My next and final stop in India is Mumbai. I’ve talked to every Indian and they still call it Bombay, and in all my conversations with them, I felt like if I called Bombay, Mumbai that I would lose standing. While I was making myself comfortable in my room at one of the four star hotels Mumbai is known for, I did a little research and found out that traditionally, the name of the city is Mumbai in Marathi and Gujarati, Bombay in English. Bambai is Hindi, Urdu and Persian. Since I’m an English speaking European, I talked Bombay with every Indian I met. It’s kind of like how Chennai all the English-speaking Indians, so I will call it Madras. When the Shiv Sena party came into power in 1996, the name of the city was changed to Mumbai, they say in honor of a Hindu Goddess.
Originally, I was going to take about a twenty-four hour train from Chennai to Mumbai. But, I realized that a plane ticket was so much less, it made so much more sense for me to spend one of my final days in India exploring Chennai some more, and not sit on a train for a whole 24 hours, which I’ve already done plenty of, believe me, my but still hurts. While in India, I found out I could fly from one end of the country to the other in two hours, but on a train, it will take well over three days. I like riding the rails, I mean it’s the quintessential India experience, but, heck, I have the money, so why not spend a little more and cover more of the country in less time. The airlines will take better care of me than on a train any day and I got to eat coconut chutney with couscous. Even in the airport, the staff took very good care of me. I never got that riding on the trains.
It was a tough decision, because I really do enjoy the connectedness to the people of India, but I really appreciated having more time to explore India by flying there instead
