goa, to Old Goa, formerly the capital of the region during Portuguese rule. The main thing to see here is the old churches.
I consider it a good omen that the first thing I noticed when we walked up to the first (and most impressive) church in Old Goa was a facade with the following enormous letters carved into its front: IHS. A Jesuit church! How wonderful! Something about finding familiar iconography felt good, especially the more I examined the facade. There's the IHS, a symbol of the Jesuit order standing for the first three letters in Jesus's name in Greek; there's the baroque, tiered facade, looking like an imitation of the Church of the Gesu (the Jesuits' mother church) in Rome. There are the three orders of columns: doric, corinthian, and... ionic? That doesn't sound right; I'll remember later.
Seeing something so Western after a day of culture shock was cool. We paid a local tour guide $2 (half a day's wages to most locals) to show us around. This church, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, is also the final resting place of St. Francis Xavier, one of the co-founders of the Jesuit order and an early missionary in India and East Asia. His body is "miraculously" preserved and visible in the church in a glass coffin. Oh, so that's what a 400+-year-old cadaver looks like: question answered.
I won't go over too many other details of the trip to Old Goa. Suffice it to say we visited the local Archeological Museum, stumbled upon the derelict Chapel of St. Catherine, wandered through the Church of St. Cajetan, and took pity on the extremely uncared for Cathedral, which was literally becoming a ruin before our eyes.
From there we took another auto-rickshaw to Panajim, where we ate lunch. It was good.
From there we took a cab back to Calangute, where we changed for and wandered to the beach. I discovered that I had accidentally packed an old pair of swimtrunks that was far too large, so I threw it out and bought a new one on the way. Then we arrived at Calangute Beach just in time to catch the sunset and go for a quick, 30-minute swim before the lifeguards started shooing people out of the water.
Dinner, the first Internet access in days, socializing with other hostel-goers, and bed. An extremely satisfying day in Goa.
The next evening N and I were due to head back to Mumbai and Delhi respectively, so it was an abridged day that we planned to dedicate entirely to the beach. We got up early, had breakfast, headed to Calangute beach and the first item on our checklist was parasailing. For about $4.50 we got powerboated a couple hundred meters out into the Arabian Sea, hooked up to a parachute, and parasailed for a while. It was pretty fun, and an unexpected bonus was the view of the beaches from out on the water. Unfortunately we had stashed our cameras at the hostel so as not to worry about them on the beach, so no parasailing pictures.
After the "water sports", we wandered around the beach, swam while discussing extremely nerdy topics such as generational workforce shifts, and then had lunch. Not long after that it was time to head to the airport and back to Mumbai.
The airport was a bit of a nightmare, but I can write about that and travel in India later. I got back to Mumbai and headed for my first Mumbai hostel near the airport, which was fine. I crashed there and then this morning headed into downtown Mumbai for my second hostel, where I'm writing this now and which is also fine. I'll probably write more about Indian hostels and staying in Mumbai soon.
Today has been largely a day of catch-up and planning. I've got a week in Mumbai now, and met some fellow hostellers who are going to Elephanta Island tomorrow morning; I'm tagging along. I just got a call from A. D. asking me to grab drinks with him and some friends, so I'm off to Colaba Causeway and the southern tip of the Mumbai peninsula.
Cheers,
E
Once I landed in Mumbai (+23 hrs), I had about 9 hours before my next flight to Goa, a beachy region south of Mumbai on the coast of the Arabian Sea. I wandered around the International Arrivals area in Mumbai Airport for a few hours (there is nothing to do there and it is very sketchy and uncomfortable) before A. D., a friend from college, drove up to say hi. We had a fantastic breakfast at the ITC Hotel and caught up, and then he dropped me back off at the Domestic Departures area of Mumbai Airport, which all things said is pretty great. I bummed around there for another few hours listening to Beatles songs on my iPod, and I was off on my fourth flight in 36 hours.
I arrived in Goa and got to the hostel, where I was to meet my friend N. T. from work. N was in India for a family wedding and had a few extra days, so we decided to meet up in Goa, a place he hadn't been but wanted to experience. Goa was a Portuguese colony until 1961 and for that reason is a bit culturally distinct from the rest of India. A third of the population is Catholic; there are many beautiful churches; and in general their attitude towards life and tourists is different.
Climate-wise, Goa is the most tropical place I'll be in India. There are palm trees everywhere; highs reliably in the 90s this time of year (much hotter later); humidity off the charts; and practically never any rain, including monsoons. The ride from the Goa Airport (which is actually a military defense airport) to the hostel was beautiful, following the coast for a while and passing by Panajim, the Goa region's capital.
I got to the hostel mid-afternoon and after getting my bearings got my first sleep lying down in two days. It felt good. Then in the evening, N arrived and we grabbed a late dinner near the hostel, hung out with a few other backpackers in the hostel restaurant, and collapsed.
The next day was really my first official day of sightseeing in India. Goa is undoubtedly known for its beaches, which were and still are a major attraction for hippies. However, we decided to start the day with a bit of cultural exploration, and took an auto-rickshaw from Calangute, the town / beach we were staying in Goa, to Old Goa, formerly the capital of the region during Portuguese rule. The main thing to see here is the old churches.
I consider it a good omen that the first thing I noticed when we walked up to the first (and most impressive) church in Old Goa was a facade with the following enormous letters carved into its front: IHS. A Jesuit church! How wonderful! Something about finding familiar iconography felt good, especially the more I examined the facade. There's the IHS, a symbol of the Jesuit order standing for the first three letters in Jesus's name in Greek; there's the baroque, tiered facade, looking like an imitation of the Church of the Gesu (the Jesuits' mother church) in Rome. There are the three orders of columns: doric, corinthian, and... ionic? That doesn't sound right; I'll remember later.
Seeing something so Western after a day of culture shock was cool. We paid a local tour guide $2 (half a day's wages to most locals) to show us around. This church, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, is also the final resting place of St. Francis Xavier, one of the co-founders of the Jesuit order and an early missionary in India and East Asia. His body is "miraculously" preserved and visible in the church in a glass coffin. Oh, so that's what a 400+-year-old cadaver looks like: question answered.
I won't go over too many other details of the trip to Old Goa. Suffice it to say we visited the local Archeological Museum, stumbled upon the derelict Chapel of St. Catherine, wandered through the Church of St. Cajetan, and took pity on the extremely uncared for Cathedral, which was literally becoming a ruin before our eyes.
From there we took another auto-rickshaw to Panajim, where we ate lunch. It was good.
From there we took a cab back to Calangute, where we changed for and wandered to the beach. I discovered that I had accidentally packed an old pair of swimtrunks that was far too large, so I threw it out and bought a new one on the way. Then we arrived at Calangute Beach just in time to catch the sunset and go for a quick, 30-minute swim before the lifeguards started shooing people out of the water.
Dinner, the first Internet access in days, socializing with other hostel-goers, and bed. An extremely satisfying day in Goa.
The next evening N and I were due to head back to Mumbai and Delhi respectively, so it was an abridged day that we planned to dedicate entirely to the beach. We got up early, had breakfast, headed to Calangute beach and the first item on our checklist was parasailing. For about $4.50 we got powerboated a couple hundred meters out into the Arabian Sea, hooked up to a parachute, and parasailed for a while. It was pretty fun, and an unexpected bonus was the view of the beaches from out on the water. Unfortunately we had stashed our cameras at the hostel so as not to worry about them on the beach, so no parasailing pictures.
After the "water sports", we wandered around the beach, swam while discussing extremely nerdy topics such as generational workforce shifts, and then had lunch. Not long after that it was time to head to the airport and back to Mumbai.
The airport was a bit of a nightmare, but I can write about that and travel in India later. I got back to Mumbai and headed for my first Mumbai hostel near the airport, which was fine. I crashed there and then this morning headed into downtown Mumbai for my second hostel, where I'm writing this now and which is also fine. I'll probably write more about Indian hostels and staying in Mumbai soon.
Today has been largely a day of catch-up and planning. I've got a week in Mumbai now, and met some fellow hostellers who are going to Elephanta Island tomorrow morning; I'm tagging along. I just got a call from A. D. asking me to grab drinks with him and some friends, so I'm off to Colaba Causeway and the southern tip of the Mumbai peninsula.
Cheers,
E
Thursday, February 10, 2011
In the thick of it
I arrived safely and fairly happily in India a few days ago and just returned to Mumbai after spending 2.5 days in beautiful Goa. Unfortunately I'm beat at the moment, so a full update will have to wait for another moment... perhaps tomorrow.
Here's a teaser.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Welcome
Hi, Mom.
As you're the only person I know for sure will check this blog, I figured I'd begin with a shout-out to my fan.
In case anyone else has stumbled across this page, welcome. I'm not sure what my goal with this journal is yet, but at the least I hope to use it to keep you up to date on where I am physically. As to whether I'll also keep you up to date on where I am mentally, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, digestively, et cetera, I haven't decided yet.
But in the meantime, some background. As you probably know if you're reading this, I recently decided to take some time off from working in DC to see the world before entering law school and heavy indebtedness this fall. The first leg of my trip, comprising most of the months of February and March, takes me through Asia. I'll be starting in South Asia -- India and Nepal -- before heading to Southeast Asia. I won't spoil the details for you.
All in all, the next eight weeks should be an adventure. I've been abroad many times before, but have never really spent more than a day in the third world. I've also never lived out of a backpack for more than a weekend. And I can't really think of ever traveling anywhere that required me to get vaccinated just to step off the plane.
We're D-2 for liftoff, and I have some packing left to do. Until later,
E
As you're the only person I know for sure will check this blog, I figured I'd begin with a shout-out to my fan.
In case anyone else has stumbled across this page, welcome. I'm not sure what my goal with this journal is yet, but at the least I hope to use it to keep you up to date on where I am physically. As to whether I'll also keep you up to date on where I am mentally, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, digestively, et cetera, I haven't decided yet.
But in the meantime, some background. As you probably know if you're reading this, I recently decided to take some time off from working in DC to see the world before entering law school and heavy indebtedness this fall. The first leg of my trip, comprising most of the months of February and March, takes me through Asia. I'll be starting in South Asia -- India and Nepal -- before heading to Southeast Asia. I won't spoil the details for you.
All in all, the next eight weeks should be an adventure. I've been abroad many times before, but have never really spent more than a day in the third world. I've also never lived out of a backpack for more than a weekend. And I can't really think of ever traveling anywhere that required me to get vaccinated just to step off the plane.
We're D-2 for liftoff, and I have some packing left to do. Until later,
E
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