Reading an article in the Times today (www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7087627.ece) about Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) workers being paid a “hardship” allowance in certain countries really made me laugh. That’s because Dubai, the emirate with better living conditions that we enjoy in Britain, was included on the list. The FCO told the Times: “The FCO pays staff allowances to compensate them for their requirement to live and work abroad, often in dangerous and challenging environments. These allowances are reviewed regularly to ensure that they are fit for purpose."
Having just returned from a long weekend seeing friends in Dubai I can assure that it’s not a difficult place to live. You have some of the biggest shopping malls in the world with all the big Western names. There are hotels with as many as seven stars where lavish entertainment is laid on every night where you can drink yourself silly if you so choose.
On Friday’s the big expat thing to do is to go to an international hotel and enjoy ‘Brunch’. Not just your full English breakfast items but everything from your own personalised noodle meal to the likes of good quality chargrilled steak. I love buffets and have visited many over the years, but none have been anything near as good as what’s on offer in Dubai.
There are also fantastic beaches where you can relax in your leisure time. On the outskirts of Dubai expats also enjoy games of golf on some of the best kept courses in the world. And then of course Dubai residents get to enjoy some of the world’s most spectacular architecture, including the world’s tallest building. Those with kids will enjoy the many waterparks or trips to Dubai zoo.
I do feel sorry for the poor FCO workers for having to put up with these terrible conditions. I really do.
Monday, April 5, 2010
It's only right that we pay our way in India
There would be horror in many circles in Britain if you had two queues, one for ‘UK nationals’ and the other for ‘foreigners’ at our major tourist attractions. Yet in India this segregation has long been a reality. What’s more, from the Taj Mahal in Agra to the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai, overseas visitors pay a higher admission prices – often up to five times the amount.
Personally, I think it’s a bit silly people standing in different lines to pay for their tickets. From a practical point of view at least, you can end up with one very long queue while at the next window the attendant twiddles his or her thumbs. But I don’t have a problem with foreigners paying more to enter the major attractions. After all, if they’ve travelled all the way to India, surely they can afford to pay their way and help the Indian people preserve their heritage?
If you had the admissions at a standardised level for both foreign visitors and Indians then everyone would lose out. The Indian people either wouldn’t be able to afford to visit the museums and monuments that have shaped the identity of today’s country. Or the admission prices would need to be so low that the heritage would be in danger of falling into disrepair. After all, preserving monuments is an expensive process. The current approach in ticket prices is therefore ideal in ensuring that future generations, whatever their earnings, can enjoy India.
And what a fascinating place India is. You have for example the Taj Mahal, which I think is one of the greatest monuments ever built in the world. It looks amazing on postcards but when you get there it appears a million times more special. Erected by a Muslim Mughal ruler to remember his beloved wife, but it seems to sidestep religion. Today the Taj is enjoyed by Muslims and Hindus alike.
Then 20 miles or so from the Taj, there’s the abandoned red sandstone city of Fatehpur Sikri. Capital under the Mughal ruler Akbhar, the seat of the government later had to be moved after the water supply dried up. Being a Mughal Akbhar was a Muslim but he celebrated the diversity of religions. He even had three wives of different religions (Muslim, Hindu and Christian) and built them all their own palaces at Fatehpur Sikri. Akbhar’s armour is one of the many treasures at the Prince of Wales museum in Mumbai.
At a time of religious intolerance in the Indian subcontinent, it is fitting to look back at leaders like Akbhar and see how they not just tolerated, but also celebrated diversity. Reading the histories of Akbhar’s time, you discover just how successful India was at that time. Indeed, the West was only really just waking up after years of decline. For example Akbhar ruled 100m people, while Elizabeth I ruled just 3m people in England.
As the Indian leaders that followed Akbhar became less intolerant to different religions the tables well and truly turned. India was too busy fighting within its own borders to see the colonisation threat from Europe. As Hindu temples were being smashed up and other equally bad atrocities taking place, the domestic economy suffered and rule by nations like Britain became inevitable.
Every nation needs to understand the mistakes of its past in order to have a better tomorrow. It is therefore extremely important in India today that people get to see the sites where history took place and understand the happenings mean for them as modern citizens. Why shouldn’t Indians whatever their income levels get to enjoy their national treasures.
The West spent decades plundering countries like India, extracting riches for maximum profit. Now it’s only right that foreign visitors pay their way and not expect to have everything on the cheap.
Personally, I think it’s a bit silly people standing in different lines to pay for their tickets. From a practical point of view at least, you can end up with one very long queue while at the next window the attendant twiddles his or her thumbs. But I don’t have a problem with foreigners paying more to enter the major attractions. After all, if they’ve travelled all the way to India, surely they can afford to pay their way and help the Indian people preserve their heritage?
If you had the admissions at a standardised level for both foreign visitors and Indians then everyone would lose out. The Indian people either wouldn’t be able to afford to visit the museums and monuments that have shaped the identity of today’s country. Or the admission prices would need to be so low that the heritage would be in danger of falling into disrepair. After all, preserving monuments is an expensive process. The current approach in ticket prices is therefore ideal in ensuring that future generations, whatever their earnings, can enjoy India.
And what a fascinating place India is. You have for example the Taj Mahal, which I think is one of the greatest monuments ever built in the world. It looks amazing on postcards but when you get there it appears a million times more special. Erected by a Muslim Mughal ruler to remember his beloved wife, but it seems to sidestep religion. Today the Taj is enjoyed by Muslims and Hindus alike.
Then 20 miles or so from the Taj, there’s the abandoned red sandstone city of Fatehpur Sikri. Capital under the Mughal ruler Akbhar, the seat of the government later had to be moved after the water supply dried up. Being a Mughal Akbhar was a Muslim but he celebrated the diversity of religions. He even had three wives of different religions (Muslim, Hindu and Christian) and built them all their own palaces at Fatehpur Sikri. Akbhar’s armour is one of the many treasures at the Prince of Wales museum in Mumbai.
At a time of religious intolerance in the Indian subcontinent, it is fitting to look back at leaders like Akbhar and see how they not just tolerated, but also celebrated diversity. Reading the histories of Akbhar’s time, you discover just how successful India was at that time. Indeed, the West was only really just waking up after years of decline. For example Akbhar ruled 100m people, while Elizabeth I ruled just 3m people in England.
As the Indian leaders that followed Akbhar became less intolerant to different religions the tables well and truly turned. India was too busy fighting within its own borders to see the colonisation threat from Europe. As Hindu temples were being smashed up and other equally bad atrocities taking place, the domestic economy suffered and rule by nations like Britain became inevitable.
Every nation needs to understand the mistakes of its past in order to have a better tomorrow. It is therefore extremely important in India today that people get to see the sites where history took place and understand the happenings mean for them as modern citizens. Why shouldn’t Indians whatever their income levels get to enjoy their national treasures.
The West spent decades plundering countries like India, extracting riches for maximum profit. Now it’s only right that foreign visitors pay their way and not expect to have everything on the cheap.
The glamour of going to the movies
Going to the cinema in India is a completely different experience to watching a film back in Britain. People cheer, they laugh, they boo, they wail and they applaud. Mobile phones go off and cinema goers end up having fool blown conversations. But no-one complains about these disturbances, that’s because they are too busy joining in with the action.
Bollywood is a big industry for India, so it was only natural to go and watch a film while in the country. The fact that there were going to be no sub titles slightly worried me, but I shouldn’t have been concerned. The film I saw featured a simple plot of an unwelcome family visitor and his many irritating antics. In any case, the very public reactions of the audience helped me along greatly.
And it felt special going to the cinema as well. The Raj Mandir Movie Theatre in Jaipur has wonderful chandeliers in the lobby area. People had made an effort dressing up and were ready to make an evening of it. That just does not happen anymore in Britain. Brits drive in their cars to an out of town multiplex and then grab a KFC drive through on the way home. Where’s the glitz and glamour in that?
Bollywood is a big industry for India, so it was only natural to go and watch a film while in the country. The fact that there were going to be no sub titles slightly worried me, but I shouldn’t have been concerned. The film I saw featured a simple plot of an unwelcome family visitor and his many irritating antics. In any case, the very public reactions of the audience helped me along greatly.
And it felt special going to the cinema as well. The Raj Mandir Movie Theatre in Jaipur has wonderful chandeliers in the lobby area. People had made an effort dressing up and were ready to make an evening of it. That just does not happen anymore in Britain. Brits drive in their cars to an out of town multiplex and then grab a KFC drive through on the way home. Where’s the glitz and glamour in that?
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Would my laundry come back in one piece?
When I was told earlier that there was a good chance that the clothes I'd arranged to have washed could have gone to Mumbai's biggest open air laundry I was worried. I thought I would never see my pair of jeans and two shirts again. What I saw at a visit to the site today seemed nothing short of chaos. How on earth could they keep track of so many clothes?
Apparently 3,000 people work washing garments in the open air pools. Exposed to the blazing sunlight, it gets very hot down there so many just toil away in their shorts. They dip the clothes in the soap water and then wring them out by hand. The clothes are then hung on giant make-shift wooden clothes rails jutting out from the washers' shack-like homes.
From some distance the different garments create a feast of colour on the eye. There are items from all over the city – green sheets from hospitals, a batch of jeans having their first wash before being sold and many more items for individuals. I'm assured that less than 1% of clothes are lost because everything is carefully tagged. Still, it wasn't enough to convince me that my clothes would arrive back in one piece.
But just a few minutes ago I had a delivery at my hotel room. Of course, I can't be sure that they were washed at the open air laundry, they could have just been put in some electric washing machine (increasingly popular gadgets in India which are unfortunately putting the future of open air laundries in doubt). Still, it's a pretty impressive, manual system that leads you to question why parcel companies have to spend so much on electronic tracking devices. I'm just happy to have my laundry back.
Apparently 3,000 people work washing garments in the open air pools. Exposed to the blazing sunlight, it gets very hot down there so many just toil away in their shorts. They dip the clothes in the soap water and then wring them out by hand. The clothes are then hung on giant make-shift wooden clothes rails jutting out from the washers' shack-like homes.
From some distance the different garments create a feast of colour on the eye. There are items from all over the city – green sheets from hospitals, a batch of jeans having their first wash before being sold and many more items for individuals. I'm assured that less than 1% of clothes are lost because everything is carefully tagged. Still, it wasn't enough to convince me that my clothes would arrive back in one piece.
But just a few minutes ago I had a delivery at my hotel room. Of course, I can't be sure that they were washed at the open air laundry, they could have just been put in some electric washing machine (increasingly popular gadgets in India which are unfortunately putting the future of open air laundries in doubt). Still, it's a pretty impressive, manual system that leads you to question why parcel companies have to spend so much on electronic tracking devices. I'm just happy to have my laundry back.
A hotel of defiance
I'm in sitting in a swish bar at the Taj Palace and Hotel in the centre of Mumbai. Peering out the window, the iconic Gateway to India is lit up. Indians, plus a few expats, gather in front of it and enjoying the warm evening. This is the best spot in the city and room rates (which start at $300 per night) at the Taj, which dates from the early 1900s, reflect that. The service is good and passing through the marble decorated corridors you reach some very luxurious shops.
Unfortunately I'm not staying here, I've merely just popped in to enjoy a drink and a very tasty chicken curry. The timing of my visit is significant, just yesterday the ballroom re-opened after the deadly 2008 bombings in which more than 160 people were killed. And coincidentally yesterday was also when the Indian government announced that the verdict of the only bomber captured alive will be May 3rd.
Today the national newspapers are full of the details about the trial – how much it's costing and stressing the Pakistan link (India holds Pakistan responsible for the difficulties in bringing to trial the suicide bomber.) And families of the victims killed in the atrocity say that the death penalty is not enough, they want to seem the bomber hung drawn and quartered in public.
But for the Taj, the swift progress in getting it open again sends out a message of defiance. The hotel re-opened its doors to guests just three weeks after the attack. The unveiling of the splendid ballroom pretty much completes that process. It signifies that terrorism won't be tolerated, not in India, not anywhere in the world. It says that terrorists will never win.
Unfortunately I'm not staying here, I've merely just popped in to enjoy a drink and a very tasty chicken curry. The timing of my visit is significant, just yesterday the ballroom re-opened after the deadly 2008 bombings in which more than 160 people were killed. And coincidentally yesterday was also when the Indian government announced that the verdict of the only bomber captured alive will be May 3rd.
Today the national newspapers are full of the details about the trial – how much it's costing and stressing the Pakistan link (India holds Pakistan responsible for the difficulties in bringing to trial the suicide bomber.) And families of the victims killed in the atrocity say that the death penalty is not enough, they want to seem the bomber hung drawn and quartered in public.
But for the Taj, the swift progress in getting it open again sends out a message of defiance. The hotel re-opened its doors to guests just three weeks after the attack. The unveiling of the splendid ballroom pretty much completes that process. It signifies that terrorism won't be tolerated, not in India, not anywhere in the world. It says that terrorists will never win.
The slum of a thousand smiles
They are probably the dirtiest streets and alleyways that I've ever walked along. Filthy water pours out of small factories, goats roam free and waste is piled high. I'm just a visitor, for some people the tumbling shacks, where large families sleep cramped in small rooms, this is their home. Others save money by sleeping on the floor of where they work. It can't be healthy given the many toxic 'recycling' processes that take place in these parts. Many do indeed get ill.
But there is another side to this Mumbai shantytown called Dharavi, Asia's biggest slum. Children play cricket and other games with their friends in the streets. They smile and want to shake the hands of Western vistors, but no-one demands any small coins. Overall, everyone seems to be simply enjoying themselves. They are doing what people of their age do in other places around the world, they are just being kids. They lark about, like by putting a baseball cap on a goat, but without being threatening.
Dharavi, home to more than one million people living in over 550 acres, is a strange place. Over the years a city within a city has sprung up, with an array of small stalls, shops and cafes on private land. Barbers cut people's hair at open air counters, Internet cafes have sprung up and there's even a police station. There are schools, many run by NGOs, which pupils attend in pristine uniforms either every morning or evening. The streets are not mapped, yet the postman still has addresses and knows where to deliver the mail each day.
There maybe be 21st innovations like the Internet and you see slum dwellers with mobiles and Blackberries, but many of the cottage-based industries use very simple working processes. Recycling the likes of drinks cans and plastics employs many in single-room factories. They work laboriously in the dingy shacks to sort all of the different composites by hand. In the narrow alleyways the raw materials, like the plastics from computer monitors, sourced from the city and the world are piled high.
Health and safety inspectors from the West would have a heart attack visiting Dharavi. Nothing and no-where is risk assessed. Factory workers are exposed to the toxic fumes of plastics being melted down and have no protection from welding sparks as they produce the machines for crushing cans. Bakeries roll out bread on the dirty floors, women make poppodoms in dusty conditions in the open air. Electrical cables hang down in the alleyways leading to individual homes, they are barely wide enough for a person to pass and sharp stakes stick out.
With these conditions, it's no wonder that diseases like Cholera, Malaria and Typhoid are rife. Living and working like this reminds me of accounts of the middle ages in Britain. Back then people became ill from having their homes so close to dirty industrial processes. Little seems to have changed. The waste products of small-scale tanneries, potteries and the the like that flow into the streets look absolutely filthy.
For the privilege of working in this stench, factory workers get about 120 Rupees (less than £2). Many come to Dharavi from small villages outside Mumbai and send money back to their families. So in the areas with the network of workshops, you see mainly men. As already mentioned, they often sleep on the factory floors so they maximise the amount they send back. This may be a slum, but with every inch of land taken those that have built up property over the years charge rents of around 1500 Rupees (just under £20) a month for a small house. A small amount by Western standards, but it represents a considerable amount of slum take home pay.
In total the 15,000 factories turn over an incredible £700 million a year. Through a series of middle men deals are cut with a number of well-known large international companies. It's for this reason that business leaders have been interested in finding out more about the economic miracle that is Dharavi.
So what of the legality of the slum dwellers? On paper Dharavi is built on private land which was left vacant by speculators waiting for land prices to go up. In reality though the dwellers have rights. In 1995 the Indian Government made records of all those living in Mumbai in their slums and the properties they had erected. All those part of this census can't be evicted without compensation from developers (but any homes built after 1995 can simply be pulled down and residents evicted without compensation).
For the slums built pre 1995, developers need 70% approval from dwellers before they can demolish their homes. If they do get the go-ahead, tower blocks are built for the displaced residents. Developers give several floors free to the evicted slum dwellers, but then profit by selling apartments on other floors on the open market. Bill Clinton and Prince Charles visited the opening of the first such tower block in Dharavi in 1997. Since then many more have sprung up.
But many living in the slums resist the offers of the developers. They say they don't want to live in small flats, high up in the skies where there won't be any provision for their workshops. Other slum dwellers have made considerable sums of money in business (there are rumoured to be millionaires in Dharavi), but like the close-knit community of the shantytown. You get many living in the slums but then traveling to the commercial districts for work each day. Slum dwellers may even be answering the phones in call centres for UK based companies.
As a visitor, I worried slightly about going into a slum, particularly from a security point of view. But I can say that walking around, it felt one of the safest places I've been to in India. You certainly don't get the hawkers that congregate in the tourist areas and hassle you with every kind of crap souvenir that is possible. According to the statistics, crime is much lower in Dharavi than in other parts of Mumbai.
The question remains though, is it responsible tourism to visit somewhere like Dharavi? Aren't visitors just invading residents' privacy? These are questions that I thought long and hard about and did my research. I came across an organisation called Reality Tours and Travel. They give 80% of the profits of the visits to NGOs that operate in the slums. For example, on my trip we popped our heads in at a nursery that is completely funded by the organisation. Next year it will take over an ailing school. And Reality operates a strict 'no photography policy'.
But it is important to do your research. Following the release of the hit film Slumdog Millionaire many tour companies have started slum tours, unfortunately the profits don't always benefit the dwellers. Reality actually spent a month talking to people in the alleyways of Dharavi before it launched its tours four years ago. Ending my visit at a community centre, funded by Reality, I saw where slum dwellers can take free English classes, I think what the organisation does is every bit responsible.
As for Dharavi itself, I think the positive work ethic displayed in the factories offers a model for how India should develop. The wages are low, but the cost of living is also low. What Dharavi has, and what other areas of Mumbai don't have, is community spirit. It would be suicidal for the slums to be totally destroyed and the residents moved to endless tower blocks. Just look at how crime levels in Britain shot up when such blocks were built after World War Two. Council estates became 'no go areas'.
And for me, one of the most humbling things was seeing those living in the Muslim sector making Hindu shrines. Over the last few years people from the two religions have in fact grown closer together. Non-Muslims go to schools run by Muslim charities, for example. This harmony is a rare commodity in other parts of India and neighbouring Pakistan.
So Dharavi and other smaller slums across Asia should be allowed to evolve. Services need to be improved and workers need advice on better protection. But it would be absolutely criminal to totally destroy what has grown so naturally over the years. Let Dharavi be a blueprint for the rest of India.
But there is another side to this Mumbai shantytown called Dharavi, Asia's biggest slum. Children play cricket and other games with their friends in the streets. They smile and want to shake the hands of Western vistors, but no-one demands any small coins. Overall, everyone seems to be simply enjoying themselves. They are doing what people of their age do in other places around the world, they are just being kids. They lark about, like by putting a baseball cap on a goat, but without being threatening.
Dharavi, home to more than one million people living in over 550 acres, is a strange place. Over the years a city within a city has sprung up, with an array of small stalls, shops and cafes on private land. Barbers cut people's hair at open air counters, Internet cafes have sprung up and there's even a police station. There are schools, many run by NGOs, which pupils attend in pristine uniforms either every morning or evening. The streets are not mapped, yet the postman still has addresses and knows where to deliver the mail each day.
There maybe be 21st innovations like the Internet and you see slum dwellers with mobiles and Blackberries, but many of the cottage-based industries use very simple working processes. Recycling the likes of drinks cans and plastics employs many in single-room factories. They work laboriously in the dingy shacks to sort all of the different composites by hand. In the narrow alleyways the raw materials, like the plastics from computer monitors, sourced from the city and the world are piled high.
Health and safety inspectors from the West would have a heart attack visiting Dharavi. Nothing and no-where is risk assessed. Factory workers are exposed to the toxic fumes of plastics being melted down and have no protection from welding sparks as they produce the machines for crushing cans. Bakeries roll out bread on the dirty floors, women make poppodoms in dusty conditions in the open air. Electrical cables hang down in the alleyways leading to individual homes, they are barely wide enough for a person to pass and sharp stakes stick out.
With these conditions, it's no wonder that diseases like Cholera, Malaria and Typhoid are rife. Living and working like this reminds me of accounts of the middle ages in Britain. Back then people became ill from having their homes so close to dirty industrial processes. Little seems to have changed. The waste products of small-scale tanneries, potteries and the the like that flow into the streets look absolutely filthy.
For the privilege of working in this stench, factory workers get about 120 Rupees (less than £2). Many come to Dharavi from small villages outside Mumbai and send money back to their families. So in the areas with the network of workshops, you see mainly men. As already mentioned, they often sleep on the factory floors so they maximise the amount they send back. This may be a slum, but with every inch of land taken those that have built up property over the years charge rents of around 1500 Rupees (just under £20) a month for a small house. A small amount by Western standards, but it represents a considerable amount of slum take home pay.
In total the 15,000 factories turn over an incredible £700 million a year. Through a series of middle men deals are cut with a number of well-known large international companies. It's for this reason that business leaders have been interested in finding out more about the economic miracle that is Dharavi.
So what of the legality of the slum dwellers? On paper Dharavi is built on private land which was left vacant by speculators waiting for land prices to go up. In reality though the dwellers have rights. In 1995 the Indian Government made records of all those living in Mumbai in their slums and the properties they had erected. All those part of this census can't be evicted without compensation from developers (but any homes built after 1995 can simply be pulled down and residents evicted without compensation).
For the slums built pre 1995, developers need 70% approval from dwellers before they can demolish their homes. If they do get the go-ahead, tower blocks are built for the displaced residents. Developers give several floors free to the evicted slum dwellers, but then profit by selling apartments on other floors on the open market. Bill Clinton and Prince Charles visited the opening of the first such tower block in Dharavi in 1997. Since then many more have sprung up.
But many living in the slums resist the offers of the developers. They say they don't want to live in small flats, high up in the skies where there won't be any provision for their workshops. Other slum dwellers have made considerable sums of money in business (there are rumoured to be millionaires in Dharavi), but like the close-knit community of the shantytown. You get many living in the slums but then traveling to the commercial districts for work each day. Slum dwellers may even be answering the phones in call centres for UK based companies.
As a visitor, I worried slightly about going into a slum, particularly from a security point of view. But I can say that walking around, it felt one of the safest places I've been to in India. You certainly don't get the hawkers that congregate in the tourist areas and hassle you with every kind of crap souvenir that is possible. According to the statistics, crime is much lower in Dharavi than in other parts of Mumbai.
The question remains though, is it responsible tourism to visit somewhere like Dharavi? Aren't visitors just invading residents' privacy? These are questions that I thought long and hard about and did my research. I came across an organisation called Reality Tours and Travel. They give 80% of the profits of the visits to NGOs that operate in the slums. For example, on my trip we popped our heads in at a nursery that is completely funded by the organisation. Next year it will take over an ailing school. And Reality operates a strict 'no photography policy'.
But it is important to do your research. Following the release of the hit film Slumdog Millionaire many tour companies have started slum tours, unfortunately the profits don't always benefit the dwellers. Reality actually spent a month talking to people in the alleyways of Dharavi before it launched its tours four years ago. Ending my visit at a community centre, funded by Reality, I saw where slum dwellers can take free English classes, I think what the organisation does is every bit responsible.
As for Dharavi itself, I think the positive work ethic displayed in the factories offers a model for how India should develop. The wages are low, but the cost of living is also low. What Dharavi has, and what other areas of Mumbai don't have, is community spirit. It would be suicidal for the slums to be totally destroyed and the residents moved to endless tower blocks. Just look at how crime levels in Britain shot up when such blocks were built after World War Two. Council estates became 'no go areas'.
And for me, one of the most humbling things was seeing those living in the Muslim sector making Hindu shrines. Over the last few years people from the two religions have in fact grown closer together. Non-Muslims go to schools run by Muslim charities, for example. This harmony is a rare commodity in other parts of India and neighbouring Pakistan.
So Dharavi and other smaller slums across Asia should be allowed to evolve. Services need to be improved and workers need advice on better protection. But it would be absolutely criminal to totally destroy what has grown so naturally over the years. Let Dharavi be a blueprint for the rest of India.
A very British city in India
Walking around the Fort and Colaba areas of Mumbai reminds me at times of Britain's capital, London. There's a museum with a resemblance to London's British Museum, the Victoria Terminus train station is modeled on St Pancras and then there are countless fenced off gardens in the centre of roundabouts with fountains. And all the grand public buildings have remarkable similarities to many of the financial buildings in Britain's capital.
Given Mumbai's recent history none of this is at all surprising. By its previous name of Bombay, this was Britain's first colony proper in India (previously Britain had just had trading posts and small factories.) Bombay would different. The British took possession in 1665 of the seven islands which today make up the city. Just a few years later they were leased to the East India Company for £10 per year. Bombay flourished as a trading port and such was the strategic importance for the Company that a fort was built in the 1700s. From the opening of the Suez canal in 1869, Bombay became the principal gateway to the subcontinent.
Nowadays, the defence walls that surrounded the city survive only in the district name Fort. The actual fort was pulled down as the grand city that greets visitors today was built in the second half of the 1800s. It's as well-constructed as any of the great Victorian cities in places like Manchester and London. And it's also a real pleasure to walk around, so unlike many cities in India.
St Thomas Cathedral is the oldest British building (construction took place from 1672 to 1718), in Mumbai. Walking inside the white-washed building, you read memorial after memorial commemorating those Britons that worked for the East India Company. It doesn't make comfortable reading for post-colonial India as the language used talks about individuals 'brave' work in the 'Conquest' of the subcontinent. You also read had lives were so intertwined with Britain, with people living their lives in places like Birmingham and Bristol, then coming out to India.
I also love the extravagance of aformentioned Victoria Terminus, today Asia's busiest railway station. The cathedral-like Gothic building features an array of towers, turrets and spires. It has to be one of the grandest stations in the world. Opened in 1887, it is now deservedably a World Heritage site and is undergoing much needed renovation work.
Then there's the Oval Maiden, which is surrounded by more grand Victorian buildings like the High Court and the University. For the best of the action look to the green grass of the Oval itself, it's here where impromtu cricket matches crop up. The British brought cricket to India and today it's the country's national sport. IPL cricket matches are big events and wherever you go, people ask you if you like cricket.
For Mumbai's buildings and monuments from the period of British rule, perhaps the most popular is the Gateway to India. Built to commemorate the visit to India of King George V in 1911, it was completed in 1924. It's a place today where tourists and local alike tend to congregate. Security is therefore tight and you are frisked as you get up close to it. This was the place where the last British troops left India after independence in 1948. What a fitting link between Mumbai's colonial past and its independent future.
Given Mumbai's recent history none of this is at all surprising. By its previous name of Bombay, this was Britain's first colony proper in India (previously Britain had just had trading posts and small factories.) Bombay would different. The British took possession in 1665 of the seven islands which today make up the city. Just a few years later they were leased to the East India Company for £10 per year. Bombay flourished as a trading port and such was the strategic importance for the Company that a fort was built in the 1700s. From the opening of the Suez canal in 1869, Bombay became the principal gateway to the subcontinent.
Nowadays, the defence walls that surrounded the city survive only in the district name Fort. The actual fort was pulled down as the grand city that greets visitors today was built in the second half of the 1800s. It's as well-constructed as any of the great Victorian cities in places like Manchester and London. And it's also a real pleasure to walk around, so unlike many cities in India.
St Thomas Cathedral is the oldest British building (construction took place from 1672 to 1718), in Mumbai. Walking inside the white-washed building, you read memorial after memorial commemorating those Britons that worked for the East India Company. It doesn't make comfortable reading for post-colonial India as the language used talks about individuals 'brave' work in the 'Conquest' of the subcontinent. You also read had lives were so intertwined with Britain, with people living their lives in places like Birmingham and Bristol, then coming out to India.
I also love the extravagance of aformentioned Victoria Terminus, today Asia's busiest railway station. The cathedral-like Gothic building features an array of towers, turrets and spires. It has to be one of the grandest stations in the world. Opened in 1887, it is now deservedably a World Heritage site and is undergoing much needed renovation work.
Then there's the Oval Maiden, which is surrounded by more grand Victorian buildings like the High Court and the University. For the best of the action look to the green grass of the Oval itself, it's here where impromtu cricket matches crop up. The British brought cricket to India and today it's the country's national sport. IPL cricket matches are big events and wherever you go, people ask you if you like cricket.
For Mumbai's buildings and monuments from the period of British rule, perhaps the most popular is the Gateway to India. Built to commemorate the visit to India of King George V in 1911, it was completed in 1924. It's a place today where tourists and local alike tend to congregate. Security is therefore tight and you are frisked as you get up close to it. This was the place where the last British troops left India after independence in 1948. What a fitting link between Mumbai's colonial past and its independent future.
Save the spice, people just want cheap flight tickets
Air India has been losing a lot of money for some time now. Even merging with Indian Airlines, a fellow state owned carrier, has not been able to improve performance. Many analysts blame the rise of no frills airlines like Kingfisher, Spice Jet and Jet Lite. Advertising hoardings around the country for such organisations claim you can fly for little more than the cost of a train ticket (which is already extremely cheap).
But I know the real flaw of Air India is that its dishing out too many curries. No matter how short the flight, they seem to stick a spicy dish or two in front of you. There is no need for a curry, rice and chocolate pudding on a 45 minute from Mumbai to Goa, for example. And when I flew a few days earlier from Delhi to Goa I ended up getting two meals (they must has considered it two flights because of a touchdown in Mumbai en route). All totally unnecessary.
Delivering hot food on such short flights also creates hysterical scenes in the cabin. The air stewardesses have to almost throw the meals at passengers as they race down the plane with the trays. They then do another trip to pour a cup of coffee. Then they have to clear it all away again. And if there's a bit of turbulance in the middle of proceedings, they even need to check that everyone has fastened their seatbelts.
Even the ultra staid and traditional British Airways has done away with food on short flights to compete in price with the likes of easyjet. Perhaps Air India should do the same to save on costs. But you'd hope they know their customers. It maybe be that there would be more drama (than delivering the food) in the cabin from complaining passengers. Personally I'd just settle for poppodom!
But I know the real flaw of Air India is that its dishing out too many curries. No matter how short the flight, they seem to stick a spicy dish or two in front of you. There is no need for a curry, rice and chocolate pudding on a 45 minute from Mumbai to Goa, for example. And when I flew a few days earlier from Delhi to Goa I ended up getting two meals (they must has considered it two flights because of a touchdown in Mumbai en route). All totally unnecessary.
Delivering hot food on such short flights also creates hysterical scenes in the cabin. The air stewardesses have to almost throw the meals at passengers as they race down the plane with the trays. They then do another trip to pour a cup of coffee. Then they have to clear it all away again. And if there's a bit of turbulance in the middle of proceedings, they even need to check that everyone has fastened their seatbelts.
Even the ultra staid and traditional British Airways has done away with food on short flights to compete in price with the likes of easyjet. Perhaps Air India should do the same to save on costs. But you'd hope they know their customers. It maybe be that there would be more drama (than delivering the food) in the cabin from complaining passengers. Personally I'd just settle for poppodom!
This could almost be Blackpool
If it wasn't for the hot weather and blue sky, this could be a British seaside report like Blackpool. Europeans on package holidays hang out at beach shacks named 'Weather Spoons', 'Sam's Bar' and the like. They go straight for the full English breakfasts on the menu, washed down with a nice chilled beer. Nearby at endless rows of shops you can buy the usual seaside resort tat.
But before you start thinking I'm on the Spanish Costas, I will tell you I'm in Goa in India. Indians work in the bars and restaurants and there are plenty of Indian food options on the menus, but it's the 'Continental' options that everyone seems to be ordering. True, in Goa there are still some unspoiled beaches on the coast, but here on the stretch that features the resorts of Baga, Calangute and Candolim (which seem to merge into each other) it's far from quiet.
Despite all the British brashness, I'm quiet enjoying here, especially with the typical 'Goan' touches. For example, it's quiet amusing (from the relative safety of beachside shacks!) seeing small herds of cows gathering next to Europeans on the sun beds. You also have ringside seats for the various entertainment features that pop up in different spots on the sands – like trapeze artists walking the tightrope. In the evening many of the beach shack bars put on BBQs and firework displays.
Many Indians also come on holiday here (there's a particular area in the Baga, Calangute and Candolim stretch that's currently pretty much exclusively given over to domestic tourists – they've got some cheap deals given it's nearing the end of the season). But the majority of Indians that you see provide the services for the tourists. Many live in terrible conditions in very primitive 'camps', often right next to luxury tourist resorts. Finding a gap in the high fence, I can see one such abode – home to the locals in little more than shacks.
It just goes to show that not everyone around here has money to spend on luxuries like beer and pizzas. You have people watching Premiership football in loud pubs alongside Indians living in far more simple life, where pigs roam the muddy lanes.
The Brits and Germans dominate in these parts, but following the area's history would logically make you think it should be mostly Portuguese on holiday. For from the 1500s to 1961 Goa was administered by Lisbon. There is a brutal story to tell here, as the local population was murdered in in droves and Hindu heritage destroyed in the name of Christianity.
Save for the odd white-washed Catholic church on the coast and colonial fort, you need to travel inland to find the Portuguese influences. As you pass the villages you witness lovely European-style villas that look like they've been imported straight from the Algarve.
The best examples of Portuguese history can be found in what is now termed Old Goa, a World Heritage Site and the original colonial capital. Here visitors are greeted by an abundance of churches, including Asia's largest church, Se cathedral – at over 76m long and 55m wide. Just across the road there's the equally grand Basilica of Bom Jesus which contains the tomb and mortal remains of St Francis Xavier, the so-called Apostle of the Indies.
Christianity was central to the colonisation of Goa by Portugal. Afonso de Aluquque who established early forts (he first attacked Goa in 1510) had a real hatred for Muslims. After some early battles, as the second Viceroy he ordered for Muslims to be killed. Later on the Portuguese became even less tolerant – Hindu temples were destroyed, only the baptised could retain land and heretics were burned at the stake.
Of course, the Portuguese had also come for Goa's spices – they had wanted to find a sea route to compete with the Arab's overland monopoly in spices for some time. It was profits from the spice levies that financed the building boom in Old Goa (and also the many schools and hospitals that were built by missionaries).
Today, despite being a major tourist draw there is little to see of Old Goa apart from the churches and a grand archway called the Viceroy's arch – erected by Vasco de Gama's grandson in 1597. One inscription shows a European women wielding a sword at an Indian, showing who was boss at the time. But apart from these imposing structures you just have to imagine the grand houses that are where grassy fields now stand. The population was wiped out by Cholera epidemics from the 1600s and the wealthy moved to the current capital of Goa, Panjim (it officially became the capital in 1845, although many moved much earlier than that.)
European rivals like Britain and the Dutch became more powerful from the end of the 1500s, but Portugal held onto to Goa (although it did require concessions like giving the British free access to the ports). Portugal crushed uprisings calling for independence. But then in 1961 India sent the military in and captured Goa.
Soon the tourist trade in Goa was born, first with the hippies in the 1960s (tourist attractions in their own right, considered many) and later travelers searching for a little more luxury. It's the Brits and other Europeans that holiday here today – but as the east becomes more powerful at the expense of the west, who knows who the holidaymakers of tomorrow will be?
But before you start thinking I'm on the Spanish Costas, I will tell you I'm in Goa in India. Indians work in the bars and restaurants and there are plenty of Indian food options on the menus, but it's the 'Continental' options that everyone seems to be ordering. True, in Goa there are still some unspoiled beaches on the coast, but here on the stretch that features the resorts of Baga, Calangute and Candolim (which seem to merge into each other) it's far from quiet.
Despite all the British brashness, I'm quiet enjoying here, especially with the typical 'Goan' touches. For example, it's quiet amusing (from the relative safety of beachside shacks!) seeing small herds of cows gathering next to Europeans on the sun beds. You also have ringside seats for the various entertainment features that pop up in different spots on the sands – like trapeze artists walking the tightrope. In the evening many of the beach shack bars put on BBQs and firework displays.
Many Indians also come on holiday here (there's a particular area in the Baga, Calangute and Candolim stretch that's currently pretty much exclusively given over to domestic tourists – they've got some cheap deals given it's nearing the end of the season). But the majority of Indians that you see provide the services for the tourists. Many live in terrible conditions in very primitive 'camps', often right next to luxury tourist resorts. Finding a gap in the high fence, I can see one such abode – home to the locals in little more than shacks.
It just goes to show that not everyone around here has money to spend on luxuries like beer and pizzas. You have people watching Premiership football in loud pubs alongside Indians living in far more simple life, where pigs roam the muddy lanes.
The Brits and Germans dominate in these parts, but following the area's history would logically make you think it should be mostly Portuguese on holiday. For from the 1500s to 1961 Goa was administered by Lisbon. There is a brutal story to tell here, as the local population was murdered in in droves and Hindu heritage destroyed in the name of Christianity.
Save for the odd white-washed Catholic church on the coast and colonial fort, you need to travel inland to find the Portuguese influences. As you pass the villages you witness lovely European-style villas that look like they've been imported straight from the Algarve.
The best examples of Portuguese history can be found in what is now termed Old Goa, a World Heritage Site and the original colonial capital. Here visitors are greeted by an abundance of churches, including Asia's largest church, Se cathedral – at over 76m long and 55m wide. Just across the road there's the equally grand Basilica of Bom Jesus which contains the tomb and mortal remains of St Francis Xavier, the so-called Apostle of the Indies.
Christianity was central to the colonisation of Goa by Portugal. Afonso de Aluquque who established early forts (he first attacked Goa in 1510) had a real hatred for Muslims. After some early battles, as the second Viceroy he ordered for Muslims to be killed. Later on the Portuguese became even less tolerant – Hindu temples were destroyed, only the baptised could retain land and heretics were burned at the stake.
Of course, the Portuguese had also come for Goa's spices – they had wanted to find a sea route to compete with the Arab's overland monopoly in spices for some time. It was profits from the spice levies that financed the building boom in Old Goa (and also the many schools and hospitals that were built by missionaries).
Today, despite being a major tourist draw there is little to see of Old Goa apart from the churches and a grand archway called the Viceroy's arch – erected by Vasco de Gama's grandson in 1597. One inscription shows a European women wielding a sword at an Indian, showing who was boss at the time. But apart from these imposing structures you just have to imagine the grand houses that are where grassy fields now stand. The population was wiped out by Cholera epidemics from the 1600s and the wealthy moved to the current capital of Goa, Panjim (it officially became the capital in 1845, although many moved much earlier than that.)
European rivals like Britain and the Dutch became more powerful from the end of the 1500s, but Portugal held onto to Goa (although it did require concessions like giving the British free access to the ports). Portugal crushed uprisings calling for independence. But then in 1961 India sent the military in and captured Goa.
Soon the tourist trade in Goa was born, first with the hippies in the 1960s (tourist attractions in their own right, considered many) and later travelers searching for a little more luxury. It's the Brits and other Europeans that holiday here today – but as the east becomes more powerful at the expense of the west, who knows who the holidaymakers of tomorrow will be?
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