Today has been an excellent day, I woke up at 2am to a rat trying to eat it's way through my air conditioner into my room, went back to sleep armed with my guitar nearby, and got a lazy start around eleven am. From there I hit the "Reality Tours" office, a cramped, airless building (like most of Bombay) above a food store. This company offers tours of Mumbai's slum, Daharavi, the biggest in Asia. It was certainly an eye-opening experience, but was a bit different than I had anticipated. As a little background, the slum lies about 10km north of Mumbai's city center and covers an area of about 0.7 sq miles. Around a million people pack into two story homes built from cardboard, scrap metal, wood, burlap, and whatever other building materials were available. The area has about 1,000 different industries, ranging from pottery to the manufacture of plastic-shredding machines. Daharvi's separated along religious lines, this section is Muslim, this section is Hindu, no hostility, but after deadly riots in the 90's, the two sects divided up the slum. My tour was run by Shuni, a 30 or so year old Indian who grew up north of Mumbai. The company is co-managed by an Indian, Krishna, and Chris, a Brit. They work to promote education within the slum and pump some money into the local economy. At around 2pm some fellow Westerners and I set off into the slum, winding around shops that cut tiny bits of plastic scavenged from the garbage, sorted them by color, and melted them for re-distribution. From there to a residential district of the slum, extremely narrow walkways, just big enough for two people to pass by each other, where thousands have built their homes. The ground is a mix of concrete slab, bits of wood, sewage, water of questionable composition, and trash. While trying to catch up to the tour group in one such alley I had the fortune of stepping through a hole in the concrete slab, plunging my foot into water (I hope) and scraping my hand on the wall (cleanish). Up to date on my shots, no open wounds, so that's good, ha, one of my new balances is a bit off though. Anyway, the rest of the day was spent wandering the residential district of the slum, seeing the school run by the tour company, and checking out the pottery district. The kids at the school were eager to practice their English with us foreigners, I to practice my Hindi with them, which was immediately assailed with laughter. I did, however, manage to pick up a few words in Urdu, which sounds a lot like Arabic. Hmmm... Emerged from the slum and caught the nearby train home to Colaba district with a few friends from the tour. Hit a great restaurant downtown, chicken coconut curry, life is good, and cheap, very cheap. Grabbed a beer at their hotel's terrace, then more delicious food (chicken tikka and more curry, plus delicious, charcoal fired bread), then a beer at a very local place, ha, traded stories, and called it a night.
Anyway, chk out the link below...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/travel/09heads.html
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2 comments:
I'm rather jealous of your India experience, especially the slum tour you went on. I read the NYT article and thought "What a great idea!" After being a tourist in Egypt I think it's good that foreigners are becoming more exposed to realities of life in developing countries. It's the development of relationships that really inspires the drive to help, and the slum tours seem like effective means. After doing the tour how do you feel about the two views presented in the article?
i'm glad you did this. after reading the article some weeks ago, i immediately thought of you and what kind of tourist experience you were looking for, which is to say an untouristy experience.
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