I was on a program designed for student mobility professionals from Australian universities. There were 12 of us total from 8 universities in three different states.
Our industry (and the country it operates in) is fairly small so I had met a quarter of these people before, but didn't know them well. I certainly didn't know the ins and outs of how their university compares to mine before the trip, but I do now. That sort of knowledge is genuine professional development, which I think is rare in this day and age.
I won't bore you with the specifics about my PD, but I promise you a solid half of our time was spent in workshops and peer-to-peer learning. This was no work-sponsored Kontiki tour! To prove it I will start out with various action shots of us being studious:
I was one of the last to arrive on Sunday morning despite my early departure from Singapore. Almost everyone else was already there, out and about, so I narrowed in on their location and called an Uber to go meet them. What showed up:
A tuk tuk! An Uber tuk tuk! I shit you not.
I was only mildly shocked at the vehicle. There are far more tuk tuks on the streets of Mumbai than cars, so logically it makes sense that Uber has moved into this local market. What really surprised me was the price. It wasn't a long ride, 10 minutes max, and cost 21 rupees. That's only 44 Australian cents! 30 cents US. Insanity!
I'm going to structure this post as a series of surprises, because at the end of the day I don't know if India was anything like I was expecting. Almost every single thing was a surprise to me. Surprise #1 was the overall price point of things. I've been to cheap countries before, but never 44-cent-Uber cheap!
We spent our first day wandering around Mumbai until the official proceedings began, being gawked at by locals while gawking at things ourselves.
Like these goats at a bus stop! Surprise #2: how few cows I saw on the streets. When you think of urban animals in India you think cows, but I saw a lot more goats. And of course dogs.
Surprise #3: how healthy and well fed all the street dogs were. Not a single one looked to be suffering. In fact, they looked like they had a pretty comfortable life. Not Matilda comfortable, of course, but lacking any true misery.
I guess a country that is largely vegetarian and follows a religion that preaches no harm to living creatures results in a decent life for street animals.
Our inaugural event was a traditional thali dinner.
Which is various Indian dishes served in small little bowls on a platter. The waiters bring you more of each dish, so it's like a sit down buffet.
Surprise #4: "No, thank you" does not mean no. We learned this the hard way on multiple occasions, starting with thali, by getting what we didn't want. All Indians seem to hear is thank you and translate that to yes. While "no, thank you" is a more polite way of saying no, it absolutely does not get your point across.
On our first full day after a full morning at a local university we embarked on the most interesting and impactful event, in my opinion, of the whole trip.
Tour of Dharavi slum
This is where the movie Slumdog Millionaire was set. Not actually filmed there, due to it being one of the most densely populated places in the world making that impossible, but it's where the kid grew up and had his crazy experiences.
Dharavi is the largest slum in India, and probably all of Asia, with nearly a million inhabitants. It's 2.1 square kilometers (.81 square miles) which, by my calculations, is about 62% the size of Central Park. Or 6x larger than Disneyland. Or a shade under 5x larger than Vatican City. However you want to calculate it, the only way that many people live together in that amount of space is stacked on top of each other.
Our tour guide told us how many slums there are in the city, which I've now forgotten and cannot seem to find anywhere online (I'm sure the number changes constantly). The last census in India was in 2011 so every fact and figure out there is bound to be outdated and inaccurate. About half of Mumbai's population of 22 million lives in one of the many slums. This does not mean they're unemployed, starving bums. The economy is actually quite booming, which is what we were there to see.
Plastic sorting and recycling is a huge industry, as is pottery, textiles and, ironically, leather. We saw suitcases being hand made, which will be shipped on to legitimate retailers once branded. I can't even imagine all the industries that exist here. It was extensive and only the narrow walkways were not consumed by industry, much of it 24/7. All of it informal, turning over $1 billion USD in trade per year!
Surprise #5: I thought a slum was a slum because people didn't work and were poor. Man was I wrong. The slum inhabitants, while poor, hustle harder than I ever have in my life.
Indian cooking class
I am a lover of Indian food, but even in my regular life I have a low limit for how much I can handle (once per month is more than enough for me). While we had many excellent meals on this trip, it was non-stop Indian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner for six straight days which can wear on a person.
Surprise #6: This is shockingly difficult to come by (in sufficient quantities):
To be clear this was (tragically) not a heavily boozed up trip. In fact, there was far less casual boozing than I'd expected-slash-hoped for. But on occasion we did treat ourselves to the sweetest of sweet nectar, Kingfisher beer. That is if it was available.
More than once when we asked for it at a restaurant they had none. On the one occasion we were ready to tie one on we very quickly drank the restaurant dry. I am a huge fan of Kingfisher and was very excited to drink it in its natural habitat, but my dream of drunken Indian nights was not to be.
Holli
Completely by accident our visit was lucky enough to coincide with the Hindu "festival of colors", or Holli. It's celebrated to fend off a demon, or celebrate the banishment of the demon. Something about a demon! They throw around colored powder and make a beautiful mess.
As part of the festivities they also burn an effigy of the demon in a late night bonfire.
It's literally done in the middle of the night, which didn't fit into our packed and busy daily schedule so some local villagers were kind enough to hold a bonfire just after sunset so we could watch the ritual.
We only got to "play" Holli with each other and not the whole community. I never saw one big gathering of humanity throwing around color, but we did see many stained, smiling people along the way.
Warli Painting Class
Warli is a style of painting that tells stories, and was traditionally done atop a background of mud and...wait for it...cow dung. Luckily we did our paintings on simple colored paper, but we did see (though luckily did not smell) the real deal in action.
Gateway of India
Here was the closest I've ever been, and likely ever will be, to being a celebrity. So many people came up to us and wanted to take selfies with us. It was wild!
When we asked our guide Vedanth why, why on earth are we so interesting, he likened us to exotic zoo animals that these people have never seen before. Of course people are going to take pictures!
He said it gentler than that, but he makes a good point. Many of those people were there on vacation, coming from far away, small places where tourists never go. So we really were a fascinating, unique sight for them. An absolutely wild experience!
But back to the arch. It was built in 1911 to commemorate a visit from the King of England, who at the time was king of India, too. A monument celebrating colonization, hmm, interesting.
The Gateway of India is right next door to the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.
This is one of the sites of the November 2008 terrorist attacks, where 12 coordinated attacks took place around Mumbai and killed 165 people. The movie Hotel Mumbai came out (in Australia, at least) literally the day before I left but I had the good sense not to pay too close attention to it. I definitely want to see it now, after the fact.
Surprise #7: This, everywhere:
All over town! What? Why?! I'm baffled. What is going on with office chairs in India that this service is so widely needed and advertized?
I found it endlessly amusing, and nobody noticed all these signs until I pointed them out. So perplexing! But not nearly as perplexing (and horrifying) as this:
O.M.G. Donate your eyes! While simultaneously buying fruits.
We were walking down a very busy beach, filled with Holli revellers. We were attracting attention as usual, and one tipsy guy notices us and starts shouting in our direction. Usually this has trouble written all over it, but his message was, almost word for word:
Hello visitors! Don't go to the slums while you're here. Go to the high rises and the new businesses. This isn't the Mumbai of the past; Mumbai is new money!
My final surprise: That I actually went to India.
Never in my life did I expect to travel there. In fact I actively avoided it and dreaded the thought after hearing some unpleasant stories. But I'm really glad I went, and had a safe, structured itinerary with some cool people who were in the same boat as me, all while benefiting my career.
I really am a fortune gal!
