Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Mumbai, India - Travel with Ajay
In this episode, Ajay Row takes us on an enlightening tour of Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay. With his extensive experience navigating the city's notorious traffic and bustling streets, Ajay offers a unique perspective on the everyday chaos and charm of Mumbai. His stories, drawn from living in the US, UK, France, Singapore, and various Indian cities, add a rich, global context to our understanding of this vibrant metropolis.
We dive into Bombay's unique geography, including its sailing culture and impressive tidal phenomena. From the monsoon's dramatic impact to the stunning high-rise views, Ajay provides a captivating look at Bombay’s past and present, painting a vivid picture of its ongoing transformation.
Our journey doesn't end there. We traverse the diverse regions of India, offering travel tips and cultural insights for those eager to explore beyond the beaten path. We also touch on India’s rich religious diversity and the mouth-watering delights of South Indian cuisine, featuring must-try dishes in South Bombay. This episode is packed with invaluable insights for travelers and culture enthusiasts ready to discover India’s endless possibilities.
Map of Mumbai
The Man Who Inspired Gandhi
by G. Pandrang Row Praemi M. Row
Life of privilege explained in a $100 race
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Hosts
Carol Springer: https://www.instagram.com/carol.work.life
Kristen: https://www.instagram.com/team_wake/
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Hi, welcome to our podcast when Next Travel with Kristen and Carol.
Speaker 2:I am Kristen and I am Carol, and we're two long-term friends with a passion for travel and adventure. Each episode, we interview people around the globe to help us decide where to go next. So today we have AJ Rowe calling in from India. He is an old friend of mine and has spent a lot of time in the US. And where are you now, aj?
Speaker 3:I'm in Bombay.
Speaker 2:So Bombay, is it Mumbai now, or?
Speaker 3:No Mumbai, yeah, no Mumbai. Sorry, I should have been politically correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Bombay is the old name I remember that's how I first heard of Mumbai, back when I first heard about it.
Speaker 1:I just knew this is new to me because I, when I I was goog, I always look up where we're talking and I put in Bombay and it's Mumbai, and then I kept trying to correct it. I know why it wasn't working.
Speaker 3:We have a brochure for confusing the rest of the world by renaming our cities.
Speaker 1:There you go. How long ago? What was the reason and how long ago did that happen?
Speaker 3:20 years ago and I think it's. Every time the politician feels the need for a few new votes, he renames the city or she renames the city. Yeah, let's not be sexist about it. Both stripes of politicians do that kind of thing. It's confusing for everybody else and very confusing for people who live in the city.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:And since a lot of the cities were named, bombay is not named by the British, it was named by the Portuguese. It means beautiful bay, but you know the Bombay and the British called it Bombay and that's what it was, until you know. We decided no, no, no, no, that's not what it was, it was something else before the city existed. And we decided no, no, no, no, that's not what it was, it was something else before the city existed. And we decided to rename it Mumbai, which caters to a class of people, whose tiny, minuscule little bunch of bishop folks who lived on the island, the seven islands that made up Bombay, before they were joined together and they had a deity called Momba Devi, and so they said she is the original. You know the reason for the name it's the name for Bombay it's all very confusing, okay, okay, very good, all right and I'm sure there's somebody else there before that and you know, I guess we'll go back far enough in time.
Speaker 3:We'll find those people and rename it yet again okay, and how many people live in mumbai? Not sure, but I think about 18 million or 20 million or something like that enormous city. Let me put it in perspective. Carol yep, you start driving from the I'm way at the southern tip of Bombay, right down here. You start driving, you drive for five hours and you're still in the city.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, it's like LA times five yeah.
Speaker 3:Wow, we got. Yeah, like LA times five without the freeways. Oh without the freeways and slightly more traffic. So with that as well, we mustn't forget that. Okay, and you're still like? Citing the cows and the mopeds and the rickshaws, or are those just on the smaller streets I think the cows, and yeah, there are some streets which would have them, but by and large now you're just fighting very bad driving.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:In India. You know we're not great believers and curtsy, and we're all brought up in a scarcity economy, so we believe that. You know we've got to grab every last square inch of space on the road. Okay, and uh, scared that you get lonely if I don't come and snuggle my car right up next to you, right, I mean if you're that much away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, my recall is also like passing. You're on a two-lane road, cars go in one in each direction and they pass. They go in the other lane and then they just cut over right before they're late to go head on. Are accidents pretty common?
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I think most accidents areone country in the world. I don't know this for a fact, but I guess. But because we don't drive very fast, because it's part of many of us and the growth of logs, we don't really get up much speed. I think we probably have a very small percentage of fatalities in the accidents. I think we're okay. We bump against each other. I don't think there's a car in Bombay which hasn't got bump bugs all over it.
Speaker 2:Oh, so it's more just like bumper cars all the time Not dangerous, not physically dangerous.
Speaker 3:Boom, boom boom.
Speaker 1:They need to have bumpers around the cars so they don't get bumped, or some sort of different bumper system around the whole car so they don't get bumped, or some sort of different, uh, bumper system around around the whole car so they don't get all. Or you just kind?
Speaker 3:of think about that. Yeah, maybe rubber all around or something like that. Yeah, that's a bad idea okay and so money in that yeah, right, okay.
Speaker 2:And then how much time have you spent in in the us?
Speaker 3:I feel like quite a bit so about four or five years all told, and I lived in the us as opposed to bit Four or five years all told. I lived in the US as opposed to merely visiting About five years. I think you know Something like that Is that back when we worked together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you were living there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's where we used to work together. Then, for a couple of years after that, you got married and disappeared to Denver.
Speaker 2:No, boulder, boulder right, that's where you were to Denver, no Boulder.
Speaker 3:That's where you were, and then I moved to Manhattan. At that time, I've lived in London for a couple of years. I lived in Paris for five years, I stayed very briefly in Singapore and I spent a lot of time in cities all over India. So I lived in San Francisco, new York, london, paris, bombay, delhi, calcutta, madras, which is now Chennai, bangalore, which is now Bengaluru.
Speaker 1:And a little bit in Singapore.
Speaker 2:Okay. And so what's your favorite place to live in the world? You've been so global Bombay, bombay, okay, so that you know an American would go oh, favorite place. You don't hear that very much. Your favorite place to live in India. Of course you have family there and friends, but like outside of that, those kind of those connections, what do you love about Bombay?
Speaker 3:There's much to love about Bombay. It's sort of like New York, in some ways London. You know these great cities. They're very different from the countries they're in, aren't they? They have their history, they have their culture. They've got so many things going on. Nobody ever sleeps in these cities, right, Right, you know, they're 24-7. And Bombay is one of those cities which is on the edge all the time, right, I mean, it's really. You know, they call it maximum city. And unless you've lived here, unless you, I mean, you've visited, of course, Carol, and you know what it's like, right, and you know, there's noise all the time. There's something going on all the time. It's unrelenting. Is Bollywood headquartered there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, Bollywood, which is now no longer the biggest cinema industry in India is out of Bombay, so you're forever seeing actors and actresses and all kinds of people. I mean, bombay is pretty large as you get it, both the scale of it and the number of people. I mean Bombay is, you know, it's pretty large as you get it and the both the scale of it and the number of people in it, but also it's very culturally list and it's got quite a quite a history. So in addition to the rich culture, right, it's got quite a history in many, many strands, if you would. You know, in business, in industry, there are all kinds of things about bombay.
Speaker 2:It's a fascinating city okay, and how old is it? Like I mean because america, I would say new york is 230 years old. Give or take.
Speaker 3:It's not doing the math, but but uh, I'll put things in perspective by indian standards, right, because most of our cities are thousands of years old, right?
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so this one is relatively recent.
Speaker 3:It's about 400 years old, okay. But let me put things in perspective, carol. We've got a building here in Bombay and the building has had people sitting in the offices in that building since before America existed, since before Australia was discovered, as it were, right, so it's not very old by Indian standards, but it's pretty darn old by anybody else's right. So the building's called Great Western and, uh, captain Cook, you know, the uh, yeah, captain James Cook, the guy who circumnavigated Australia, the first, uh, brit to do so, actually had an office there, and that office subsequently, about 200, 300 years later, became a friend's office, and so I've actually sat at the desk, oh wow, which is where the desk that Captain Cook would have been, and overlooking the ocean. So it's, yeah, it's got to go.
Speaker 2:Oh, I just think of Johnny Depp. I don't know if he's the one.
Speaker 3:Sorry, you just think of Johnny Depp.
Speaker 2:I don't know if he's Sorry, you just think of Johnny Depp Depp, he's a famous actor, johnny.
Speaker 3:Depp, yeah, yeah, yeah, the Pirates of the Caribbean, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all playing on Memorial Day. I guess there's five of them or something. My daughter was watching some of them and they just played all day long. So it's kind of like New.
Speaker 2:York that it's kind of like new york, that it's known for probably great food. And how about? Like what is it? A melting pot. Like new york is so amazing because it's such a melting pot. You know different cultures. Are there a lot of cultures that end up settling in india?
Speaker 3:not as much so as new york, but it's. It's got its own fair share, yeah and there must be. I don't know. I've got friends from almost every part of the world here it's. It's not, you know, like new york. You've got an ethiopian restaurant, you've got a tibetan food restaurant, so you don't have that kind of variety over here, but you do have a lot of indian variety oh, okay, so you know communities and gardens, so the different parts of bombay which have different cultures.
Speaker 3:so there's a community called the millions and there are different parts of Bombay which have different cultures. So there's a community called the Tamilians and there's a part of Bombay which is very Tamilian in nature and the lingua franca there would be Tamil, which is the you know. There's another part of Bombay which is Gujarati Jain in nature, there's another part, et cetera, it goes on, and then you've got these enormous swaths of Bombay which are just completely mixed up. So you know, neighbors would be different religions, different cultures, different tongues, different eating habits, different. You know everything.
Speaker 3:And we all managed to get on. Of course we get along very well indeed because we hardly know our neighbors. It's a grand Bombay thing, like a grand New York thing, to not know the person next door to you, but it's a fine old tradition.
Speaker 1:Okay that you do get to know each other, that you do know each other or that you don't.
Speaker 3:No, no, you don't you don't. Okay, nobody's got the time to get to know anyone. The reason why Bombay is so safe. It's a very safe city. It is so safe. Right, it's a very safe city, it is.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's going to be one of my questions, I think one of the reasons why it's so safe.
Speaker 3:Well, you know my wife, you remember Nita Darrell. Yeah, she used to be the head of a school and before that, one of the courses she'd teach is Spanish, and so she had a relationship with a school in Spain and all, all Spanish kids would come into India and, uh, you know they did. Kids would go to Spain and they'd have this cultural program a couple of times every year. And when the Spanish kids came here, uh, you know, they stroll around the um slums, around Bombay and it's completely safe, right, they just walk in and and they find it surreal, they'd say, look, you know we'd get killed if we walked into an area like this in our home countries, because you know the people with guns and knives and you know just be completely offended. And here are people welcoming them in to their homes and you know it's abject poverty.
Speaker 3:It's not that these are well-off people, I mean it's really, it's completely safe safe, I've got a theory which is everybody's too busy making money to rip you off or to murder you. Right, there's far more money to be made on the next deal than you know hitting you on the head okay, but thievery is not an easy way to make money for some people probably. There's so much stuff going on. There are many better ways to make money, but that said, we do have a pretty. Have you heard of a guy called Shantaran?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:Shantaran. He's an Shantaran. He's an Australian criminal who escaped to Bombay and he used to live in a slum just down the road from where I live, maybe a couple of kilometers down the road, and he live maybe a couple of kilometers down the road and he wrote a book about his time here. Absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's worth reading if you haven't.
Speaker 3:Okay, and how do you spell Shantaran S-H-A-N-T-A-R-A-N?
Speaker 2:Okay, I was close.
Speaker 3:R-O-N-R-A-N. His real name is Gregory Gregory. Gregory Gregory, what Greg? I know him as Greg so he's the free surnames so he's a free man in India. He was a criminal in Australia married to a princess, so in India or Australia, india, I'm assuming right no, no, no, neither he's married to a princess. Gregory. Gregory David Roberts. Yeah, that's right. Three last names. Gregory David Roberts, he's married to an Italian princess, or an Austrian princess, or something like that. Wow.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a turnaround story, huh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it really is. It's a fascinating story, oh, so I want to read his book.
Speaker 2:I'm actually reading this book on Wallace Waddles. It's about the science of getting rich. It's very fascinating. It's like there is a science to it and I'm like I don't know.
Speaker 3:I wonder if you've read that book.
Speaker 2:I haven't, I should.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you about it.
Speaker 2:It's pretty amazing. That's a whole other topic. You just do yeah. So what do you do for fun?
Speaker 1:What do you do for fun? What a beautiful day it looks like in India.
Speaker 3:Sale, sale. The nice thing about Bombay is that it's like a little peninsula. It's like a little India stuck onto the big India right, and so we've got water on three sides of us. It's like little India, you know, stuck on to the big India right, and so we got water on three sides of us, and so we got a lot of good sailing over here.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so.
Speaker 3:I've got a couple of boats and you know, being on the water is life.
Speaker 2:Nice and there's a very famous water area. I hear the Maldives. How far is that from you? I hear people go to that all the time. It's like the Maldives, that's. How far is that from you? I hear people go to that all the time that's further south of us. Okay.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's not India, that's another country.
Speaker 2:Oh, it is a country.
Speaker 3:Indian islands called the Lakshmadip, which is just above the Maldives, the Maldives down here. You've got Bombay up here, so it's a straight line. And if you sail south from Bombay, you go through the Lakshmipuri, you go through the Maldives and the next stop is Antarctica. Oh okay, oh, wow, okay, okay, yeah, let me just draw a straight line down from Bombay, and then you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:So Bombay is kind of like the Bay Area, but like opposite, the Bay Area has like a peninsula going up and down. This is like downward peninsula. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 3:It's almost like the opposite here, where the Bay Area's got all the water coming in. This is just a little bit coming out. Bombay was actually seven islands, right, Depending on how you define an island. Okay, and so Bombay was a part of the dowry of a princess of Portugal who got married to the King of England and she brought the island along with various other bits and pieces and that was handed over. Now the seven islands were kind of connected. Well, four of them were connected in the low tide and they became distinct islands in the high tide. So we have an area in Bombay called Paiduni, which literally means wash feet. Okay, so if you can imagine a part of New York called feet down feet, wash down, right, that's Paiduni for you right.
Speaker 3:Okay, right, that's by boonie for you, right, okay, and um, it would be covered in water, right, uh, through the high tide and the monsoons a lot of the time, right, but uh, occasionally it would you know, drain out and you could cross from one island to the other. Okay, and the problem was the tide came in very quickly and the tide here is can be quite impressive. It's usually about six to eight feet, but it can be as much as 18. Let's go out for a walk to the next island. Whoops, there's 80 feet of water between me and where I want to go, right.
Speaker 2:How often does that happen? At least once a year, well, no, no.
Speaker 3:It happens every monsoon. The tides get really quite ferocious here. Monsoons are not quite hurricanes, but just little hurricanes down a notch and that's what you got.
Speaker 2:What time of year does that happen?
Speaker 3:About now, another couple of weeks, and we'd be in the middle of the monsoon, so we'd be thundering and lightning away, but anyway. So what happened was those seven islands. So what happened was those seven islands got joined bit by bit, and so Bombay was literally built on garbage and rotting palm fronds you know coconut fronds and they just fill up the water with. You know this stuff. And then you know it actually came to a point where they could put earth and concrete on top of it, and so you've got this. When I look at the the map.
Speaker 3:It just looks like it's one big piece, um, and it's kind of there's a lot of water and it's like there's water up this way and there's a canal going that way where I live, the sea on this side is about, uh, maybe 50, 100 meters away, and the sea on that side, on the other side, is maybe a kilometer and a half a kilometer away.
Speaker 2:Kilometer kilometer and a half away maybe a mile away, so you have some views, huh.
Speaker 3:That's it, sorry.
Speaker 2:You have some views.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we're very fortunate. Yeah, I'll send you a picture.
Speaker 2:Okay, and do you live in a high rise? I assume everything is high rise there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're on the 18th floor, so by Bombay standards that's not very high anymore, because now we've got these 60-story and 80-story buildings 80-story buildings. Oh my goodness, I mean they've got these enormous buildings that maybe I lie. They were to be 18, but they actually stopped at 72, because there's some height restriction or something like that. There's all kinds of trouble about that.
Speaker 2:They're enormous.
Speaker 3:Do you all get earthquakes there? Yeah, Not so much. In Bombay, All the new birdings are earthquake-proofed. You know the kind which?
Speaker 2:can take the earthquakes. Oh yeah, they can handle the shaking.
Speaker 3:We don't get much. We do get the occasional one, it's more. We're not on the fault lines here, we're exactly below them. So we're not a california, okay, but there are parts of india which are, you know, riddled with fault lines, but we fortunately not so much. Though I do remember once I was in singapore and I remember watching the news and I still there's an earthquake and I called home and I couldn't get through, oh, but fortunately the wife and kids had slept through it so it didn't disturb them one little bit. But it was quite scary for me, you know, several hours away and worrying myself sick about this earthquake. But it's rare.
Speaker 2:Okay, and since you guys are on the water in kind of like California, where you have like the water's coming from the west, is it cooler there? What's the climate like?
Speaker 3:Where we are in the building we're at, remember, we have through ventilation right, because we've got the sea on three sides and so we get a lot of ventilation, so we're quite blessed. We don't necessarily need the air conditioning, but I mean, people do use it. The wife and I hardly use air conditioning, it's you know. You're fine with a fan, oh okay, which. You're fine with a fan, oh okay, which is kind of unusual in Bombay. But Bombay has got three weather conditions right it's hot, it's very hot and it's raining.
Speaker 1:I knew oh, and then the rain. Okay, got it, but still hot or maybe humid at that time.
Speaker 3:Well, it cools down a bit during the rains, but yeah, it's still hot. It's by American standards. It's hot all year round. It's just a question of how hot it is Our winter, which we're very proud of, and we all have warm clothes for that. The temperature actually goes down to, I think, 21 degrees centigrade.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which would be oh that's like a 70 or 80 something, I think it's probably 70, yeah, so it looks like latitude. You're like the lower part of mexico, okay, so just think of being in like puerto vallarta or something but you need to remember that the uh, the way, the the weather patterns work, right.
Speaker 3:You know where I mean, for example, california. California gets really cold when it feels like, depending on which side of the hills you're on in San Francisco, right. If you're on the Millbury side, you're okay, and if you're on the San Francisco side, you know the old twain quote about the coldest winter I ever knew was summer. San Francisco, right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Yes, so there's that kind of thing as well. We're fortunate with our weather right, we, it could be a lot worse. And I think we're fortunate that the you know, the easiest job in the world is a weatherman in bombay. Yeah, because you don't even have to look out of the window. Yeah, right, you just look at your calendar, you know exactly what the temperature is it's gonna be 85 today with a low of sunny.
Speaker 2:But put that in Celsius for you all.
Speaker 1:Or it's either hot, hotter or rain.
Speaker 2:That's right. They just put up a symbol, exactly.
Speaker 3:The food here is good, which is a good reason to live here. You have excellent food, particularly seafood, a bit spicy by the average american standards but we love it and you know you get all kinds of good stuff here and food and I know like vegetarianism is very popular, but I feel like more in different parts of india, where some people are just all vegetarian.
Speaker 2:Um, if I recall, you're not vegetarian, but I remember going out to eat. They're like like instead of like do you want spice? You're not spicy. You want veg or not veg and like that's my options, like I don't know. So are most people vegetarian there at there are some.
Speaker 3:My wife's a vegetarian, but she more for ethical reasons rather than religious, but there are a lot of people who are vegetarian, maybe about I don't know 20, 30% of the city. Oh, okay, and then you've got these rather extreme vegetarians who have something called jain food, which is vegetarian food, no meat and no root vegetables either.
Speaker 2:Wow, is that a religious thing too?
Speaker 3:That's a religious thing as well. And then you've got the vegans, who of course take it to a bit of an extreme. No cheese. All kinds of people will be here. Really, I'm a food that used to move on its own volition when it was alive. I believe we struggle to find our way to the top of the food chain. There's got to be a reason for that. It's strong. You've got to respect everybody's wishes, Of course yeah, is it expensive to live there?
Speaker 1:if someone wanted to go and stay there, well, Karen, I don't know if you remember Ruth Stevens.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:Was an advisory at Customer Asset.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:Ruth was over here and she, you know she preached out with laughter when we passed a hoarding over here you know one of those billboards right, Big billboards on the roads and she clutched my hand and you know I still have the marks of her nails on my forearm and she couldn't stop laughing and you know I still have the marks of the nails on my forearm and she couldn't stop laughing and you know we had to pull the car over and you know what she recovered. And she pointed to Hoarding and she said it's only in Bombay that you could see this, but it advertised apartments for only the equivalent to 1.7 million dollars for a two-bedroom. And what made her laugh was only yeah, even in manhattan we have the grace not to say only right it's starting at.
Speaker 2:You know, it is what it is starting out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but you can't say only for it.
Speaker 2:Let me see yeah, yeah, but how would that equate to American dollars? Is that American dollars? Oh, that's US dollars.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right, yeah, so it's very expensive.
Speaker 1:So it's like New York Well real estate is very expensive.
Speaker 3:The rest is not so much, so it is one of the more expensive cities in the world to live in. It's not's not a singapore or new york, but it's not cheap yeah, right, okay, you know rent here is, uh, it's.
Speaker 3:It's a very big part of all our lives. Finally having a place of your own in bombay is is a it's quite a win for most people. Yeah, you work in a lifetime to get one and it's. It's not cheap, unless your parents left you something, because their parents left them something, which is a sensible way to get something. But if you picked your parents wrong and they didn't leave it to you, then you've got a hard life ahead of you.
Speaker 2:Picked your parents wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is rent really expensive as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah it is. It is indeed. So it's far more expensive to buy than to rent because the rental rates yields here are relatively low, but it's expensive. So let me put things in perspective. Kristen, it's about depending on how senior you are. It will be somewhere between the third and half of your salary would be in rent. It's not like Manhattan. It's not cheap. You wouldn't get by with 15, 20% of your income being rent. That would be very few people.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then what about if someone wanted to go visit India and wanted to stay somewhere more affordable? What town would you recommend to go visit?
Speaker 3:It's a very large country, right? Yeah, um, so I mean it's. It's not large compared to the us or the ussr, but it's massive in terms of the differences. Right as you drive through america, there are differences, but they're not as significant, if you would. Right as you drive to the uk, um, the accents change every, you know 50 kilometers every 100 kilometers, for sure. Right in india, the languages change, the food changes, the culture changes, what's, you know, appropriate changes. Things change literally every 50, 100, 100, 150 kilometers.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, and they can change quite dramatically.
Speaker 3:So remember, we're talking about a country which is about the size of Western Europe and has, you know, I think about I don't know 2,000, 2,500 languages. Whoa Dalek spoken here. Oh,500 languages Dalek spoken here.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3:Maybe at least 4 or 5 hundred distinct types of cuisine, maybe more.
Speaker 2:Was India. Multiple countries at one point.
Speaker 3:India was more of an idea than countries, actually, until it all came together. It's been many things over many years. It's got a very long history. So there have been times when a particular ruler has dominated a big chunk of what is now India. Right, there have been times when invaders have come. It's a long history.
Speaker 3:So, to answer your question, you know there are a lot of things to see in India. Right, there are some of the highest mountains in the world, some of the most beautiful beaches, there's forest, there's one of the driest places in the world, there's one of the wettest places in the world. There is one of the coldest places in the world to live in, colder than Siberia, which is saying something, uh, uh. One of the highest places in the world that's lived in through the year, through the, through the, um, yeah, because you know the temperatures fall dramatically, and so it's a. It's a permanent establishment at 17 000 square feet, oh, sorry, 17 000 feet feet above Mithi level, wow, so that gives you a sense. So that's about 13,000 square feet. Divided by three would be about 5,500 meters.
Speaker 3:Okay, and people live there through the year so it gives you a sense of you know Mount Everest is in India.
Speaker 2:Is that right? No, it's in Nepal, nepal.
Speaker 3:It's in Nepal, but I think the Gans jagas in india. You've got a lot of very, very high mountains in india as well, okay, and the everest range, you know the himalayas come right down through india. So you can, you know, so you can go all the way from there to deserts. We've got, uh, forests, all kinds of forests, right. So there's pretty much everything you want to see and from a cultural perspective, it's incredibly rich because you know whether you're looking at music or dance or art, you know you get everything. So it really depends on what you want to see. It depends on what you like, right. If you, if you want to be dancing you, you know, at a fiesta, then Goa is your place. Right. If you want to sit in a desert and hear the desert singers sing from, you know, a kilometer away, you can hear them clearly, and maybe have Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones besides you, rajasthan is the place you want to go to.
Speaker 1:What is it?
Speaker 3:called. If you want to be Rajasthan, which is, uh, the place of kings oh, okay raja is a king, oh I see it star on this place.
Speaker 3:So you know the place of kings. If you want to be uh, you know where you can see the snow peaks while you have a wood fire warming. You know your feet. Maybe you want to go to sitla gate or rani gate, right? If you want to be sitting on a lake in a little wooden houseboat, right. Kashmir. If you want to learn how to ski and don't want to pay Swiss or Aspen prices, then you know another part of Kashmir, right? It goes on. It really depends on what you want to do. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:All right, so, but I think, most like Americans, we think of india. You go there for yoga and I think everyone is all zen and, like I, you know, and we know there's just a billion people there, right, so it's very crowded, um, but that's interesting. Like I don't think of lakes and I don't think it's the driest place in the world and I know there's mountains um, and, of course, the taj mahal is huge, but is there? Is there other like cool destinations like the Taj Mahal?
Speaker 3:I don't know why everyone goes there. When you go to Delhi, right so you know the Taj and the place called Agra, right. Then there's a place called Jaipur and then there's a place called Delhi. Delhi is the capital, so they form something called the Golden Triangle.
Speaker 2:Oh OK.
Speaker 3:Now I'm going to speak to you about Delhi for a moment. Yeah, then we'll talk about Agra, and then we'll talk about Jaipur, just to give you a sense of the Golden Triangle and how much there is, and I'm only going to talk to you about monuments. Since you raised the Taj, so Delhi has got seven cities which have been built one on top of the other.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:And a lot of them are still around, right. So when you go to Delhi, you can actually see what they call the old fort Purana Keela, you can go from there to Tughlaqabad, you can see the red fort, and all these are cities of Delhi. The Nordic city of Delhi and the seven cities of Delhi are still extant in the present day capital right, all the way up to present day Delhi right. So now just think of the amount of history that you have over there. So you've literally got maybe two and a half thousand, three thousand years of history, right, you've got it all the way from the ancient cities of Delhi, which is the. Have you heard of this epic poem called the Mahabharata, the great story?
Speaker 2:No, it's a great story, you said.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the great Indian story, the great story of India.
Speaker 2:Oh no.
Speaker 3:Mahabharata. It's the two Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Have you heard of the Odyssey by? You know the old Greek epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata? Have you heard of the Odyssey by the old Greek epics? No, okay, so there's a guy called Homer, a blind poet, who composed the story of Troy and the fall of Troy and then the two stories that follow that, one of which was the Odyssey. About what happens to you.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:So think of those epics, right. Multiply that by maybe 10 and you got drama head. Multiply that by 10 and you got the mahabharata, these epics which were composed, like you know, thousands of years ago, included. Have you heard of something called the Bhagavad Gita, the Song of God? No, okay, it's one of those. A lot of philosophy, indian philosophy, which has now become pretty much global philosophy, comes out of this thing called the Bhagavad Gita, right? So the? Are you familiar with the term karma? Oh, yeah, that one I know yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay. So karma is explained there. Dharma, which is the duty. Karma is what happens, right, dharma is what you do. Think of it that way. Oh, okay, so all that's out of.
Speaker 3:So, in the Mahabharata, it's the story of these two sets of cousins, five brothers on one side and a hundred brothers on the other, who go to war with each other. And Krishna, who's God, is a charioteer to one of the brothers. And this brother, called Arjuna, who's the greatest man with a bow and arrow who ever lived, is hesitating to start killing his cousins. The armies are all their friends, they're all relatives. And so he says you know, I mean, how can I do this? I mean, you know, I'm killing my own family, right? And the own family is busy trying to kill him.
Speaker 3:And Krishna, who's God, explains to him that it's your duty, right, and what happens as a result of your doing your duty, which is karma, is not in your hands. That is in somebody else's hands, but what is in your hands is to do your duty. So Arjuna proceeds to disembowel the enemies. But that story of what Krishna tells Arjuna is the Bhagavad Gita, the song of God. So now the Mahabharata was based, theoretically, in one of the ancient cities of Delhi and the remains of that city can be found, theoretically, in one of the ancient cities of Delhi.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, and the remains of that city can be found beneath the old fort which I told you about earlier, the Paranakila. So you know where I'm coming from. Carol is just monument-wise Delhi. Every so many meters you find another spectacular piece of history.
Speaker 2:Okay, so if you like history, Delhi's a great place to go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now you come down to Agra. Now they moved the capital between Delhi and Agra, the Mughals, and so there is, aside from the Taj, there's a fort in Agra, and in that fort, the guy who built the Taj built it in memory of his wife. Right, it was her tomb, it's her tomb, the.
Speaker 2:Taj Mahal was her tomb.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a tomb, yeah, yeah, oh my god I didn't realize that, wow, you really, really are fond of your wife and you built something like that, right, yeah, so the old man got holed up in a single room the former emperor of India by his son, right, who got rid of him and became the emperor in his place and he holed up the old man, who was nearly blind by that time. And across the river from this fort, where he was holed up in this prison, was the Taj Mahal, which he couldn see because he could see a little mirror, tiny little mirror, and looking into the mirror, you could see his wife's tomb right, and she spent his last years staring in that mirror and remembering what they were.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, wow.
Speaker 3:So that's Meantime. When you go to the other, the last leg of the Golden Triangle, you get to Jaipur, where now that was the Mughals, and this is the Rajputs who fought the Mughals. Oh, is the Rajputs who fought the Mughals. Okay, right, where you know, one of the Rajput rulers returns home from battlefield wounded and he calls to the people in his fort to let him in and his wife comes out and she looks at him and says you're not my husband. And says what my husband? Only You're not my husband.
Speaker 3:Oh, what You're not my husband oh okay, and he says please let me in, I'm wounded, Please let me in. She said no, my husband comes over only in one of two ways victorious or dead.
Speaker 2:Not wounded.
Speaker 3:And he goes back and he comes back dead. But that gives you a sense of. And then what she does is because now the Mughals are going to overtake the palace. She and all the women walk into a whacking great bonfire, one after the other, one after the other. So when the Mughals invade, there's not a person left alive, because oh my goodness are you victorious?
Speaker 2:yeah, so they're a bit extreme.
Speaker 3:Now imagine all that history and the and the forts are there and the palaces are there, and you know you've got all this stuff within that one little triangle do the, do the modern people?
Speaker 2:some carry on some of those thoughts and beliefs still, or or that's just old history, very proud people the rajputs are.
Speaker 3:You know they're, they're the warrior caste and they are proud people and you know a lot of this lives on many things like, for example, polo right, which is a very popular sport right where you ride around and, polo polo.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, okay, yeah, yeah yeah, you've got that uh in many parts of the.
Speaker 3:Okay, the horses yeah, you've got that in many parts of the US as well, right, Not as much here, but yeah, I mean England, I hear it yeah.
Speaker 3:You've got it in some of the southern states and you've got quite a polo, but it's very well off people Equally over here. It's very well off a play polo because you need to own a string of horses and it's quite a princes and kings kind of game and so you've got all these vestiges of the royalty in those kinds of the food, the palaces, the way they live. It's quite interesting how the history percolates through the ages.
Speaker 2:And is the caste system still prevalent, where people are definitely in their caste, sadly, yes, okay.
Speaker 3:In fact I was horrified. I didn't know this until COVID, but my mom wrote a book about this chap who was my great-great-grandfather wrote a book about this chap who's my great great grandfather right now. He um was very against the caste system at the turn of the last century and he was excommunicated by our community because he would hang with people who are considered below the caste system. You know, he did all kinds of things and there there was at that time a little-known lawyer from South Africa who came back to India and spent six months with him and learned a lot from him. That little-known lawyer got better known to the world as Mahatma Gandhi.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:So he's literally the guy who inspired Gandhi, which is what my mom's book was called the man who Inspired Gandhi. So in our family we believe that we're, you know, completely non-castist. Until I read a book by isabel wilkerson. You know the new york times reporter, who's a black woman in america. So strike one black, strike two woman, so you can imagine that she's not having terribly easy life. Um, she writes about, uh, her book's called cast. If you haven't read it you should do. It's about how color in america is like caste in india. And you know, when I read the book I realized how casteist I was. Uh, until then I was brought up in this cocoon of you know, the super silliness, super silliness that we're. You know we're really decent people and we don't believe in caste.
Speaker 3:And you know, I didn't know about this great, great grandfather of mine but I did know that as a family where you know, we consider ourselves very decent people.
Speaker 2:And then when I read the book and you should read it, yeah, consider ourselves very decent people and then when I read the book and you should read it, yeah, because okay, yeah, so I mean, so the cast there is kind of like our racism here like yeah, well, we're not racist like you don't want to believe you're racist, but things you do you do because like you're racist, but like yeah and maybe because it's learned yeah, maybe it's more learned and that's just the way it is.
Speaker 2:But like, no, wait a minute if that person was white, but that. But I still have that same opinion, but I'd be scared or whatever.
Speaker 3:Um yeah, okay, I definitely. Which is you don't realize it. At least, garyl, you know yourself aware enough to be aware of that.
Speaker 3:I wasn't that self-aware and I didn't realize the things that I was doing. You know it's just because you're programmed that way and despite believing that you're a good person and that you know it's so yes, it's that gas system is still alive and well, unfortunately, I think we're doing a lot of the country to try and get rid of it. But you know, it's been pernicious for, you know, centuries and it's going to take time.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you saw that video on YouTube about this guy who's got a bunch of school and college kids and he basically says there's a hundred bucks, there's a race to be run, there's a hundred bucks for whoever gets in first. And he says well, all the kids whose parents have, who know both their parents and they've not been divorced parents are still together, take two steps forward. So a bunch of kids take two steps forward. A bunch of kids don't move. Will all those who never had to worry about whether they get food at home take two steps forward? And it goes on like this right Will all those who completed high school without worrying about where they find the money to do that take two steps? And it goes on right. And now you've got a bunch of mainly white kids who are like 10 feet away from the end line, and you've got a bunch of mainly black kids. So way at the back right.
Speaker 3:And you say okay, now you've got your penalties. Now run your race Right Now. Whoever wins gets the hundred bucks. Now you know that if you all start at the same time in the same place, the kids at the back would probably smoke you guys. But that's not the reality. The reality is you're right where you are because of nothing that you did, because every single thing that got you two steps forward was something that happened for you, which somebody else did for you, and that's pretty much, yeah, you must look for that video.
Speaker 3:It's fascinating. It's in. Yeah, you must look for that video.
Speaker 2:It's fascinating. It's in the.
Speaker 3:US, but it's universally applicable, because that is privilege.
Speaker 2:Yes, we are just about out of time. We didn't cover too much, but I do have my rapid fire questions. But, kristen, if there's anything else that you wanted to, we talked a lot about history.
Speaker 1:I know it was very fascinating. No, I'm fine, it was really interesting. Thanks so much for sharing.
Speaker 2:It learned a lot. Okay, so you're ready for some, as hopefully, you read the rapid fire question. So, popular religion there, um, I you said there's a ton, but is there, like I think of hinduism? Is that the main religion or is there a?
Speaker 3:combination. Yeah, that is the main religion, okay, but there is Hinduism and there's Hinduism. There's all kinds of Hinduism.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, just like lots of Christianity, I guess.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like lots of Christianity, except you know so much more scale in some ways. Oh, okay. But yeah, but Hinduism is the main religion. But having said that, I mean you know, we've got hundreds of millions of Muslims and we must be having tens of millions of Christians, okay, and we've got our Jews, we've got our Zoroastrians, we've got so many religions out here. You've got the Baha'is, you've got I mean, it just goes on and on. Okay, because there is Religion is big in.
Speaker 2:India Is billion people in India, I think 1.4 when last counted, I think. And there's like 8 billion people on the earth, I think roughly Nine now, I think. So you have like one ninth of the population in India.
Speaker 3:We're now the fifth largest economy in the world. We'll be the fourth largest in a few years and we'll very soon be the third largest, after the US and China. So it's huge.
Speaker 2:California, I think, like in the top 10 of the largest economies. It's kind of crazy.
Speaker 3:So it used to be. You know that the US states were bigger than India, but now I think that's become.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. I'd love to have another conversation about just business in India, because there's so much, you know, I'm just curious how that changed by the time of today.
Speaker 3:But okay, so on to so what? What do you have for breakfast? What's a typical breakfast there? Well, I'm South Indian right, and so well, I prefer a South Indian breakfast. So we've got these things called idlis, which are little rice. Uh, you've had the idlis, a little rice things. Um, they're a little white, uh, steamed, um, I'd call them dumplings, but they're not really. But they're, uh, they're very nice. So you guys gotta have them is it?
Speaker 2:is it like?
Speaker 3:we have these things on those which are like pancakes okay, crisp, uh, savory pancakes, think of it that way okay with chutneys on the side and that kind of stuff. So I'm quite spoiled and we've got a cook who does that Nice 7 am every morning, I set myself down to a South Indian breakfast.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic. Okay, and what is like one of your favorite meals?
Speaker 3:Speaking of cooking like, just like an afternoon for dinner, sunday dinner, in my little triangle of South Bombay which is ringed in by our two clubs and our home, and one of the clubs is where I go sailing from, the other club is where I swim and our home and that little triangle, we've got Trishna, which gives you the most incredible butter, garlic crap. Oh, okay. It's worth the price of a plane ticket from wherever you are in the world.
Speaker 2:Butter garlic what did you say?
Speaker 3:Crab, Crab okay.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we have crab meat, of course. Okay, butter garlic crab.
Speaker 3:We've got Olympia, which doesn't seem to have changed the prices in the 30 years, 40 years that I've been eating there. They give you a bill and you look at it and you say are you sure you charge for everything? Yes, we charge for everything. You sure you don't want to increase your prices? No, we don't want to increase our prices. It's incredible food.
Speaker 3:Oh wow, oh okay, that's Islamic food Super. And then we, and it goes on. I can go on for the rest, oh okay, we can have an episode just about the food, food of India.
Speaker 2:That would be a fun episode, alrighty. And what's the money called? And if an American was going to go to India, what's is the best used credit card, you know? Or exchange the money.
Speaker 3:Yeah, credit cards work pretty much everywhere and the money is called the rupee, and what you do in India now is we hardly use notes, it's all digital, so we all have these little apps. Google has got one called Google Pay, so if you're American, you may want to download that and make it to your bank account. And you just go scanning QR codes wherever you go and paying with that. Everything is app driven now everybody in india has got a smartphone. Things have changed a lot garen the last few years okay, this financial digital now when I travel internationally, right?
Speaker 3:um, you know it used to be. Uh, you know we had these credit cards and you're always worried about whether they work. I don't know if you remember they used to keep feeding my credit card when I lived in the us, right?
Speaker 3:and because it would keep and it was always a bit of attention. So now you go to other countries and you say, I mean, why are these guys so backward? They want to get their act together. I mean, it's so easy to get a financial act together. We take it very much for granted now in ind India how easy it is, money wise right no more science, no more, it's all electronic and it's.
Speaker 3:It's really cool to pay the. You know the person sitting on the street selling your vegetables, um, what we call a bhaji wali, which is the lady who sits on the street in a market and she gets paid on her cell phone with oh, she does too okay, so you think? Those markets always want cash oh, wow, that's interesting. Okay, guys, that were yeah I mean, that's what you think of india is very high tech, um, tech hub, all right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so many graduates, right, like a million graduates a year from college. Very smart people, um, and so, and what's the closest place to surf is surfing.
Speaker 3:You guys are on kind of a coast but you're on a sea, bombay, um it's. It's not hawaii, but you've got a little bit of surfing down south of bombay. And then there's a beach, uh, not far from my home city of mangalore, where there's this lovely young lady, whose uh name I now forget, who runs a surfing school. She's sort of a friend of a friend or relative of a friend or something like that. She's won quite a lot of international awards in surfing and now she's come home to teach people how to surf over here. So she's got a school down south and all over. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, very nice, so that'd be probably inexpensive.
Speaker 3:stay along the southern coast, south of like carnotica or something yeah, carnotica is where you can surf here a beach called malpy, I think, is where she does it st mary's island okay, I think it's somewhere around there and uh, yeah, that's just a little north of where I'm from originally, so carnotica, yeah, but you get diving out around here. You get some very nice diving in the Andamans and then again Lakshmi. Of course, the ultimate diving is in the Maldives.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Perfect sailing in Bombay. You couldn't do better. Oh nice, Steady, strong breeze, Safe as blazes.
Speaker 2:I mean it's just Are there any sharks in the waters there?
Speaker 3:In Bombay? Probably not, the poor things would get poisoned. But we do get dolphins. I should send you a picture of one that my daughter took. You need to have super fast reflexes. She's actually got a picture of a dolphin in the foreground and the skyscrapers of Bombay in the back. It's incredible. That's unexpected.
Speaker 2:That's unusual. Yeah, I mean you'd think of like Hawaii, or some palm trees or something in the back or other boats. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, send us some pictures so well. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3:And thank you so much for making the time. Yeah, yeah us and thank you so much for making the time. Yeah, yeah, I know it took a while to get it figured out.
Speaker 2:But the time difference, yeah, this makes me a little challenging, but thank you for staying up late for us yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:This was really interesting pleasure lovely meeting.
Speaker 2:kristen, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, can you please take a second and do a quick follow of the show and rate us in your podcast app, and if you have a minute, we would really appreciate a review. Following and rating is the best way to support us. If you're on Instagram, let's connect. We're at where next podcast. Thanks again, thank you.
