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Meeting Gopal
16 January 2007
Mumbai, India
We are now sitting in Leopold's Café in the Colaba district of Mumbai (Bombay). This café is apparently a sort of Mumbai institution, being open since the 1870s, and also figures prominently in a book Andy ready before heading out into the unknown. The book is called ‘Shantaram’ by Gregory David Roberts and is a good read — certainly an excellent result for a first novel. The café is fairly nice, if expensive in Indian terms.
We've been debating this morning whether or not to take up the offer of a man we met on the street yesterday, regarding a tour of the city sites, both on foot and by taxi. The tour would cost about 950 rupees, or US$22, for both of us. Our only concern is the safety of the whole venture. After all, we did meet this guy — Gopal — on the street yesterday, making him more or less a complete stranger. Still, there's always some risk in these things, and in this case it seems to be minimal.
[…]
So, we took the tour and everything worked out quite well. We spent about four hours going around Mumbai and we saw: Bombay University, Fashion St., Jain Temple, The Hanging Gardens, The Tower of Silence, Laxmi Temple, and the Mahatma Ghandi Museum (which was the house he lived in from 1917 to 1934). We also experienced our first ‘Thali’ meal — a standard South Indian meal that is served on a metal cafeteria tray and involves a variety of typical vegetables, legumes, rice and Indian breads. We are now sitting in a place called Mondegar Café, near Leopold's on the Colaba Causeway. Willie Nelson is playing on the radio in the background!