Mumbai Wandering - India 2

As I continued through Mumbai, I came directly to a cricket stadium. There was a team practicing there. And then I came to another field with a cricket team practicing. A short walk later, I saw another cricket team practicing. Around the corner from that was a 4th cricket team practicing. I get the feeling that Indians enjoy cricket.

The last cricket team was practicing at the edge of a construction site. Like most of Asia, the construction site was braced through many wooden poles. What was unusual about this urban construction site was the lack of both netting and pigeons. The poles were completely bare of birds.

All the pigeons covered one small fenced in area nearby. There was barely enough space between the birds to see what the birds were walking on. This little space was completely filled with birdseed, perhaps a couple inches thick. While this feeder might not be for construction, it prevented the birds from resting there.

In addition to Cricket teams, Mumbai has a beach. It is a city beach in a bay, so one would expect that only the poor would go in the dirty water. Yet again Bombay had a surprise: there were Kite Surfers renting boards for $120/hour. In addition, a few wave runners were zipping around. On the other end of the beach, a couple families, who apparently lived on the beach, were cooking dinner and fixing wooden boats. At the end of the beach the edge of the roadway was reinforced with concrete polyhedrons reminiscent of water mines.

For my evening entertainment, I decided to make a pilgrimage. Haji Ali's tomb is across a causeway which is covered in water at high tide. Yet during low tide, when I crossed, it was covered in both merchants and beggers. While I later saw a beggar drag himself, it appeared as though many were too malformed in arms and legs to move. Most had at least one appendage withered useless. I am told that many religious structures have such beggers outside.

The polished marble entrance to the tomb was slimy, although not from kissing, but still slippery under the feet. While, some people were there simply to watch the beautiful sunset from the western edge of the city, the two Rajasthani salesmen and I were there to look at the tomb. The unremarkable marble dome outside was covered in discoball mirror pieces on the inside. The tomb was brightly lit and draped in prayer cloths. Not bad for an Islamic sage.

On my way back from the tomb I had my first, "I lived in America, so give me some money interaction." John was more than happy to tell me about his time as a cab driver before asking me for 2x what I had paid for dinner. I rebuffed him, but it has encouraged me to tell people I am British (if they look harmless) or German (if I don't want to talk/can't understand them). So far no similar person has asked for money.

Later that evening I purchased some light reading: the Mahabharata (1700pg Indian epic)