Day 101-103: Walking
Up #18
*This and the following entry will be my last two detailing
my RTW trip, which is somehow ending, despite it both feeling really, really
long (I mean, it was effing Winter when I left the US) and really short (wasn’t
it just two weeks ago when I was being given complimentary Sambuca for going to
City Grill two nights in a row in Cape Town?). Since this one takes place in
Mumbai, a city where I didn’t do much actual sightseeing apart from taking a
launch ride out to the Elephanta Caves (probably worth it), it won’t be too
long. I’ll probably have actual thoughts on the last part, which includes one
more visit to Singapore and the longest flight sector of my entire trip
(Singaopore to New York). That flight stops in Frankfurt for refueling, so the
New York to Johannesburg flight will still be the longest individual flight
I’ve taken. Still, there’s more to talk about there than writing about me going
to Leopold for the umpteenth time.*
When I arrived in Mumbai, fresh off of my short flight on
IndiGo, I was reminded one more time that Mumbai is a City, while Bangalore is
an oversized town. Driving through Mumbai you get the feeling you are in a
city. I certainly do, everytime we reach Marine Drive, which always looks
better at night than it does during the day. I also remembered just how lucky I
was with my timing for this trip. The air was extremely hot and humid, meaning
one thing: Monsoon is Coming. Within three weeks, the sky will turn cloudy, and
it won’t be blue for another two months. The specter of rain will hang over
every day during that time. I just missed it. Of course, after my face sweating
continuously while walking around Mumbai, I could’ve done with some of nature’s
tears, but not having to deal with the mud and slop that arises during Monsoon
season is still better than having to deal with the increased heat.
By the time I left Mumbai four nights later, entering my Tab
Cab in front of the Esperance building, heading for the airport, I kind of felt
like this was the end of something special, which it was. I was glad to have
spent the last few days of my trip in Mumbai, just as I was glad to spend the
last few days of the 1st half of my trip, which I call the 3rd
World Half, on Mumbai. In a way, this trip was built on symmetry. The longest
flight was the first. The second longest flight was the last. Each time I left
India I went on the same flight, SQ423, to Singapore, and each time I had about
a full day to wander around Singapore.
The similarities didn’t end there. Each time before that
flight, I went to Leopold Café one last time. I’ll admit that I never went to
Leopold Café before the terrorist attack, but why would I, since I couldn’t
really enjoy Leopold Café in all its glory back in 2001. Leopold Café, I feel,
is a little underrated as a place to eat. Sure, they’re known as an incredible
people watching spot and a place to drink a tower of ice cold beer (as was
Sports Bar Express, RIP), but I think their food gets a little but tossed
aside. Their Chinese and Continental Food isn’t the best, but their Indian food
is almost always good. I’ve had a few of their kebabs and a few of their
curries, and they’ve all been good. Leopold Café may be famous because it was
attacked, but it was attacked because it was already a famous spot, and for a
reason.
I ventured out back to my old stomping grounds in Lower
Parel as well. I met my friend back at The Blue Frog, a famous lounge with live
music in Lower Parel. It’s tucked away on a street in the back and beyond of
Lower Parel, and is very hard to find if you don’t know where it is. Last time,
I didn’t really know where it was and it took me about 30 minutes in the Mumbai
heat to walk up and down and find it. No such problems this time. Before The
Blue Frog, we first went to Zaffran, a Mughlai restaurant on that same begotten
alley. This one is closer to the main road, so if I knew it as a landmark last
time it would have been so much easier to find The Blue Frog. The food at
Zaffran was about as good as the décor, as we were seated on a circular table
inside a hanging wooden swing (I’m not sure how to better describe it). Zaffran
was good, and while there was no live music in Blue Frog that night, I finally
had a place adhere to one of my music requests, which was a relief after being
turned away at Man U. bar and Leopold’s upstairs.
My cousin Robin and I returned to Lower Parel the next night
(my last true ‘night’ of the trip), this time going to The Irish House, an
Irish-pub styled bar that played loud music and had a lively, jovial, young
crowd. Robin and I did quite well that evening (probably a little too well),
enjoying the moment, connecting for the last time during our trip and just
enjoying what was going on. It was such a different experience than the
previous night.
Power almost never goes out in Mumbai. It never goes out,
another reason why Mumbai feels like a city whereas Bangalore feels like an
oversized town. Of course, it did the night before, going off around 2 AM.
Because the power never goes out in Mumbai, most buildings don’t have generators
like they do in Bangalore, so we were screwed. My Aunt told us that likely it
would only come back in the morning, which was basically a quasi-death sentence
to me. Robin and I decided around 3 AM that we couldn’t take it anymore, and we
went for a walk to the Taj. The Taj hotel, the more famous terrorist attack
target, turned Robin and I away when we
tried to enter around 6 PM one day during my trip in 2011. We have no idea why,
butt making up that another cousin of mine was staying there and having them
call the fake room probably didn’t help (this happened after they turned us
away originally). We entered the Taj
with no problem. I guess they don’t feel that terrorists arrive at 3AM.
One of their restaurants stays open 24 hours a day, so we
headed there and tried to waste as much time as we could when splitting one $20
entrée. Soon, we got the fettuccini, which was as well made as I could have
expected given the price and the place that we were eating in. There was,
amazingly, one other British family there, and we soon decided that they must
be staying at the Taj (unlike us) and had arrived in Mumbai earlier that night,
and just gotten in and were hungry. It is this type of weird background stuff
that we were doing to keep ourselves semi-awake a 3:30 AM. We finished our meal
and briefly considered going to sleep in their foyer at a place where the
people behind the desk had an obstructed view of us. We decided against that
and returned back to Esperanca to brave the heat, and we did. Miraculously, around
4:45, the power came back, a gift from God. I had my best sleep ever in that
apartment that night.
Going back to the night at The Irish House, we left around
1:45, after finishing what we ordered during their 1:30 last call. This is just
another reason why I love Mumbai, because things don’t close early. Of course,
they close early enough that we returned to Esperance in time to catch VH1 ZZZZ
and have some last few Kingfishers from the shady Gokkul Wine Shop. I’ll
remember The Irish House, and Leopold, and Zaffran, but for some reason, I’ll
remember VH1 ZZZ… more than anything.
