TONY’S TRIP TO SOUTH INDIA
First leg: Getting to Know Bombay (11 February 2005)

BY TONY MYERS FRPS

We landed at Bombay shortly after midnight after flying for about eight hours from Paris and checking out through a very primitive scanning system, which we were told to by-pass because of the crowds that were building. We were soon on our way to the centre of Bombay passing several cows and horses on the dual carriageway, and after about three near misses of head on collisions, we eventually arrived at our hotel.

Next morning, we had breakfast in our room. Breakfast consisted of eggs and toast which was more than welcome. We also encountered the most dangerous of showers with live electric cable dangling close by--but we had survived this far.

We set off to explore Bombay, very excited. Bombay is a really buzzing, charismatic city of 16 million people. We were located close to the sea-front where all the tourists and locals seem to promenade, and we were constantly picked on by all the local sales people. At one point, we spotted this very old, bearded, Indian man running towards us calling for us to stop so that he could show us his wares. His wares turned out to be two beautiful Cobra snakes, a Python and a few other unidentified snakes which he kept in these very fragile looking wicker baskets. He was happy to be photographed but was asking for money, which, after some hard negotiating, we agreed to and got some nice photographs of him and his snakes. Inevitably, a few photos were ruined by camera shake!!

Gateway to india Gran Arch way Bombay

After a good stroll around the magnificent Gateway to India archway building, which was constructed by the British to commemorate the visit of King George V in 1911, we decided to do the city tour by taxi. The driver spoke excellent English and had a well documented list of all the sights we would visit. The most appealing was the open air laundry, which is a truly amazing place, and where most of Bombay’s hotel laundry is washed by hand every day by an army of workers scrubbing the many tons of laundry in the open air--a truly great photographic experience.

Chowpatty beach

We found an excellent café to people watch and take snaps from and had an excellent first day in India day. That evening we were taken around ALL the sights of Bombay by taxi, which also included the very seedy red light area, which has no fewer than 23.000 prostitutes (no we didn’t count them! The figure is as quoted in the Lonely Planet guide book!).

Nick and tony in Bombay

That was just about all my colleague Nick and I could stand for one day!

Please send any comments to Tony