The first stop was Dhobi Ghat. It is a HUGE laundry community. When we first arrived and were living in a hotel we would have our clothes washed and sometimes they would come back smelling like the air of India. I do not know how to describe that smell, but if any of you have ever been to India you know what I mean. It is the mix of millions of people, dust, dirt, pollution, spices, polluted water, food...all mixed into one. Until this tour we did not realize that the reason it smelled that way is they were washed at Dhobi Ghat.
We viewed the community from the bridge nearby, then we went down into the community. At one gate one of the guys was really aggressive wanting money for us to enter. We left him and went to the next gate and paid a guy a small fee to walk with us and we wandered down the winding alleys.
They take old jeans, re-dye them and sell them on the used market.
You can see the different stages of wash tubs. The soap, the rinse, and the finalization.
Re-dying jeans so they look new. His hands were also blue now.
After Dhobi Ghat, we wandered the streets for a bit. I took photos because this is something we see everyday so we don't think much of it. However, I realized that we will not always be here and wanted to have some photos to remember our time here.
Our next stop was Hanging Gardens. It is a serene park to do walks or laps. The greenery is well manicured and there are benches for people to sit and talk. I like to see some green space in a city that is otherwise so crowded and crammed.
The photo above does not give a good idea. In the blue sky (which is unusual to see here anyway) there are hundreds of hawks. But they are there. They gather in this place because it is the Tower of Silence. Hundreds of years ago the Parsi community came to Mumbai to escape persecution and still have a large presence here. They believe that the most nature and pure way to care for their dead was to allow nature to happen naturally. This meant they would lay the bodies out in the Tower of Silence for the vultures to eat and the body is then given back to the earth in a natural way.
However, in a clash of religion and culture the vultures started to die. There was no malice involved, it was just two different ideals and cultures contrasting each other. The Hindu religion deifies cattle and they want to protect them. To help the cattle population remain healthy they started to give them cattle anti-biotics. That seem to be a good idea until they cows died and the vultures ate the dead cow the antibiotic would cause kidney failure for the vultures. So the vulture population has been completely decimated.
The result was where in the past bodies would be laid in the Tower of Silence and the vultures would take care of it within an hour, bodies were starting to lay there in the sun for months due to the decline of the vulture population. So one religion's practice is now causing another religion to not practice theirs. In the early 2000s the drug for animals, but the vulture population is gone so the Parsi Zoroastrians are having to find alternative ways to respectfully care for their dead.
We went to see the Tower of Silence. Much like when we go on cemetery tours or drove for hours to see the hanging coffins in northern Phillippines, we went. We cannot go in, sadly, but it was still interesting to learn about religions and practices.
Lady Hiva trying to choose which items to buy. I have learned that I REALLY LOVE Indian food. I love the explosion of flavors and textures. But I really DO NOT like Indian "sweets." And the guy kept giving me samples--even though I kept declining. He thought that I was declining to not have to pay so he insisted more. By the time I left I had a handful of items I had nibbled but could not make myself eat.
We ate lots of street food. It was so good! We had such a good day hanging out together.
