New Years in Bombay

After touching down in one of the world's largest cities, most travelers might be a bit intimidated. Not me, though; I had 5½ months in India under my belt. I can handle anything.

So, in the first 10 minutes, I had Rs. 1000 stolen right in front of me by a taxi-pimp skilled in slight of hand. It was a bit of a sour start.

James and I arrived at our hostel, the Hotel Volga II, after 20 minutes of circling the block with our clueless cab driver. We didn't have good directions, and none of the people on the street knew how to find the place, so I felt a bit bad for the driver—or would have if his boss wasn't such a sleaze.

The Volga was a "delightful" little hallway of rooms with about 30 beds total sharing 2 westerns and a squatter. There were spouts and a bucket for showering. Thankfully, hot water wasn't much of an issue: even during winter the thermometer hits 90°F daily. We couldn't get into our room until a few hours, so we went downstairs and around the corner to Leopold Café, a former colonial pub now hugely popular with young international tourists, boasting a solid-but-typical Indian/Chinese/Continental menu. After a few hours of coffee, we walked the Colaba causeway for the first of many times. It's a ½-mile traffic jam of street vendors and "upper-class" shops like Nike, Reebok, Lacoste, etc. After picking up a city-guide from a small book stand, we planned out a long weekend.

Mumbai is expansive, and has no single entertainment district. Colaba was one, and seemed good enough for our 4-day stay. After all, it's no fun wearing yourself out seeing sights when all the sights are more or less the same you've seen for months. I'd made this mistake before and we wanted Mumbai to be relaxing.

That night, we visited the first listing in the guide under "Good Live Music": Not Just Jazz by the Bay. It ended up being an almost 5 hour visit, but the "just jazz"-playing band was talented and we had nowhere else to go.

The next day began with more Colaba: food and gift shopping. And that night, lazy but content, we decided to go back to "Jazz". To defend this choice, they had great food, and Sunday night was Karaoke night and described as "highly popular with college-aged locals." (Our trip to India sort of delayed and grayed the point where college-aged ended and working-aged began, so we were all for it.) The guide was right: we were the only Americans there, and the mean age was probably around 22. We were a bit nervous volunteering until we heard a few "regulars" first. Luckily, it was adequately amateur, and soon "Nathan from the U.S." was singing "To Be With You" by Mr. Big.

This was a worthy ice-breaker: we soon got into conversation (and duet agreements) with the group at the table next to us. They ended up being mostly Boston University students, and after a sub-par "A Whole New World," we followed them to an after-hours hookah joint. Fully aware that meeting locals can make a trip many times better, we eagerly accepted an invitation to join them for New Years Eve, plans TBA.

Day three on the Colaba Causeway was no different, except for lunch (Lebanese today), so we changed things up and wandered around the Hotel Taj Mahal Palace (rooms starting at Rs. 15k). It had a large lobby with elite shoppes vis-à-vis the causeway. After a mix of goggling and cynicism at the same, we sat down at the residents-only pool bar, underdressed and overconfident. Since we'd been washing with a bucket the last few days, we promptly compensated with 2 glasses of their finest champagne, explaining that we'd just checked out and therefore couldn't respond to your query for our room number.

We returned to our real room and made plans to join our new friends at one of their family's flats. It couldn't have been more of a fun, chill mini-party that night; we easily forgot we're supposedly "working adults".

There's no Bollywood version of Dick Clark, but the neighbors' fireworks kept us on time for the countdown. Around four, we actually attempted to return to "Jazz", who's party had been unfortunately shut down by the cops. The staff, now quite familiar with my presence, we quite apologetic.

James and I returned to the Volga around 7 AM and crashed until checkout. Now having spent our second major holiday in a week with surrogate friends and family, I can almost say I'm glad I had to stay.