Welcome to the Mumbai Rainforest

I knew my trip would be exciting, but didn' t think it would start that early!

After the farewell party on 28 to 29 June, I fell a sleep with my mobile in my hand, however failed to set an alarm clock. Luckily, I woke up at 4:40 and decided to take a taxi to the Prague airport. I arrived at 5:30 and had plenty of time till 7:20, when my Alitalia plane left for Milan, where I changed the plane for Bombay. The changeable, upgradeable return ticket, valid for 6 months, cost 21600 CZK (cca 770 EUR). This time, it was www.condor.cz, which offered the cheapest ticket under my conditions and within the requested timeframe.

I arrived to Bombay at 22:30. I have recognized the Indian humid air and the smell immediately. I suddenly became very happy and my 25 kg bag and the Bohemian crystal that I carried for my Pune friends didn’t seem that heavy anymore… Lee, my mentor from Atma Mumbai, and Sandra, my new colleague from SAHAS, greeted me from the distance and helped me to the pre-paid taxi. Of course our taxi driver knew exactly the way to the Somayia college, but we still had to ask for the direction three times… the driver would never admit he’s lost. The rickshaws, the white saint cow, the damaged buildings, the rain…welcome to Bombay, the commercial capital of India!

Our flat is on the last floor of one of the dormitories within the Somayia college campus. The lift reminded us to “lock the door”… it kept repeating it while we were getting in and out… The flat is (or rather used to be) quite nice, but it seems that nobody cared for cleaning it this year… So this was my task for the first Saturday in Bombay. While my roommate was working on the computer, I scared out our zoo in the kitchen - the cockroach, the squirrel, pigeons and finally a lizard that was hiding behind our oven. Well, I will never be alone… Later on, I met our maid, who is taking care of the flat everyday...she is very nice, smiling all the time, but I think there is some education to be done. :)

As it is monsoon, the water is dripping from the ceiling and the windows at several places of our flat. The corridors in the dormitory seem to be quite soaked with the water and I was wondering when all the wires just next to our flat start to mind the water drops too. Step by step, the rain got so heavy, that a lake appeared on the roads in front of the dormitory. But people kept coming and going through the water, with umbrellas, plastic covers, towels and any other improvised rain jackets. I haven’t though that Danish, my old friend from Pune, would be right warning me that boat may be quite useful here. On my first day, Sandra and me decided to have both the lunch and the dinner in the dormitory’s cafeteria. For 22 Rupees (11 CZK, e.g. 40 cents), we have got pretty good thali - 2x dal, rice, chapatti, raita, lemon and onion. In the evening, we went out through a dark street towards the main road to shop some food. The quite big bats reminded me that my zoo is even bigger than I thought - Bombay is truly in the middle of a rainforest!

A rikshaw took us a km or so to the “Spinach” supermarket at Shopper’s Stop for 9 Rupees (waw, they really use meters without being asked!). I just could not resist buying all the different spices and ingredients… including ladyfinger (28 Rs/kg), mangos (5 Rs each), tomatoes (1.5 Rs each) or cheese (83 Rs per 400 g). On Sunday, we have got several meetings with our new friends - Lee, Adrienne, Dipesh, Minakksi and Viren. Amazingly, beside their jobs, they are all involved in social work (each of them should actualy get some space here in this blog). And they are so funny! We spent the time in Bandra, a good place for shopping, parties or jogging at the seaside. And we watched also a Bollywood movie Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Movie - pretty crazy story, but the music is nice!