We are in Mumbai India now and it is a real shocker. Unlike anyplace that I have been. I have been fortunate to travel and get in deep to many remote places, but this is different. The wide spread poverty is hard to digest. The general overcrowding of people. The infrastructure reminds me of Cuba, A place that once was grand and then was left to decay with no maintenance or upgrades.
There are 20 million people in Mumbai (Bombay) India, and 4 million are homeless. To put that in perspective; in the whole country of Australia there are 21 million people and Australia is the size of all of India.
Life is very much "in your face". Yelling, pushing, begging, touting, if you have personal space issues - this is not the place for you! Driving is insane, I would not even think of renting a car or motor bike here. It is common practice to use your horn as much as you use your brake pedal and it is grid lock stop and go traffic here with incessant horns. It can drive you mental after about a 15 minute taxi ride. The accepted practice if there is a car crash is that you get out and beat the person that was wrong. Makes me wonder if California was on to something with "No Fault Insurance". The hustling, scamming and touts ashore wear you down. The Lonely Planet warns of scams to lure you to a family restaurant, drug you and then steal your vital organs for resale on the market. Nice.
It is like a scene out of a disaster movie, how the world tries to cope after being nuked. It is the worst place I have ever seen for negative impact on the environment.
You can barely breath here, and visibility is usually less than one mile due to pollution. There are days where the pollution smog is so thick that large ships use restricted navigation (fog) signals in the shipping lanes. We had to replace a microwave and I asked the guy to take it away and dispose of properly and he said "just throw it off the back of the boat"! A navy ship sank last week here a few miles from us and dumped tons of diesel and oil into the water and they did nothing to contain it. People piss and shit any where they can, in plain sight. The smells here will never be forgotten. I have photos of gross child labor that I will not post out of respect for the victims involved. The scenes of human rights violations and living conditions for the poor will be etched in my mind for ever.
You can barely breath here, and visibility is usually less than one mile due to pollution. There are days where the pollution smog is so thick that large ships use restricted navigation (fog) signals in the shipping lanes. We had to replace a microwave and I asked the guy to take it away and dispose of properly and he said "just throw it off the back of the boat"! A navy ship sank last week here a few miles from us and dumped tons of diesel and oil into the water and they did nothing to contain it. People piss and shit any where they can, in plain sight. The smells here will never be forgotten. I have photos of gross child labor that I will not post out of respect for the victims involved. The scenes of human rights violations and living conditions for the poor will be etched in my mind for ever.
On a positive note the experience is sensory overload so much color, texture and contrast. Standing with a camera you are so excited with everything surrounding you being a great shot. I am trying to work out how to take scratch and sniff photos to really share the experience with every one. This is a place where people are very industrious and make use of everything, nothing gets thrown out. I walked down streets of people selling what we would consider to be junk and lines of people where bartering for it and carting it away. Made me think of my Dad's garage and all the "junk" he collected, He would enjoy these junk streets.
I hate being negative about a place, but I can not wait to leave here and get back into clean air, clean water, and a more "serene" environment.
No comments:
Post a Comment