Bombay. Mumbai. So good they gave it a new name, which is actually the old name, and stuck it in annoying parentheses, despite most Indians insisting still on the good old colonial pronunciation.
What a lovely surprise of a city! I was determined to dislike the hectic insanity, imagining it to be an even worse Delhi, but no, not a bit of it. Strolling around the areas of Colaba and the Fort I felt anonymous in a way I've grown very unused to, and it was great. Some areas of the city are very green and leafy, there are more than a few old colonial buildings, and as well as the likes of 'Walton Street' and 'Lord Street' Bombay sometimes feels like a baking, sweaty London some 150 years ago.
Apart from the Gateway to India, the arch that spawned a thousand curry houses, and the fancy Taj Mahal Palace hotel I did little in the way of sights. It's more of a wandering city, so wander I did, through markets, the stock exchange area and the bayside.
On the 9th, the Hindu festival of Diwali hit town. I'd been around the bay about 6:00 but nothing was happening, so I went back to Colaba for dinner. When I went back up Marine Drive later, fuck me, it felt like the trenches. There were people everywhere, every last one of them disobeying every safe fireworks rule in the book and blasting the city to bits with all manner of rockets, screamers and bangers. Particularly bangers. These bastards explode like machine guns on the ground, inches away from innocent bystanders, bursting any eardrums within a 5 mile radius. Most of the fireworks which take off into the sky are cheap, probably home-made efforts, and explode as low as about 15 metres, popping any surviving eardrums and showering the earth below with sparks, ash, powder and debris. All in all it was very on-edge, frightening stuff, an experience to be had but never repeated.
In the middle of all that I managed to buy a next-day ticket to Goa at the standard price, despite all and sundry's best efforts to convince me that all forms of transport were full during the holiday period and would only, mysteriously become available if I were to pay about 6 times over the odds. 1-nil to me.
