Goodbye, Mumbai, Namaskar Kolkata!

It’s been a while since 1) I had internet, and 2) was not spending my free time sleeping; not from jetlag mind you, but from adventure!

My last day in the Indian East was spent with my new friend, Mitesh Panchal, of Thane City north of Mumbai. He spends his free time hiking in the Ghandi National Park just to the north of Mumbai, and was gracious enough to agree to take me along for a day of monsoon rainforest trekking.

Mitesh - the coolest dude I have met in Mumbai!

I took a very early morning train from Victoria Terminus (VT) for the approximately one hour trip. The total cost for the round-trip ticket: 20 rupees (about 50 cents). Like my last train trip, I was able to see where India’s most poverty-stricken attempt to eke out a meager living along the tracks. Since the trip was early Sunday morning, the train wasn’t crowded, but not so empty I felt like I was a hapless tourist target. The only complaint I could offer was that the gentleman seated across from me saw fit to share his “Indian adult contemporary” with the whole train via his cell phone. I used to think American adult contemporary was the worst type of music; I can safely say this tops it – obvious cheap synthesizers on ‘record’ set to the cheesy beats of electric drums accompanied by over-reverbed vocals – all through the audiophile nightmare of cellular phone speakers! Don’t accuse me of cultural bias here – one of my favorite music types is salsa and I don’t understand the lyrics too well there, either. There is no other way to put it – it was terrible music by any objective measure of quality.

When I arrived at Thane (pronounced Tah-nay) City station, I couldn’t find Mitesh at first, so I called his cell phone. Unfortunately, the pay phone was right under the speaker blaring the arriving and departing train schedule on continuous loop. That made the conversation decidedly one-sided, and ‘transmit only’ (sorry Mitesh!) so I basically had to describe my position to the best of my ability and hope that Mitesh wasn’t saying that he was stuck at home with a sick kid and couldn’t make it today! I did have to go through my first real prolonged begging experience. Continuing the trend of sticking out in a crowd, I was a magnetic attraction to the denizens of the train station, who approached me with various maladies and deformities. For the first time in India, I had to pull out the blank, distant stare of apathy. It is something I was loathe to do, but every guidebook (and probably common sense) suggests this unfortunate, hardened approach.

Mitesh appeared out of the throngs and we headed west to the forest through yet another torrential downpour, which up until now, has been the last I have experienced of the Noachian level in India. The National Park is truly a spectacular place to visit and considering the juxtaposition with the urban sprawl of Mumbai, it serves as a welcome oasis. We scrambled up the well-maintained paths, and even did some bushwhacking up a waterfall wash. I wish I was more prepared to get totally wet, because the waterfall temperature was absolutely perfect. The wildlife highlight was watching six kites circling above, most likely to scan the scene for scavenging a fresh leopard kill.

Ghandi National Park near Mumbai

Kites

Even thought it is a national park, there are small groups that walk the gray line of legality by ‘monsoon farming’ and temporarily set up domiciles in the hills with their crops, dogs (which are a great food source for the leopards, apparently), and sacred cows. I took a picture of the stream of 15 that passed us by.

Don't have a cow, man!

After our hike, Mitesh was kind enough to bring me back to his apartment, where I met his family and had a lovely meal and some nice tea. As my first ‘home-cooked’ meal since leaving Bozeman, it was the perfect way to top off my adventure. Mitesh thought it best to take a cab back to Mumbai, and I was in no position to argue, given my moist and dirt-clodden presence.




I returned to the hotel for a final clean-up and was fortunate to be able to stay there with an extreme late check-out time of 2:00pm. One final Mumbai cab ride, a rest in the fabulous Mumbai domestic terminal (no kidding – one of the best airports I have encountered!) a knosh of chicken, onion, and cheese Domino’s Pizza  (not recommended) and I was off to Kolkata!