Solapur, India

"Y'all act like you never seen a white person before

Jaws all on the floor 

Like Pam and Tommy just burst in the door..."

These are the opening lyrics to "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem, and they have been on my mind in Solapur. I've never been stared at so much in my life. Children go wide-eyed and point me out excitedly to their parents. Before too long I'll have learned how to say 'look mummy, an unclean paleface' in colloquial Marathi. Quite often the bolder teenage boys will yell out to me across the street. But in fairness nobody has said anything rude yet. At least not in English.

I had never heard of Solapur before coming here. It's a fairly nondescript place. I just wanted to get off the train somewhere a bit less crowded and less polluted. Mumbai and Pune are big cities but Solapur barely registers, its population only about that of Liverpool and Sheffield combined.

It's ironic that being in non-touristy places actually makes it harder to get a nice curry. Curry is what the locals eat at home: when they go out to treat themselves, they want Thai or tacos or whatever. Me coming here and looking for a nice curry is a bit like an Indian flying to London and hitting the town for a gourmet plate of beans on toast. But persistence pays off in the end.

The curries I've had so far in India have been creamier than I was expecting. Probably I'll have eaten my own body weight in ghee by the time I get home. Spice-wise everything's been OK, comparable to what you'd get in a UK curry house if you ordered something moderately adventurous. Though for all I know the waiters here have been telling their chefs to tone it down for the white guy.

And on the gastronomic / gastric theme...no, I don't have Delhi belly. I've been in India a fortnight and everything's fine, including the street food. I was prepared for the worst, of course, and so I came out here with my own stash of TP and vitamin pills and rehydration tablets. Not to mention enough Immodium to bung up a buffalo. Perhaps my digestive system has been so battle-hardened over the past two decades that it treats India like just another country. I suspect the same is true of my immune system, hence me never having had Covid. Or at least if I've had Covid then it had no effect on me.

When it comes to home cooking (ie when I'm in an apartment rather than a hotel) the food tends to be vegetarian because butcher's shops and supermarkets aren't really a thing in India. From the convenience stores I get rice, and tins of kidney beans or chickpeas; from the street vendors I get tomatoes and onions and fruit. It probably does me good to cut meat down to once a day, just like it probably does me good to cut down on drinking. Alcohol is taxed and controlled almost out of existence in India and liquor stores are thin on the ground. Indeed, Republic Day (January 26th) was a 'dry day' on which alcohol sales were banned completely! I'm surprised we let them stay in the Commonwealth. There's no danger of me emigrating here. But I'm definitely not in a hurry to leave.

View from the hotel restaurant window at breakfast

At the market

Solapur Municipal Corporation building

Another angle of the above

This fair is part of Gadda Yatra, an annual Hindu festival.

Indian railways trade union. "Step-motherly attitude"!

Edd vs Food #151
Chicken wings (foil wrapped handles), spicy curry, rice, mocktail, sundries.
At Sigdi restaurant in Solapur.

Pune, India

South of Mumbai lies Goa, which is where all the tourists go. So I've headed east instead. Because I'm like that, and that's the way I am.

It's pronounced "poo-nay", and the locals are collectively known as "Punani". (Only one of these two things is true.) Whereas Mumbai is huge and has about as many people as Belgium, Pune is but a small provincial backwater in comparison, its population merely that of Hong Kong. But even if you were to put Mumbai and Pune together, you'd still have only around 1 in every 70 Indians.

The ride here was fairly pleasant. 4 hours or so. All kinds of vendors were doing the rounds, up and down the train. I heard one of them approaching from far off. "Chai chai chai chai chai," he sang from the next carriage. "Chai chai," as he came into our carriage. "Chai chai chai chai," he chirruped to the people in the next compartment, and "Chai chai chai," as he appeared in our compartment. Then he saw the one white guy on the train, i.e. me, and his eyes lit up like beacons. "Tea?" I was reluctant to leave him unrewarded for this nimble feat of linguistic gymnastics, but unfortunately I'm a coffee drinker. 

The young man next to me on the train was excitedly regaling his companions with footage from the Coldplay concert he'd attended in Mumbai the night before. British-Indian cultural exchange has evidently declined a very long way indeed since the days when they gave us curries and we gave them cricket. Incidentally I note that the Coldplay singer graciously took it upon himself to apologise to India, from the Mumbai stage, for colonialism. Yet I just spent two whole months in Italy, and nobody apologised to me for the Roman conquest. What's that all about?

Unlike in the USA, where the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War and the Constitution are hailed everywhere you look, I've hardly seen anything here that commemorates the end of the Raj in 1947. The only images of Nehru or Ghandi are the ones on the banknotes. Nationalism is something we can all do without. I hope it doesn't sound too condescending towards the Indian people if I suggest that most of them probably have more pressing things to worry about.

Notable sights in Pune are the Bund Garden, whose founder rejoiced in the name of Sir Jamshedji Jeejeebhoy, and the original Aga Khan palace, which I didn't bother with. But the main attraction is the Shaniwar Wada temple, pictured below. I had a painful experience in the queue: when the security guards spotted me, I was immediately beckoned to the front of the line. Several dozen little old Indian ladies, evidently from the humbler classes, had to step meekly aside to let the foreigner through. I protested with some heat that I was happy to wait, but the guards were brooking no argument and nobody was going anywhere until I acquiesced. I didn't feel like a VIP; I felt like a cad and a bounder. But I suppose there's a faint justification for this preferential treatment, in that entrance tickets for foreigners are about ten times what the locals pay (£2.50 as opposed to 25p).

Pune has a small but pleasant overground Metro service, where the maximum fare is capped at about 35p. You have to go through airport-style security to board the Metro, and you're not allowed to chew gum or take soft drinks, as I discovered to my cost. There's a sign prohibiting the carrying of nuclear weapons, which is good to know, and it also states specifically that 'mentally disturbed' people are also banned. I fear that last one would leave most American suburban trains half-empty.

They don't allow animals on the Metro, either. You see stray dogs everywhere, and to a lesser extent stray cats, and quite often you find yourself stepping around cows on the street. They're not always tethered, but then cows are only dangerous in herds. I saw an enormous 'flying fox' bat flapping around in the trees at night from my 3rd-floor apartment balcony, and I think there was a tiny baby rat scuttling around the floor of the train as we trundled from Mumbai to Pune. Also, as much as I've been enjoying the Indian food, the local mosquitos have clearly been enjoying their English food even more. I'm getting bitten to death. But at least I'm successfully avoiding the cockroaches. And the tourists. And Coldplay. 

Shaniwar Wada temple (18th century)

Iricen Railway Colony. My 'hood.

Looking south over the Shivaji bridge from the PMC Metro station

My first ever non-Greggs cheese pasty

Every now and then, I'm reminded of home.

The river Mutha. Not one for swimming in.

Ideal development project opportunity for the first time buyer

Edd vs Food #150
Vegetarian Kunwar Thal at Dal Baati, mere yards from my apartment.
Four baati (unleavened bread in centre) plus poppadom and salad.
Lasun chutney, pickle, Marwari curry, cooked gram flour dumpings in gravy, desert beans.

Mumbai, India

For some years, India has been by far the biggest gap in my travel CV. Now I'm finally setting that right. And in my most recent contract (yes, I do actually work from time to time) I was part of a team split between the UK and Hyderabad, so allow me to begin with a warm namaste to my former colleagues Haritha & Sinduja.

On arrival I was pleased to achieve the hat-trick of a) getting me and my E-Visa through immigration, b) withdrawing my rupees (you can't buy them in the UK), and c) sorting out an Indian SIM card. It all works out OK, provided you do your homework in advance, which you definitely need to do.

I walked straight from the airport to my hotel, checked in and unpacked, and then headed out on foot. (Perhaps in search of an English corner shop, ha ha.) I normally avoid American chain eateries when I'm travelling, but I was a bit wary of 'Delhi belly' - and after a sleepless red-eye flight, I wanted to spend my first night here in bed, not on the porcelain throne. Hence my Indian gastronomic experience began with a McDonalds and a Subway. But on the second night I went for a proper curry, for which see Edd vs Food below.

I'm now in an apartment in an area called Bandra West, which is quite fashionable but still largely devoid of foreigners. Most of the tourists stay in South Mumbai, because that's where you find most of the famed sights and colonial architecture. I've had a walk around South Mumbai and it's OK, but I prefer mixing with the locals, and also as always I'm on a budget. Prices in South Mumbai can reach London levels and beyond.

The journey between Bandra West and South Mumbai is not walkable. Mumbai is huge. So I've had my introduction to the Indian railways. There's none of your politically corrrect "stand clear of the doors please" nonsense here. The train doors don't ever close. People start getting off the train long before it stops moving, and they continue boarding the train long after it starts moving. In Mumbai alone, there are over 2,000 railway deaths every single year - about six a day on average -  partly as a result of ill-judged train-hopping manouevres, and partly as a result of ill-judged track-crossing manouevres. I myself am playing it safe, of course, and I haven't climbed up on the roof even once.

Incidentally these trains, like those I've used in Mexico City and Tokyo, have 'ladies only' carriages. It's good that they exist, and it's bad that they're needed. I haven't felt any kind of danger even in the sketchiest parts of town, but of course it's easier to feel safe if you're a man. 

Anyway these are only the suburban Mumbai trains I'm talking about. The national rail network covers 82,000 miles of track and employs 1.2 million people. Time to check it out in detail. I'm not going back to the airport; I'm going to do India properly.

Heavily polluted sunset by the beach in Bandra West

View from the back of the train station

Beach nightlife

Gateway Of India in South Mumbai

Mumbai's beaches.
The Spanish tourism ministry is probably not panicking just yet.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus railway station

Mumbai is hugely multi-racial, multi-lingual, and multi-faith.
But that tolerance is nowhere better exemplified than here. Dogs & pigeons!
Maybe Paul McCartney could write a song called "Pedigree And Aviary".

Edd vs Food #149
My first ever Indian curry in actual India. Another life achievement unlocked.
Chicken Madras with lemon rice. Creamier than I was expecting.
At the Tanjore Tiffin Room near my apartment in Bandra West.
When it's your first visit, they give you a free tasting platter for the entire menu. Gets my vote.