What is going on with the Spaander family?: 2014

We have seen many places in India already, but I still have a few on my list that I would love to visit. Adriaan and the boys have told me they have seen enough forts and temples and don't want to come along anymore. Luckily there are enough people around who do want to travel, so this Thursday and Friday I was in Mumbai with 3 other Dutch ladies from Bangalore.

We went for a tour through Dharavi straight from the airport. Dharavi is the largest slum in India. The first part that we saw was the industrial area. People work 10 hours a day recycling plastic, glass or aluminum, cleaning olive oil drum or drums that contained paint or glue. There are also a lot of workshops where they make jeans, school uniforms and other clothes. Most workshop are dark and poorly ventilated. The men do not only work there, but also live at the workshops.
It was very impressive to see, hear and smell.

We then crossed the road to walk through the residential part of Dharavi. The people that live there have jobs in the city. We came though some very narrow alleys and could sometimes sneak a peek into the 'houses'.
Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photographs inside the slum, but I took these photos of the outside of the slum from the bus.

The workshops

Living quarters

Plastic garbage stacked on the roof, waiting to be recycled

Waste water is being dumped into the waterway

Next we stopped to have a look at a dhobi ghat, a washer men's village. I have visited a big one in Bangalore too and am always amazed at how white and bright their wash is drying in the sun.

After this we went to visit the house where Gandhi used to stay when he was in Mumbai.

Gandhi's room

A letter he wrote to Hitler

The house is now a museum with a collection of books from and about Gandhi, a lot of photographs and an elaborate display about his live made with dolls.
It was interesting to see, but by this time we were all VERY tired and in need of some food, so we decided to cut the tour short and go for lunch.
I had been up since 3:30 am and we finally sat down for a meal about 11 hours later...

After lunch we went to our hotel, the famous Taj Mahal hotel. Unfortunately our rooms did not have the grandeur you would expect, but they were nice enough an had a great view.

We went out for a coffee and a stroll around the neighbourhood and were back in the hotel for a tour of the building. The hotel has been build in 1903 by Mr. Tata, as a revenge for the fact that he was not allowed to enter the hotels owned by the British. In November 2008 there was a terrorist attack and security has been stepped up all over India since then.

On Friday we went to Victoria station (also featured in Slum Dog Millionaire) to see the hustle and bustle of the morning rush hour.

The main entrance

Busy!

After Victoria station we drove around to see some more of Mumbai, before we went to the next station to see the Dabbawallahs at work.

Dabbawallahs at Churchgate station

The Dabbawallahs/tiffin carriers deliver home cooked meals from the outskirts of Mumbai to the offices for lunch. Most Dabbawallahs are illiterate, but somehow these men have found a system that works so well that only 1 in six million deliveries goes wrong.
The meals are picked up from the houses and are sent to Mumbai on the trains. At Churchgate station the tiffins get sorted and are delivered to the office buildings.

A big crate with tiffins just unloaded from the train. The sign in the back is a coincidence, but the Dabbawallahs have become a tourist attraction, specially after the movie 'Lunchbox'.

and this is what happens at a tourist spot

Sorting out the tiffins

What goes where?

The codes on the tiffins

The system of the codes

Decorations on a delivery bike

Hooks to hang the tiffins from

I guess his mother never told him not to cycle with something dangling from the handlebars

Deliveries go by bike or by hand cart

We had two more things on our list and the first one was to have a drink at Leopold's. Leopold's is a bar that has been around since 1871 and it features in the book Shantaram. It doesn't look like much, but it is a very popular place and it is always full. We managed to get a table and once you sit there is not much room to move around.

This is it!

Proost!

And then there was only one last thing to do: high tea at the Taj Mahal hotel!

So we started at the slum and we ended with high tea. It was a wonderful trip!!!

This Diwali holiday we've spent 6 days on a beautiful island in the Maldives. Not a bad place to escape the noise of all the fire works ;-) .

We stayed at the Sheraton Full Moon, just a 15 minute boat ride from Male. The boys were a bit scared I had booked us into a nudist camp, because of the name, but it turned out that everybody kept (at least some of) their clothes on.

The weather forecast was not very good, but we had nice sunny days to start with, a few showers on the fourth day and a full day of rain on the fifth, but with all the water sports it is no problem getting wet from the rain too.

The island is beautiful and very clean, the staff was lovely, our rooms very comfortable and the food was great.

Lovely place!

Local wildlife

Dolphin tour (A's hat blew over board and the captain went back to pick it up!)

The men went diving

Adriaan and Simon went fishing and caught our evening meal!

Unfortunately the reef around our island was not very nice, so we went on a snorkeling trip to a nearby island (no photos). We saw beautiful corals, lots of different fish and a turtle.

It was a wonderful and very relaxed holiday!