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July 15, 2007
Mumbai on the water
In Mumbai/ Bombay today, with the two other company people (two of us are permanently in India, the third runs the Innosight Asia and divides his time between India, Singapore, And the United States).
Expedia apparently had some ridiculous offer on a hotel on Mumbai's west side, so we are at a Hilton on Marine Drive, overlooking the water. This is pretty much the central park west of Mumbai. I spent part of the afternoon sitting out on the granite balustrade along the ocean, ten feet above the waterline maybe. The city had placed some cement water breaks between the waterline and the promenade and the breaks looked just like oversized cement jacks. At night, giants come down with little bouncy balls and scoop up the jacks out of the water. I'm sure of it. It was great to sit down over the water and listen to music and take a break.
Anyway, I love this city. It reminds me of New York. I went to dinner at Indigo, a restaurant in Bombay's equivalent of the village.
Curiously, I got to stay inside Delhi this week as well, at a little, shabby chic hotel in Karol Bagh, which made it easier to get to the Vietnam embassy. I spent the evening and then dawn wandering around in the city. This is very unusual since most of my travel is airport-to-hotel business style travel which really isn't interesting at all.
So, a lucky week. I fly back to Trivandarum on Wednesday morning and then I might take the scooter up to Ponmudi and wander around the tea plantations this coming weekend.
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Posted by jb at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)
July 01, 2007
Shnakes
Saw my first snake today, about 3.5 feet long, moving slowly along the cement trellis in the upper berm of the backyard. It had the gold/brown coloring that matched some cobra photographs I'd found but it was too far away to identify properly and I did not spot, at distance, any ridges along the neck that might indicate a hood so it was probably not a cobra.
But let's say it was a cobra. They are common enough here. Kerala is home to all four of the "big four" venomous snakes: the cobra, russel's viper, the krait and the hump-nosed pit viper. If I were a hump nosed pit viper I'd bite people just because of my name. I saw a mongoose walking through the side yard five days ago so it's as if a personal Rikki Tikki Tavi cycle has been completed.
So I realize that this was probably not a cobra but I've started looking in the corners of the rooms anyway. Cobras, like many other snakes, feed on lizards and my house is a bit lizard ridden. I spot at least one a day on my walls, and I like them because they eat the insects which I continually vote offstage in favor of the lizards. I'm not going to vote for snakes though. I'll stay with Lizards... little moving Geico commercials hanging to the ceiling above the churning fan blades... I wonder what they are thinking. Probably "no #&$^ cobra is going to get me up here, this is my own personal fiftieth floor on the skyscraper, one of them tries and I'll go all "Die Hard with a Vengeance" on it" Actually, those are my thoughts. The lizards are thinking "Insects, insects, insects, insects."
Anyway, I check the house (no window screens, only grates, and holes cut through the wall right at the ceiling, along with what I am sure is a miniature periscope so something poisonous can check out the room and wait until I am sleeping before climbing through the hole and dropping down on me) and then I notice that, while the neighbors had hired someone to cut back the brush in the yard, there is still all sorts of brush along the road leading from the house and then the grass along the roadside had not been cut and I think to myself that I will just keep an eye out for snakes when I am walking.
So I go to the store about 1/2 mile from the house and as I am walking back, a man about 10 feet in front of me suddenly shifts to the left away from the grass and begins saying "snake..snake..snake" I of course don't see anything.
"Where?"
"Back there.. you can see the mockingbird going after it"
I look back, and fifteen feet behind me (we were both still walking) a bird is pouncing on the grass and fighting with something that is thrashing around. I still can't make out the snake.
So much for spotting these things.
Posted by jb at 10:42 AM | Comments (3)