Budget: 3500R/$70; Spent: 7500R/$150
This morning we woke up hopeful; hopeful for warm showers, a cleaner room, worthwhile exploration in Mumbai, and healthier stomachs. We got 2 out of the 4. For India though, a 50% success rate has come to be expected, possibly even lucky. Attaining this took a very long, drawn out journey with what may very well be the worst taxi driver in all of India.
The plan today was to get out of the hotel by 10am. We both woke up feeling ill and therefore didn’t actually get out of our room until around 10:30am. The reception called twice to see when we would be down to meet our taxi driver whom we had hired for the day for 2500 Rupees or $50. It turned out to be the most bang for our buck to hire a driver for the day especially because Mumbai is so enormous and its infrastructure so poor. It is by far the most difficult city to get around in from our experience. There is no metro system (though one is in the works), and the public bus system would be a nightmare to navigate the city with for long distances, like ours.
Since we were late we didn’t have a chance to eat breakfast, but it was alright since our tummies were pretty sensitive. Our kind hotel owner provided us with a recommended itinerary for the day. His suggestion for our first stop was at a mall called “InOrbit” in the new part of Mumbai known as Vashi. The area was nice and much cleaner than the old Mumbai we had seen the day before. It soon became clear, however, our taxi driver had no idea where the mall was. He asked about 7 different taxiwallahs (taxi men) where "intercity" mall was. None of them knew what he was talking about, since the mall is called “InOrbit”. These kinds of verbal slip ups on his part were only the beginning. We finally realized he was saying the wrong name and corrected him and then we promptly found the mall thanks to the directions given to us by several taxi drivers. Finally at around 12:30pm, 2 hours after leaving the boonies of Ulhasnagar where are hotel was situated, we arrived at the mall. At this point we were starving and a little frustrated that such a big chunk of our day was gone and spent in a car. We were craving comfort food. Luckily Pizza Hut was there to lend their food services. We ordered 2 small greasy pizzas and felt much better. We then gorged ourselves on a beautifully made donut and a fancy cupcake:
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We were full and happy. The icing on the cupcake concerned us a bit since we had been advised not to eat icing. It’s too bad this didn't occur to us until after eating it. Things have been rough for us the past week or so in India. We have been sick on and off, travelling has been awfully cold and uncomfortable for hours at a time, which often meant sleepless nights. There have been huge highs and lows here. India has so many extremes of everything: wealth/poverty, honest/dishonest people, beauty/ugliness. The list goes on. Nothing is ever simple here. You pay for a simple taxi ride and you end up arguing over the price. You never know what you’re gonna get. The problem is that nothing is transparent, and too many people are desperate enough to devise ways of taking more money from you. And it’s not that most of them have bad intentions, but it’s a way of life. It’s been a mixed bag of experiences… yet somehow we still love India! I guess we love how it always keeps us on our toes. Everything is a new experience. It’s a place where people do the most changing, hopefully for the better.
After our smorgasbord, we checked out a few stores. There was one we really liked called Cotton World. It seems to have few locations throughout India. I ended up buying a top for $12. After that we left and got back to the car around 2pm and headed for our new hotel called Hotel Cosmo. This ended up being another adventure. It took us 2 hours to find the hotel. This was no doubt in part due to the sheer size of Mumbai, and the crazy dense traffic, the fact that our hotel was in a remote alleyway, plus we forgot to make note of the address of our hotel. But we cannot discount the impact of our taxi driver. Luckily we remembered the area the hotel was in and the taxi driver knew how to get there. The hotel we were staying at was in an area called Andheri East which is near the airport so we were hoping that other taxi drivers in the area would be able to direct us to the hotel. Sadly none of the taxi drivers knew where the hotel was located...and we asked at least a dozen of them. This may have also been because our taxi driver kept calling it hotel cosmos (with an 's') after we repeatedly corrected him. Every 20 feet or so our taxi driver would pull over to ask a tuk tuk driver if they knew where hotel cosmos was. He even asked drivers in the middle of traffic when we were stopped at lights. But none of them knew where it was. He was determined to find the place with the help of some taxi drivers. We suggested several times to pull over so that we could find the proper address for the place on the internet, but he refused until finally we were all fed up and we insisted on stopping at a hotel. Jeff and the taxi driver (Sunil) ran into a nice hotel to ask for help. A couple minutes later they came back in the car with an address! Sunil quickly pointed out that the hotel was not in Andheri East but somewhere else which was 10-15 mins away. Amazingly, we arrived at our hotel 3 minutes later. The hotel was in Andheri East…he just wanted to blame it on us.
By this point we were very excited at the thought of a warm shower. We asked Sunil to wait about an hour so that we could freshen up for dinner. He agreed to wait for us and then drop us off for dinner. We walked to the front desk and checked in. While Jeff was talking to the receptionist I told Sunil that he could go and grab lunch somewhere and meet us back at the hotel in an hour. He misunderstood and thought that I said he could leave. Well that planted a seed that turned into one of the most frustrating exchanges ever. We quickly clarified ourselves and he agreed to wait in the lobby. While I was in the shower, a bellboy knocked on our door and requested Jeff go to the lobby where he later met Sunil who explained he had to go home now…Jeff came back into the room and we both agreed we would just pay him for 2 hours less since we were told we would have his services until 7pm.
Jeff went back out to the lobby and argued with the guy for 30 minutes. I could even hear some of the conversation from the room. Sunil demanded to be paid the full amount saying he was told he only had to stay until 5pm even though he had already agreed to drive us to dinner. They tried calling Satish who organized the whole thing, but he was unavailable. Finally Jeff came back and the agreement was that Sunil would find another driver for us and we would pay the difference.
We got out of the room all cleaned up and ready for dinner and low and behold, Sunil was standing there to drive us. It was awkward and annoying and the next hour of trying to find Lemon Grass restaurant proved to really test our patience. Of course in good Sunil fashion he asked for directions and continually called the restaurant "Lemon Grass Hotel", not "restaurant". It was getting late so Sunil stopped the car and supposedly took a short cut for which he had to pay an officer 200 rupees to pass through. There was an officer but whether the cost was 200 rupees or whether there was even a charge is still a mystery. Anyways we got to the Lemon Grass Hotel at last and we ended up paying Sunil the full amount plus 200 rupees. He then proceeded to hug Jeff twice and we said goodbye. Good riddance!
We ended up having a really nice dinner though, which I think was much deserved. The restaurant served Southeast Asian dishes of all kinds. Jeff ordered the Pad Thai and I ordered a dish that was quoted as being “superb” in Lonely Planet. They were wrong about that one, but not about the restaurant. It was a really nice place.
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It was a Saturday night in Mumbai and after dinner we were kind of feeling down about not really having the chance to see any nightlife in Mumbai. We contemplated the idea of going to the coast where the "hippest" restaurants and bars are all lined up near the beach, but with the poor location of our hotel we thought it was an excursion that needed to be planned out better. We agreed to leave it for when we returned to Mumbai after Aurangabad.
We ended up getting a ride back to the hotel with a nice guy who didn't try and pull a fast one on us. He didn't speak much English, but treated us well and we all worked together to help him find the place.
It was good end to a somewhat frustrating day.
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