The Beautiful, Chaotic, Mumbai.

The first of the Historietas Series

If you ask me to describe Mumbai in one word

[chaos]

would be the unequivocal adjective that could be used under any circumstance. Organized chaos, to be precise, but more on that later. We arrived a little after noon, which allowed me to see the colors of the city on our drive from the airport on their best light. Except it was August, the high of monsoon season, but being from Puerto Rico, and our equivalent hurricanes, makes me no stranger to rain and cloudy skies. On our drive on the taxi, we were offered a/c or no a/c, we went with no a/c and kept on going. The first thing I noticed were the plumerias planted all along the center of the road, mostly white and sometimes pink and then as we got closer to the city and crossed the Bandra-Worli sea link, you can see how harsh the sea is as the waves crash without mercy against the shore and people are very wary of going near it. I also noticed the similarity in the flora, especially the banyan trees which are among my favorites.

As soon as we got off the bridge, a police officer waived to our driver asking him to pull over, and our driver, in a nonchalant manner waived back at the police officer, yelling something like: see you later and stepped on it. You can imagine our surprise, the mush in our stomachs and the flush we felt in our faces, all continued by a: “vete pa’l cara**” which roughly translates to “go to hell” but in the context, it’s something more like: “oh my goodness!!!!” followed by an uncontrollable laugh that can be a clear tell of how nervous we were.

This set the tone for the rest of the month there. After you feel the freedom of that taxi driver, there is no coming back, not even when we were stopped ourselves..

Next week, Day Guide for Mumbai and the adventures before THE adventure!

#FirstImpressions #Mumbai #Flora #historietas #ayearinretrospect #gratefultolife