**UPDATE – LOTS OF NEW IMAGES!*

Wel­come back to the travel blog­ging. Our amaz­ing, 12 month, around the world jour­ney had so far taken us to the far side of the world, the jungles of South East Asia and now was to come our most incred­ible exper­i­ence yet.

Now we had arrived in India.

Over the next few weeks, I will be present­ing a num­ber of art­icle on the sub­ject of our travels in this most exotic of coun­tries. We explored almost every inch of it, from the cit­ies, beaches, moun­tains, deserts, jungles and wet lands. Along the way we took in some of the most holy sights in the entire world, includ­ing Elora, The great Taj Mahal, Varanasi, Sarnath, the Bodhi Tree and even stood in the pres­ence of the remains of the Great Lord Buddha himself.

It was 3 months to remember.

To kick us off, I have this art­icle by none other than Cesca her­self. This was her exper­i­ence try­ing to find the Gandhi Museum hid­den some­where in Mum­bai. This was our pil­grim­age to Gandhi:

Stand­ing on Indian soil with the heat close and crowds closer nav­ig­at­ing the down­town streets of Mum­bai, I knew there was one per­son to whom our respects should be paid. Gandhi.

Gandhi to me was such an amaz­ing per­son and so fam­ous through­out the world that it is dif­fi­cult to believe that he lived on earth at all, let alone someone who lived in the house in which I stood today.

So, it was with a sense of spe­cial pil­grim­age that we made our way to Mani Bhavan the house where Gandhi spent much time hav­ing returned from prison in South Africa.

As the mid­day sun passed by we lunched before head­ing across town.

Our plan was simple, catch a taxi over there before walk­ing to Cha­patti Beach to watch the sun­set. J took the lead and approached the rank and lent in through the first taxi win­dow. Lonely Planet in hand with map at the ready he reques­ted the ride and for it to be metered. “300 Rs” was the reply, we laughed at the blatant attempt to over charge as only exper­i­ence can teach you, and moved swiftly on. Attempt no 2. Hop­ing to get this sewn up first time I took the gaunt­let and stepped out. Clearly not under­stand­ing me the driver waved me towards another taxi. I went to great lengths to name, loc­ate and describe our desired des­tin­a­tion with the expect­a­tion that this most fam­ous and won­der­ful of Indian people would be at the fore­front of their hearts. Again a blank expres­sion. A small but grow­ing crowd were mag­net­ised towards the appar­ent only tour­ists in Mum­bai, all try­ing to under­stand. No mat­ter who we showed the map too or said “Mahatma Gandhi Museum” they did not know to our surprise.

We thought to abort the mis­sion, but this we just too import­ant to us. So, we continued.

We crossed the busy cent­ral junc­tion and tried again. Des­pite every effort and inform­a­tion, the man did not under­stand. One last time we decided. It was at this point that a kind and well edu­cate Indian man stepped in to help us. We explained to him it was ‘Mani Bhavan’, Gandhi’s Museum on Laburnum Road, Near Cha­patti Beach whilst we looked at the circ­ling on the Mum­bai map. He began to relay this to the driver, much to our relief, then replied, “but you can walk from here it is only around the corner”. My heart sank as in chorus we explained it was miles away on the other side of town. He revis­ited the map and all became clear to him. More Hindi was exchanged and the jour­ney was set finally and was to be on the meter.

We got in. Well “the proof is in the pud­ding” flashed across my mind as we joined the crazy horn beep­ing road. I had retained an uneasy feel­ing about the driver not really know­ing where we were going and so kept an eye on the map. Imme­di­ately he took an unex­pec­ted turn, but it was not in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion, so I put it down to exper­i­ence of the roads and traffic flow. We con­tin­ued on, fur­ther and fur­ther north. I lost the road names in the Indian script as we drove over fly­overs north­wards. I recog­nised the road from our visit to see Lulu and Ana­heeta at Landor the pre­vi­ous day. Alarm bells were ringing loudly now. I knew this was wrong. I asked the driver “where are we?” he could not reply in any words I could understand.

Annoy­ance then crept in. Taxi drivers tak­ing on a fares when they don’t know where they are going has always been my ‘pet hate’. Espe­cially from the nights of tak­ing pre-booked taxis home from work in Lon­don only to find myself sit­ting on the hard shoulder map read­ing for the driver at 1am.

Going past a rail­way sta­tion was the con­firm­a­tion I was look­ing for. “This is not the right dir­ec­tion, we should be near Cha­patti Beach” I said. He pulled to the side of the road and got out for fur­ther assist­ance. We got out too. Our second Samar­itan appeared in the form of a middle aged man from Goa. I asked him where we were on the map, he con­firmed we were indeed in the loc­a­tion I had feared. After a flood of Hindi, I voiced our con­cern and the trans­la­tion and nego­ti­ation began.

“We have been taken in com­pletely the wrong dir­ec­tion and we are not happy to pay for this devi­ation as we have already gone fur­ther than the entire trip should have been”. Hindi again. “You must make allow­ances as he does not speak Eng­lish the Goan man replied. “Yes, how­ever the loc­a­tion we required was explained to him in Hindi” This changed man’s his view of the situ­ation slightly, but he still favoured the plight of the driver some­what over ours. How much is the taxi fare so far I reques­ted “60 Rs” was the reply. Well I began to bar­gain “We will pay him the 60 Rs and then we should be taken to the Museum for no extra cost, or we will find another taxi”. This seemed fair, we would be pay­ing more than the trip should have cost anyway.

The Goan man stepped aside after all our cards were on the table and wished us well. The driver con­tin­ued to nego­ti­ate that we should pay half the rest of the jour­ney. We were not going to play his games. It is a simple trick to take unsus­pect­ing tour­ists in the wrong dir­ec­tion and get them to pay for the extra mileage. We stayed for a few minutes to try and reach an agree­ment, but without a trans­lator com­mu­nic­a­tion was lim­ited. We offered him the deal again, noth­ing and so we walked away.

Slightly fear­ful for stor­ies Ara­bella had told me in the past about Indian police being called to such situ­ations and let’s face it they are all over this city at the moment, I prayed we were free. No one fol­lowed us thank­fully, partly due to J’s size I think!

Now we found ourselves walk­ing on the wrong side of the main high­way for the traffic flow­ing to our des­tin­a­tion. We crossed under the fly­over and got another taxi. Learn­ing from the trip so far we made the dir­ec­tions easy this time. “Please take us to Cha­patti Beach, on the meter?”

Under­stood.

We waved through the smal­ler side roads, but with the same volumes of traffic of the high­way. Time ticked on and we got to the beach road quite drained. Our fare was “54 Rs” was gave 60 Rs and hap­pily drove straight into the nearest café for a cold drink.

Mani Bhavan was about 15 minutes walk from the beach front.

We walked con­fid­ently into the maze of roads, many without street names at the corner. After ask­ing a hand­ful of people and going slightly too far on one road we were flak­ing, but determ­ined this pil­grim­age would be suc­cess­ful. Tak­ing another turn we were finally greeted with the Laburnum Road sign as a help­ful local man poin­ted to the museum down the road from his car. We had made it there.

Thank­fully the museum was open as we joined the many vis­it­ors inside. I couldn’t help won­der­ing what all the other tour­ists had said to their taxi drivers to arrive look­ing so unflustered! The frus­tra­tion of our 1.5hr jour­ney imme­di­ately melted away and I was humbled upon see­ing the first image of Gandhi, know­ing the immeas­ur­able endur­ance he dis­played dur­ing in his lifetime.

This museum fol­lows the struc­ture of many of the other Gandhi Museums that dot the coun­try. There is a very high class ver­sion in Delhi and if you only have time to visit one that is where you should head towards. This example is actu­ally the house of a close friend that he used when in the city.

It was the birth place of much of his thought and adorn­ing all the walls are quotes from his writ­ings. Most of them are mag­ni­fi­cent. The lay­out is a num­ber of rooms with Gandhi mem­or­ab­ilia, includ­ing the let­ter he send to Hitler (ask­ing him to quit) and also one that ends with the quote, “Gen­er­a­tions to some, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”

So said Einstein.

Upstairs is a col­lec­tion of dioramas that show the life of Gandhi and how me came to be so fam­ous and be named “Mahatma”, which means “Great Soul”.

He was a tire­less worker, a great thinker and one of the best men who ever lived. To glimpse into the world of a man so strong is a priv­ilege I recom­mend most heartily.

While here J bought Gandhi’s book, which is on sale for about £5.

Cesca

Web­site of the Museum: http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/

Pop­ular­ity: 2% [?]

Related Posts

• Sun­set in Mum­bai
  The Novem­ber ter­ror­ist attacks on Mum­bai was some­thing we had wor­ried about before land­ing in the ci…
• Goa: The Beach Life
  I lay on my back and tried to relax. The sound of rolling waves crashed back and forth in the distan…
• This is India
  I flipped out my phone and called the hotel. We were wait­ing out­side the Mum­bai air­port, it was late…
• Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire Movie Review
  Cesca and I sat in the heat of the Mum­bai movie theatre around the corner from the Vic­toria Stat…
• The Ellora Caves
  One of the unique things about India, and one that you never quite come to terms with, is the trains…
• Rohan pil­low talk: Guest Post 3 for Rohan Cloth­ing
  This is a cross post writ­ten by Basho, ori­gin­ally pos­ted on www.rohantime.com Why this train? …