**Other than maybe the days I was writing about my time in Cape Town, no entry filled me with more weird feelings of nostalgia than this one. I think its because (a) there is a clear tinge of sadness that this whole trip was coming to a conclusion, and (b) I've been to Mumbai many times prior and since. There are some highlights here, like me slamming Bangalore, and my cousin Robin and I venturing out to Lower Parel, a palce we've been to many more times. The Irish House is the setting of some of our best (hazy) memories, talking for hours about bullshit and sports and music and the like in that weird Irish Pub in the heart of Mumbai. This was a couple trips before we discovered Luna Lounge, but it was while The Blue Frog was still open and buzzing. As I understand, they closed due to some rental dispute, but man I'm shocked something similar didn't replace it, as the place was full every time I went. What really hits me though is the story about the power outage and venturing to The Taj. It's still abit shocking it happened. I've been to Mumbai five times since and never experienced anotiher power outage. All my trips prior to 2013 I can't remember one either (granted I was very young for a few of those). There is a decent chance I won't face one of those again, but it of course happened at 2am, and happened to give us an opportunity to experience The Taj late at night. The next re-post of this probably will be the finale, but it was cool to remember that so close to this ultimately 105-day journey ending, there was still some cool stuff going on**
**********************************************************************************************
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.
