An Indian Week

Please stop honking. Why are you honking?

I ended up going to India last week for a conference in Pune on the Sanitation Economy (aka nerdy toilet folks talking about how to make toilets more profitable). I had decided to pad my trip to Pune with a day at both ends with a stay in Mumbai since I had never been before and had heard so much about it (and since that's where I'd land).

I landed in Mumbai on Saturday and was reminded that India is hot. Very hot. I foolishly thought that Mumbai was going to be balmy and spring-like during the winter months. I was wrong. Mumbai was hot and humid like any other time I've been to India. I felt like it was jarring transitioning from the dry 78F/26C sunny days in Nairobi to the 97F/36C and humid heat of Mumbai.

Also, the air quality was pretty awful; while Nairobi at the time had an AQI of 9 (which is pretty good), Mumbai's was at 170 (which is really bad). And don't even get me started on the noise pollution in India (though this article is about Delhi) - it's honking all of the time, all day, every day, no matter where you are, and music is played in arbitrary places everywhere. It can give you a pretty big headache if you're stuck in the constant traffic on every street.

I was staying in the shopping street called Lamington Road and walked around Southern Mumbai for my day in the city. I walked to the beach area and strolled about 10 minutes before I relented and got a cab to drive me to India Gate...but in those few minutes of walking I saw run-down buildings  with humidity taking tolls on their external structures and dirty corners with questionable smells that I have come to associate with most major cities in the country.

I took a 1.5-hour boat ride to the Elephanta Cave, which is a UNESCO Heritage Site on an island off of Mumbai. While on the boat, I was dismayed watching the other riders; many of the people on the boat were eating bagged snacks and were (1) throwing pieces of food into the water to the seagulls then (2) discarding the bags and wrappers right into the water like it was a giant rubbish bin. I think if we're going to talk about saving our oceans and changing behaviors to manage climate change, we have a long way to go yet.

On the island, I hired a young tour guide to show me around the famous caves for an hour under the bleaching sun. We walked in the sweltering heat and climbed slowly up the 100+ steps to get to the caves at the top of the hill. It was pretty great once we got up there - there are several scenes of giant Lord Shiva's life carved into the cave walls, all intricately detailed. My guide explained that the cave carvings were around 1500 years old. Unfortunately, the Portuguese once stationed on the island 500 years ago and took to shooting at the carvings for target practice. The good news is that they're still amazing to see, even with a few bullet marks in Shiva's thighs.

After about four hours of touring, I gave up on braving the heat and sought refuge in a beautiful coffee shop nearby with WiFi and worked for a few hours before grabbing some Persian food en route to the hotel for bed.

The next day a colleague and I shared a car for the 4-hour drive to Pune. I slept for this drive, so there's nothing for me to share.

Pune is different than Mumbai. For one, it's much cooler - about 10F/6C degrees less than Mumbai. Pune is also much cleaner and better planned than Mumbai, as Pune has a strong campaign to clean the city with the government's Swachh Bharat mission and use smart technology to keep the city running. They have clean public toilets on the sides of the street, as well!

Someone on my trip explained to me that much of Pune's residents are the wealthier people from Mumbai who tire of the city and want to move somewhere cleaner/nicer than Mumbai. They may still do their business in Mumbai, but they live and breathe in Pune. Honestly? I can't blame them.

I didn't see too much of Pune since I was at a conference most of the time, but I liked what I saw.

The conference was also lovely and went well. I was busy with networking and talking about new projects with sector partners. We also visited the Pune Smart City Control Center, which was neat.

A few conference attendees and I shared a ride back to Mumbai afterward. The hotel one of my riding partners stayed at managed to lose her bag for three hours. After the chaos, they sent us to Mumbai in one of their cars and with bags of food - all complimentary.

The next day before I went to the airport, I tried out a pleasant coworking space near the terminal for a few hours. I left in a rickshaw to get to the airport, meaningless waiting in the airport for 3.5 hours for my flight.

And now I'm back in Nairobi.

This trip helped me realize what I have loved about India in the past, and it's not been the cities. I love the natural beauty in much of India, and the rural areas are peaceful. The cities in India, though? I could do without them right now. Pune is better than many I've been to, but I'm still not that wild about urban India if I'm honest.