Old Goa

Old Goa:

When we arrived in Goa, we stayed in a city called Ponda.  It's the town where Shweta was born.  Though her mom and dad lived in Kolhapur, as is typical in India, her mom Mrudula, returned home to stay with her parents as Shweta's birth neared.  Mrudula's brother Navin and sister Urmila live in Ponda with their spouses, so it was an obvious place for us to stay a couple of nights and spend time with family.

Here's the view out the window of our hotel room.

Our first day in Goa, our driver took us out to see Old Goa.  Like Mumbai, Goa was originally settled by Portuguese traders.  When the Portuguese came here, they brought Christianity with them, often using brutal Inquisition tactics and atrocities to forcibly convert both the locals and Portuguese who were running amok here.

The Portuguese conquered Goa in 1510, building churches, establishing trade, and generally doing what you'd do in a colonized port.  Over time however, Old Goa's lack of sanitation and warm climate led to repeated cholera and other epidemics.  To the point that Old Goa was just too difficult to live.  In 1759, the Portuguese abandoned Old Goa and moved their capital to neighboring Panjim, which remains the state capital of Goa.

The first is the Basilica of Bom Jesus (Good Jesus in Portuguese), built in 1605:

Still in use today, the building's brownish exterior colour is due to the laterite bricks that most buildings in Goa are built from.  In the case of this cathedral, the Portuguese guy who led the "restoration" of it, believed that removing the plaster from the brick would make the structure more resistant to erosion, when in fact the opposite is true.  Point being that all of the buildings we're going to see in Old Goa are constructed from these mined, laterite bricks.  The others just have plaster and paint layered on top.

Interestingly Francis Xavier's body is interned inside the cathedral.

Across the street from Francis Xavier cathedral is a large complex which contains a cathedral dedicated to Francis of Assisi.  This cathedral was built in 1661.  It is clearly no longer in use.  When you walk inside, the cathedral has been emptied and you're only allowed to walk around small roped off areas:

Adjacent to the Francis of Assisi cathedral is a small church dedicated to Saint Catherine.

Less than a mile from the Basilica of Bom Jesus, you can climb a narrow road and see a number of other Catholic buildings, including a convent, and most interestingly, the decaying Church of Saint Augustine, which was built in 1597.  Here you can see what happens to laterite when left to the monsoons, heat, and humidity of this area.  This photo is taken looking at what would have been the facade.  What remains is the right tower.

Here are some other photos of the decaying structure.  Interestingly, the church contained it's own small convent.

Finally, we visited the Church of Our Lady of the Mount.  In no way is this a spectacular structure; however, it's view over the valley, and in particular all of the buildings that I've previously discussed is amazing.

Looking at the buildings that rise above the trees, nearest to us, you can see all of the buildings that we'd previously visited.

Tour of Mumbai - Dhobi Ghat

If you weren't convinced by my last post about how hard the working class works here in India, check this out.  This is Shweta, me and our guide for the Dhobi Ghat.  He's a 3rd generation worker in Mumbai's biggest laundry.  Here we're standing at the front gate:

This is the Mumbai laundry.  Obviously not all of the city's laundry is done here, but a large amount still is.  You can't imagine how hot and humid it is in this laundry.  Each of the cement stalls that you see in the picture below is the wash area that one person uses to run their daily washing.  This first picture gives you some idea as to how the city just keeps growing around it:

Each of these folks lives and works in the laundry.  They have small rooms adjacent to their washing location where they live, surrounded by the massive humidity and heat going on around them.

When you go in to some of the tunnels nestled inside the complex, you enter the area where the real heat happens - ironing and boiled washing of clothes.

The ironing is done with fire heated, heavy, iron irons.  The people doing ironing typically iron 300 garments a day for 1 rupee per garment.  That's something like $4.25 for a full day's work.

The boiling of clothes is part of a re-use program.  There are organizations here that collect garments from people who no longer want them, have them cleaned in a boiling/caustic water solution, and then sell them on at drastically reduced prices to people who can't afford new items.

So, when you enter in to this ironing/boiling tunnel, the temperature goes sky high and the air quality hits rock bottom.  You're surrounded by burning wood and smoke.

Despite all the hard work, heat, and what we in North America would view as totally unacceptable conditions, these folks still manage to have fun and maintain a community relationship.

Here's a photo with me and one of the community kids in their large common area.  I was told that he liked to be in photos, so I figured, why not lift him up and have some fun.  Every night, folks gather here to cook food, socialize and eat.

Tour of Mumbai - Dabbawalas of Mumbai

One of the really interesting things we saw on our tour of Mumbai was the Dabbawalas (deliverers of boxed lunches).  These guys run a business that connects a Mumbai office worker with his/her lunch that was prepared back in their home. 

The normal course of operations here is:

1. The office worker leaves for work around 7:30am, likely getting on a train.
2. Someone in the worker's home, prepares their lunch and leaves it for the Dabbawalas
3. A Dabbawala picks up the lunch, marks it with the information of where it came from and where to deliver it.
4. The Dabbawala delivers that lunch and many others to a train, maybe around 10am.  The Dabbawalas load all the dabbas (lunch boxes) on to their dedicated train car.
5. The train shipment is delivered to Mumbai and the Dabbawalas move it to their distribution points around the city, like the one shown above.
6. Each of the lunches is then moved to the appropriate delivery driver.  Once the driver has all his dabbas (I still don't understand how he knows how he's got all the dabbas he's supposed to deliver - I asked, but the only answer I got was "he just knows"), he leaves the distribution point and delivers the dabbas to the office workers.
7. At the end of the day, the Dabbawalas reverse everything that they've already done, returning the empty dabbas back to the home that they originated from.

Whether it's on bikes, with carts, or on foot, these guys are working their asses off to deliver thousands of lunches, for very little money.  Much like many people in India. 

As a side note, it has to be said that the people who do the physical work in this country work incredibly hard and don't look like they do much complaining.  Send the average North American kid here to India and they'd crumble in hours. 

Tour of Mumbai - Victoria Station and Municipal Building

Shweta signed us up for a full day, guided tour of Mumbai.  The tour was just us, a driver and a tour guide, so we had a great opportunity to ask many questions and tailor the tour to our specific needs.

We started things out with a visit to Victoria Train Station, or now renamed to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.  These name changes are very common here in Mumbai.  Prior to India's independence, there was a very, very strong British presence in Mumbai.  So, there's understandably a large desire to erase as much British naming and statues from the city as possible.

This station serves somewhere in the range of 3 to 5 million people per day.  It's amazing to see the amount of humankind that blasts through here.  Here are a few photos of the station.  This, like other British built train stations, is designed to make a statement - multi-part vaulting, all kinds of original carvings on the outside, including a statue of Queen Victoria that has since been removed from the side of the building.  Apparently the statue snapped in half when it was removed from the building and no one is too sure exactly where it is today (reportedly it's somewhere on the black market).

  

Here's an example of the carvings on the outside of the building.  There are many different India native animals that can be found carved in to the structure:

On the opposite side of the street from Victoria station is the municipal building, also designed by Frederick Stevens:

Note the statue out front.  This statue is of Pherozeshah Mehta, who was the first native to be highly successful at law in Mumbai.  He did this in the late 19th century, at a time when he would have been arguing cases against British lawyers and in front of British judges.  Mehta played a major role in politics in Mumbai, thus his rightful place in front of a building that he dominated for much of his professional life.

Colaba Market

Monday morning before meeting up with Ranjana and Shekhar, Shweta and I took a little walk from the hotel to the Colaba market.  This market is what'd you'd expect from the typical Indian street market - narrow roads, many people, and a huge variety of items for sale.

Here's the local bike shop, with the crew working their way through your normal every day bike maintenance, like truing wheels and fixing flats:

Deep, the guy in orange on the right, was very happy to tell me about why he's a Modi supporter and took some interest in my bike collection.  After exchanging some stories, we continued to tour the market.  Not too much to find here, though the looks that Shweta's above the knees, North American dress garnered were a pretty clear signal that the outfits needed some adjustment toward the more conservative side of things.

Lunch at Leopold's

Shweta arrived here early Monday morning.  Shweta's cousin Ranjana and her husband came by to pick us up around noon and took us for lunch and a brief tour of Mumbai.

Before lunch, we went to the Jehangir Art gallery where we got to see some great art, including a set of paintings that the artist had done entirely in natural dyes.  In a different exhibit, the artist, Madhu Jalli, was nice enough to introduce himself.  He created these sculptures of Aamir Khan, a famous Indian actor.  Each of the sculptures is a different character from one of Khan's movies.  To make these, Madhu studied as many angles as he could from each film, and then built out each structure.  It was great to meet him and get some quick photos:

We had lunch at Leopold's, one of the highly frequented expat spots in Mumbai.  Here, they have a different way of serving a pitcher of beer, namely this tap that they bring to your table.  The center column is filled with ice, which I can see being pretty handy as the summer approaches here in India.

After the tour, we headed back to the Deshpande's where they've been nice enough to give us a room in their home and been amazing hosts.  I feel very blessed for all the hospitality that Shweta's family has shown me.  Shweta and I have re-learned just how great Indian's are at hosting.

"You Just Want Pictures, But Won't Feed Her"

Here's an instance of my local ignorance causing a little upset.

We walked up to this cow and woman in south Mumbai.  Keep in mind, south Mumbai is the most expensive real estate in India.  So, seeing a cow tied to a tree and a woman seemingly getting some additional grass together for the cow was rather unexpected.  I wasn't too sure why this woman had a cow here, but with it being such a unique situation, I figured, I'd take a photo.

Once I'd taken the photo, the woman sprang up and made a point to Shweta (in Marati) that all we want to do was take photos of the cow, without feeding it. 

Turns out that the deal here is that I was supposed to pay the woman some money to buy grass from her.  Then I would feed the grass to the cow, ideally improving my karma.  Opportunity lost.

Mumbai - Kicking Ass and Taking Names

It was a full first day in Mumbai.  I'm staying at the Taj Vivanti President in South Mumbai.  I'd heard that Marine Drive was one of the places to visit here in South Mumbai, so after lunch, I decided to head out on a hike in that direction and see what I learned along the way.

What a day!  It's a 40 or so minute hike out to Marine Drive.

It's getting to be summer time here in India, so it's a little hot and sticky, at least for me.  Regardless, it's amazing here.  Just like Hyderabad, people and cars are going everywhere.

First stop of the day was a boat yard on Back Bay:

Lots of great street food along the way.  Not too sure how safe it is to eat this stuff.  There was some great looking Pav Bhaji that I chose to pass up, even though it looked amazing.

Regardless, I finally found my way to Marine Drive and the view of the bay.  Too bad the air is so dirty.  These would be amazing shots if you could see the buildings on the other side of the Bay:

On my way out to the Bay I passed an ice cream shop.  My instant gratification genes aren't as developed as my dad's, but they're definitely still there, so on the way past the second time, I stopped in for a kiwi ice cream.  I may do this hike again tomorrow, just for the ice cream:

And then I figured I may as well get a haircut before the Boss arrives in town.  170 rupees for a cut ($2.50) can't beat that.  My barber is the guy standing with the group.  It was fun to talk with these guys a little after my cut.  They were super friendly and very surprised that my wife is from Maharashtra.  Cool place and great company:

I asked the guy with his feet in the bucket if he was okay with me taking his photo.  His response was that he just wanted to make sure that his hair looked good.  Funny guy!

From there, I stopped by Oval Maiden park to check out a bit of the cricket.  I guess this is the park to be in if you want to play in south Mumbai.  Games were happening everywhere.  This was also the first place where someone asked me to be in a selfie with them.  I had to have posed in more than 20 selfies today.  Bottom line is that there were lots of chances to speak with the locals, hear from them about their city and tell a bit of my story.

From there I walked over to the Gateway to India, which is a stone structure erected to commemorate the 1911 visit of George V and Queen Mary to India.  Interestingly and more importantly, the last British army unit to leave India in 1948 passed through this gateway, boarded a boat, and India was finally free.

After a long day of walking and mixing with the locals, E gets thirsty.  So I popped in to a small pub for some fish and chips and a frosty one (and btw, I highly recommend the chili vinegar that you see here.  Something that I'm going to try when I get home.  Amazing:

Wednesday Dinner with the Team

Big thanks to Surekha and Kunal for hosting us all at their house on Wednesday night.  It was super cool to see their home and get an idea for how people live in Hyderabad.

There was a little sadness this night too as it was the last evening for Sivaram being part of our team.  He's off to work at what we now refer to as the "Fruit Company".  I leave it to you to figure out what that means.

(Sivaram, Shashi, Radhika, me, Prajakta, and Surekha)

Surekha and Kunal were nice enough to tour us around their community.  Pretty nice setup when you consider that they've got a pool, gym, grocery, medical clinic, playgrounds, etc. at their community. 

And then the serious business started.  A good old game of Carrom.  If you know Crokinole, you kinda of know this game.  Carrom has a few different rules and tactics, but with the same technique.

Surekha's son Sthitapragnya was nice enough to let us play with him on his board.  Despite a fast start, I quickly faded:

Falaknama Palace

Thursday night some of the folks in the team took me for a tour and dinner at Falaknama Palace.  Falaknama is one of the most amazing historic things I've seen.  To set the stage a bit, this palace was completed in 1893 by the Prime Minister of Hyderabad, who was the brother-in-law of the 6th Nizam King.  When the palace was completed and the Prime Minister was broke, he asked his brother-in-law for a favor, namely buying the palace from him for 2,000,000 rupees.  Think about the kind of money involved here when that's 1897 money.  In 2019, 2M rupees is worth around $28k USD.  If you take inflation in to account, that's around $61,000,000 US dollars.

According to our guide, with the great number of palaces the king already had, he wasn't too interested in buying a new palace, but he nevertheless helped out his brother-in-law, primarily using the palace to house visiting royal guests and his army of concubines - once apparently numbering around 1000 with him having close to 2000 kids.

I've been to a couple other Nizam palaces, like Chowmahalla Palace, back in 2012, which was also very impressive, but Chowmahalla has a very different vibe than Falaknama.  A few things that stand out about Falaknama:

1. Location / View:

You have to understand that Hitech City, the area that Qualcomm is in, is a brand new high tech park.  15 years ago it was all farmland.  Now it's wide, generally straight streets; metro lines; tall buildings; and fast paced life.  Falaknama is in the old part of Hyderabad.  An area where a lot of Muslims live.  Streets go in circles, many are tight little alleyways.  When you go to this area, you see people who are pretty much living the same way their ancestors did 100s of years ago.

For us, that meant that the drive to the palace was a wild one.  No one knew exactly how to get there. One of us had Google maps going, the other had Apple.  Each gave it's own ideas on the right way to get there.  Some of them turned out to be entirely wrong, such as this street we were routed to:

Falaknama is on a hill overlooking the old city.  The view below is the opposite angle from the photo above.  It was taken from the top story of the palace, looking down on the old city.

Seeing this view, you can start to imagine how if you were the Nizam king, you could stand on the balcony looking through your binoculars and watch what was happening with your people.  The Nizams were well known for their building projects for the city of Hyderabad.  Things like medical schools, court buildings, hospitals, universities, etc.  So, the king could literally stand here and watch his world growing up around him.

2. Guests:

The king hosted many foreign monarchs at Falaknama, including King George V, King Edward VIII (his son), and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.  Of late, Shweta and I have become a little fascinated with reading about Queen Victoria, her grandchildren like George, Nicholas, and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany.  The disaster that these cousins managed to create with their handling of the diplomacy leading up to World War 1 is a sad, sometimes shocking debacle.  If you're interested in some reading on the subject, Ken Follett's Fall of Giants, while long is very good.

So, to walk in to the front entrance of the palace and see giant paintings of some of these guests is very cool.  To think that they were there, walking the same halls brings something romantic to the experience.

3. Layout:

Like Chowmahalla, Falaknama isn't more than it needs to be.  The main palace building has a 100 person dining hall, with one large table.  There's a small ballroom adjacent to the dining hall.  It's got a men's lounge equipped with the original 12.5 foot billiards table, chess boards, playing card tables and a bar.  The ladies can congregate in the ladies gossip room.  There's a very large drawing room where you can relax and read a book.  Finally, there are some bed rooms for VIP guests and the king's family.  Guest rooms then spread out around the inner courtyard.  I get it, it's a palace, so it's overstated, but it somehow keeps the feel that if you lived there, it would still feel like a home.

Here's Chandana, Surekha and I in the courtyard.

4. Restoration / Hotel:

The Taj Hotel Group, which operates 5 star hotels all over India, has leased Falaknama palace from the Nizam foundation.  They then undertook a massive 10 year restoration of the entire hotel complex.  They've done an amazing job of making the palace be what it was back in the early 1900s.  For example, the gent's lounge is exactly as it was back then.  You can walk up to the bar and order a drink.  You can sit in the drawing room and read a book.  Note that you've got to be willing to pay big money to do so.  The smallest room goes for around $450 US per night.  The VIP suites are $11,000 a night.

Bottom line is that if you've got the money and you want to go back in time to live like a king, you can literally do it here at Falaknama.

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Here are some more photos of our group that evening.  After taking the tour, we headed to the restaurant for an amazing dinner and a lot of great conversation:

(Surekha, Vishwa, Ganesh, Chandana, and me)