A Bit More from Mumbai

Matheran

A while back, Karen and I took a last minute weekend trip to a place called Matheran (maw-tay-rahn), which is supposed to be the most beautiful "Hill Station" in Maharashtra (the state we live in). I think the term Hill Station is a remnant from the times of British rule when foreigners would take short vacations just out of the city in the mountainous areas, which led to certain places developing essentially as mountain resort towns. Matheran is one of these, and is located about three hours' drive from Mumbai. It is a village on top of a high plateau where motorized vehicles are not allowed. To get there, you drive up to a parking lot and then you have to walk or take a horse up the rest of the way (about an hour's walk). It turned out to be a pretty nice place; the town itself was a little cheesey (felt like a very strange and dusty carnival), but the surrounding trails and scenery were good. The town is essentially full of animals, about 5,000 locals desperate to make some money, and Indian tourists. Horses are the primary mode of transport - both for people and goods (other than walking). In addition to horses, there was an abundance of cows and goats ambling about the town, but also an incredible number of opportunistic monkeys running around the streets and buildings. The monkeys are wild, but are unfortunately very bold because of the touristic nature of the place. One tried to take Karen's purse (or at least get into it) while Karen and I were playing ping pong at a table outside. She had left the bag on a bench next to the ping pong table, that was coincidentally next to the trunk of a big tree. I tried to scare it by slapping the paddle on the table and shouting, but it just hissed and lunged at me - shocking and scaring me - and then went about trying to open the bag. Fortunately, the hotel staff noticed and engaged the monkey patrol (two guys with sling shots) and the punk monkey ran up the tree empty handed. I'd do better next time...damn monkey. Then later, one ran through our door (that I carelesslely left ajar) and across our patio and stole the breakfast off our neighbors' table (it was a glass enclosed, shared front porch). It was pretty funny, but our neighbors didn't seem to think so. The same monkey came back and tried to pry the door open, but the monkey patrol came back with a bamboo rod and scared it away. Pretty intense. Look at the crazy mommy monkey's face in the last picture (that is a baby one hanging below). Regardless of the monkey encounters, Matheran made for a decent retreat from the city and a good chance to wander through the woods away from motor vehicles.

Our Life Here

Once before, I put some pictures of the inside of our apartment on the blog, but that probably didn't give a good sense for what it is really like here. So I thought some pictures and a video might be intersting. The first picture (the building) is of Satguru Sharan, the building that we live in. Our place is on the "first" (really the second) floor, which puts us unpleasantly close to the street. It is only a local street, but it is incredibly loud - most noticibly at night. There are a couple restaurants around, a coffee shop and two schools. So at certain times, there are hundreds of kids in uniforms going to or coming from the schools. In addition, there are trucks, cars, motorcycles, auto rickshaws (the black and yellow tricycle vehicles in the picture), and people advertising their products or services by shouting in the streets. Karen and I often mimick them, although we have no idea what they are saying or selling - another one of our odd forms of entertainment here. One other item of note is that I have obtained both a legal Indian driving license and a moped to go with it. This picture is of the Singleton fleet here in Mumbai in the parking garage in our building. Of course, there is our Toyota Innova minivan/SUV, but you can also see our always stationary bicycles (haven't been ridden since Denver...three cities ago!) and the moped. Scooters, being a primary mode of transportation in a relatively poor city, are very cheap here. So, we now own a 2008 Honda Aviator - dark metallic grey, equipped with a 'sari-step'...a standard feature on all two-wheelers in India where most women ride on the back side-saddle, stupidly without helmets. The sari-step is the silver thing behind Karen's left calf in the picture; she doesn't use it. She does, however, regularly request joyrides around town to run errands and entertain ourselves...there is not that much to do here and riding around now, when it is not the monsoon season, is pretty nice. It seems locals here think we are a pretty funny sight - a couple foreigners, on a shiny new scooter, with matching shiny helmets, rolling through the chaos and filth of Mumbai. I also went around and shot some footage in the streets and markets near our apartment. The video at the bottom provides a pretty realistic look at our neighborhood - where we buy fruits and vegetables, the places we eat and the type of people we see wandering around.

Although it is usually sunny and about 90 degrees F during the day (75 at night) and there are palm trees outside our windows, we are slowly working ourselves into some kind of Christmas spirit. It's a bit difficult here, but we have a few decorations out. Karen is posing here with our "Deli Cake" Christmas tree from the fakes market in China. We're definitely looking forward to getting out of India for a few weeks. We'll be in Europe and then in the States in less than a week, where we'll get to see friends and relatives and take a break from the chaos here. Happy Holidays!