Or, rather, driving from the airport to the hotel. Or, rather, being driven from the airport to the hotel (as you could not pay me enough to take the wheel of a car here).
- If you’ve ever been to Disney World or Disneyland, think of the crowds moving, wandering, shuffling, pushing, shoving, twisting, turning down Main Street as the park is near its close. Now replace all those people with busses, trucks, scooters, motorcycles, putt-putts/autorickshaws, little Fiat taxis, and other vehicles, add a lot of horns and blinking lights, and not-infrequent pedestrians, all racing ahead at 35-50 mph, and that’s driving in Mumbai. It’s all breathtakingly fast, close, and the lane markers are not only not a suggestion, they’re generally missing.
- The city is wide-awake and milling about like an ant hill, even at 10:30 p.m. on a Monday night.
- Everything — especially the trucks — are plastered with decor and adverts. As well as the ubiquitous “Horn OK Please” painted signs. And, not surprisingly, everyone uses their horns.
- Even (or perhaps especially) at night, urban decay was all over the place, as you could generally see right into rotting-yet-still-inhabited buildings (who keeps their windows covered, assuming the wall is still there, when it’s in the mid-80s and equally humid at night?). For those not lucky enough to live in such little few-room quarters, any wall will do with (if there’s a least a modicum of fortune) one or more tarps or large plastic advertisement signs to keep the rain off, lean-to style.
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