Today we are touring with Michaela and Tony and their family: grown sons, Tom, Mark & Joe; Mom, sister Catherine and Edward, a close family friend (who they met on a cruise a few years ago, and he’s been traveling with them every since). We meet them all in the Martini bar, and everyone seems lovely. We are cautiously optimistic about this tour group because in Michaela’s explanation of the tour, she has asked the tour guide to take us to the places they go on their street food tour, not any tourist restaurants. Sounds like our kind of crowd!
We join the queue to get off the ship – and who comes down the steps as we are all beginning to exit? But our “bird” lady! She sees Ed, and promptly turns around. She was going to do it again, cut in front of hundreds of people, but apparently Ed made an impression. Too funny!
We find the guide without much angst and hop into a lovely van – great seats, good a/c – and plenty of room for all of us. Our first stop is to see the Dabbawallah near the train station. Dabbawallah is a catering service that provides lunches to people all over Mumbai. Dabba means lunchbox and wallah means the guy carrying it. The service started initially because the British didn’t like street food, but there weren’t many other food options for them for lunch. So, an enterprising soul started a lunchbox service for the Brits in the offices around town and it just sort of grew. Today, 6000 people serve 200,000 lunches a day. The lunchboxes are carried on their heads, 20 at a time. It only costs 2500 rupees per month, which about $39 USD. It’s fascinating and normally there would be thousands of lunch boxes lined up at this time of the day. But sadly, this is a holiday week (the week before Easter) and most of the Dabbawallah are off this week. But, we still go by the area and at least get a glimpse of how the system works.
Not as impressive as if it were a normal week, but still pretty darn cool. The next stop is Victoria Station, the first railway station built in all of Asia. It’s huge and ornate and gorgeous. There used to be a statue of the Virgin Mary? Queen Victoria? on the front of the station, but someone (archaeological society maybe?) removed it for preservation? You can see my facts are a little hazy – what can I say? I was too busy looking around, trying to take everything in, rather than listening to our poor guide.
The best part about this stop is that we are standing virtually in the street at a hugely busy corner and can watch the crazy traffic go past - up close and personal. We thought we’d seen craziness before – wow – the past three days have nothing on this.
We next hop over to the Crawford market, originally named after the first Municipal Commissioner of the city, but now officially known as the Mahatma Joltirao Phule market for a political dignitary.
Everyone still calls it the Crawford market though. We don’t care what the name is, we just want to wander around the fruit and vegetable stalls. It’s bustling in here, everywhere you look there are people and beautiful fruits – the mango has just come into season and they are everywhere – along with pineapples and watermelons.
In the center of the market there is a huge water fountain/statue dedicated to the creator of the market, designed by Lockwood Kipling, father of Rudyard Kipling, who also designed most of the friezes along the outside facade.
Our guide winds us through the lanes and alleyways, pointing out different things here and there. A guy passes us on a bike carrying chickens in plastic bags, three guys are building crates to carry produce, it’s crazy fun.
We finally end up at a spice counter where we all buy way more curry than you would think possible. We end up with 3 bags of mix – but Michaela and crew end up with over $100 USD worth – they have this monstrous bag. These guys love their Indian food – and the spicier the better (which we will see shortly when it is time for lunch).
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