Yes, Mumbai is still in India


After a few days in Mumbai, I can confirm that it is still part of India. It has a far more European feel than any other Indian we've visited (though Calcutta comes a close second), but there are plenty of signs of life in India.

Today, our last day in Mumbai, we visited Crawford Market. We ran into a Canadian woman in a restaurant yesterday who has lived in Mumbai for ten years. She advised us not to go to Crawford Market since it is much like any other Indian market. But we went anyway, and she was wrong. The market takes place in a Victorian-style building, and the action inside includes a combination of retail and wholesale. So we saw rows and rows of individual mangoes for sale, as well as vendors packing crates of mangoes for distribution in other parts of the city. The market also had a slaughter house where many of the live animals for sale meet their end. There were also a lot of cats, dogs, rabbits, and other animals one would assumed to have been intended for pets. I am not sure where the line between the domestic animals and animals for consumption was drawn, though our guide did tell us the puppies were to be sold as pets.

The market is so large that there is a lot of other everyday life activity happening. Guys were sitting in the straw on the ground getting shaves. Workers who had probably been unloading crates all morning were stopping for chai and breakfast. It was an all-around true-India experience.

Here are some pictures that capture just a bit of the action...



A few other Mumbai snaps...


Posted: Tue - May 2, 2006 at 11:16 PM          

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