Bombay(India)

Train trip from Palitana-Bhavnagar-Ahmedabad-Bombay..
was a long haul..I felt like shit arriving in Bombay Victoria..
tired..and I could not get a retiring room in VIctoria Station..
these rooms get booked and taken quickly..so..I took a small
not so clean hotel in Bombay..room with 4 bunk beds..
bathroom on the corridor..no shower..in these hotels..
they use buckets of cold water..just throw it over yourself..
my room mates..were Indians..coming from Karnataka state..
looking for a better life in Bombay..that means..a job...
ahah..yes..in a city of millions like Bombay..
one sees and feels..the contrasts between rich/poor..
I stayed 4 nights in Bombay..because..it's an interesting place..
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and..I was gonna take a ferry from Bombay Docks to Goa..
waiting for the boat..ahah..yip..
Bombay was the most cosmopolitan city of India..very organised..
double decker buses..good train connections..loveley beaches..
Bollywood..glamour and glitter...and the locals..the Maharashtran's..
are great folks to talk to as well..no need to say...
Bombay was overpopulated..and in the many slums..misery..
it's a place where the temperatures rarely go down 20 degrees..
sticky heat it was..take a shower in Bombay..15 minutes later..
your shirt sticks to your body again from the heat and sweat..
first encounter was Bombay victoria Railway station..
a hub..and a confusion like never before..
I saw the *dabah* wallah's..these are like coolies...carrying meals..
in little aluminium pots and jars..with food..made by housewifes..
and sent every day by them..to Bombay central..so that their husbands..
hard working dudes in offices??get the meal from home..
it's a tradition..I only have seen in Bombay..and these *dabah's*
arrive by train in Victoria..it's quite a scene to watch really..
the Victoria terminus building..is a building with great art value..
it looks more like a palace from the outside..Gothic style,I believe??
from this station the first Indian train departed..around 1920?
the locals call it VT..but mid 90's..lot of things changed in Bombay..
it was even changed into Mumbai..a lot of streets,buildings..
got Indian names...same happened in Calcutta..politics,you know??
first day..I just wandered around a bit in Bombay..one sees so many
different things here..it's a maze of people..constant flow of crowds..
I walked to the gateway of India=reminded me of Arc de triomphe
in Paris..it's an archway in Bombay erected in honour of a visit by
a British king in 1911..it's a real meeting places for Bombay-ites..
as well as foreign tourists..nearby is Appollo bunder...
and the Taj Mahal hotel..the most luxurious in Bombay..
maybe in India..I did not enter in there with my dirty hippie feet..
this hotel was built by Tata..a Parsi..oh..these Parsi's..
they got extremeley wealthy these Parsi's..industrial wealth..
I walked back to the hotel..I was really tired..oef..yes...
will tell you crazy peeps more in different postings about Bombay...
Tiger