Gateway to India

Only Europeans would build something in a port city and call it the Gateway to India. Everybody else came via Afghanistan.

Anyway, we're here, six days in, and finally have a chance to post. I'm writing from Sangli, a provincial town in Southern Maharashtra - why we're here is for a later post. We spent four days in Mumbai, and it wasn't enough. It's a massive, frenetic city but it has a distinct charm. I'll try to describe it more later - for now I want to get some pictures up in a series of posts.

I hesitate to say it, because I don't want to get into exoticizing places and because a lot of traveling around is grubby and difficult, but since we've been here I keep having moments where I feel as though I'm in a movie. Careening around Mumbai in a taxi, making our way through the masses of people heading into Victoria Terminus (now called Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, as a cab driver made a point of telling us) on their way home from work, watching families play in the sunset at Chowpatty Beach, laying awake in a sleeper on the night train, watching the MUSKAN guys perform traditional harvest festival dances and act out Bollywood scenes resplendent in sari-wrapped drag (again, more later), cruising the streets of Sangli in a big white Land Rover listening to Indian pop music and watching the oxcarts, autorickshaws, bearded old men, women in saris, schoolkids in uniforms, fruit vendors, motorcycles, goats, palm trees, everything - there's this series of moments that all feel so cinematic.

Oh, as for the top picture, of the Taj hotel and the Gateway - if you didn't know what had happened here, you wouldn't know what happened here. Everything is open for business and life seems to be very much going on for people in Mumbai.

Lots of pics in subsequent posts - probably another day or two.