Thursday, May 26, 2011

A Portrait of India- part 10 Mumbai

India- the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly in contrasts so extreme it blows your mind.  nowhere was this more evident than Mumbai, our last city on the tour.  Mumbai was hard for me, very, very hard.  from the moment we got off the plane i wanted to leave. i'm a country girl anyway and this city is more than just a city.  there are miles and miles of slums and masses of humanity literally piled on top of each other in the filthy, stinking streets.  i really didn't feel like i could last 2 days here and considered holing up in the hotel, rather than taking the excursion the 2nd day out to Elephant Island. at dinner the first night i asked our young waiter if he'd ever been out to the island and explained i was trying to decide whether to go or not.  his eyes lit up and said "i've never been there but i've heard about it from friends and hope to go some day.  if you don't go i will go in your place.  you MUST go".  okay, that made up my mind, especially since the hotel we were staying at which is one of the top rated in the world gave me the heebie jeebies for reasons i found out later that my intuition was picking up some very intense evil forces from the recent past which i can not reveal.
i was so glad i took the boat ride out to the island with it's cave temple statues.  the spritual high was so intense and helped me recover my mind and i got it about the extreme contrast of life in India.  the unimaginable conditions of life over there are so overwhelmingly harsh that the only way they can mentally survive is to develop an unwavering faith and belief in spirit.  i learned that they are able to detach from all the pain and suffering surrounding them by their belief in karma and people's states are karmic and who are we to judge.  the day guide for elephant island told me of horrors- dowry murders still taking place all the time,  the trains so crowded several people get killed by them everyday in Mumbai,  the list goes on.  yet, when we got out to Elephant Island and trekked up the steep stairs amidst vendors and incense and music and monkeys and went into the ancient cave temple with 20 foot high sculptures and i went into the shrine and aumed with the natives...... well, i walked out of there a different person.  and the amazing part of it is how quickly i went from one extreme to the other.  but the high of that experience gave me the strength to return back to the harsh city and carry on.  so, in Mumbai i experienced the epitome of India and felt the important role that spirituality plays in the lives of the people- it is their survival.







this is the laundry ghat.  people rent these spaces to live and do laundry for their living.











here we are in the hotel- another world completely




this is our suite





i will show photos of amazing Elephant island in next post~

1 comment:

Robur said...

Wow! I'm argentine and my english is very bad... Are you seeking the truth? With this post only I'm seeing your truth: You're an accommodate women with your life solved and the truth that you're looking for is that can be paid for your money! I think that you're an hypocrite! You go to India and was shocked by poverty??? Your life is so boring???