This is a bit hard to explain. In December of 2016 we went with three friends to the tribal regions in the mountains of northern India. These areas are visited very little … not at all by Americans, not very much by Europeans, and not too much more than that by other Indians. So as you might imagine, the tourist infrastructure is not very well developed. You’ve already seen several posts from this area: The headhunters of Hong Phoi, the plug nosed women, the opium smokers of Lungwa, and a few others. We remained in the tribal highlands for about a month, where we generally stayed in local hotels or people’s homes that were pleasant enough, but certainly not up to par in terms of the convenient modernity to which most of us are used. Hospitality standards in this area of India are much lower than in the west.

Then we went on to Mumbai, and my wife and I separated from our friends. Here, finally, we stayed in a modern, ultra luxurious hotel. The Taj Mahal Palace is considered to be one of the best hotels in the world. Unfortunately, back in 2008, this well known place was invaded by terrorists in a series of coordinated actions carried out by a Pakistani-based extremist group. The attackers targeted multiple locations in Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, as well as the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, a Jewish community center, and other high-profile sites. The motives behind the attack were multifaceted, but it is generally believed that the terrorists aimed to create fear and chaos, damage India's image internationally, and undermine India-Pakistan relations. As you might guess, the security at the place when we stayed there just a few years later was overwhelming. Just to visit the coffee shop meant having to pass through several layers of screening. On the other side, though, we guests were so pampered that they wouldn’t even let us ring our own elevator buttons, the food in the restaurants was always pre cut if requested, and room service was a given. They wouldn’t even allow us to leave tips. This is the hotel where anyone who is anyone stays if they happen to be visiting Mumbai. We spotted several movie stars in the dining room while we were there.

Anyway, we spent a week in Mumbai visiting all its sights, and one of these days I may even post a couple more of them for you. I already did post photos of Mumbai’s famous laundry.

On our third or fourth day in Mumbai I asked the concierge to please get me a taxi that I can use for several hours, with an arrangement to pay after I am returned to the hotel. This is a very common practice that is a win win situation for everybody concerned. The tourist gets a vetted trustworthy driver, and the driver knows where that tourist “lives,” so he cannot skip out on paying the fare. (By the way, if you’re interested in getting some idea of what the Taj Hotel is like, take out or stream the video called “Hotel Mumbai,” made in 2018. It was filmed on location right there, and is one terrific flick. The star of the movie is Dev Patel, whom I’m certain you will recognize.)

When the taxi arrived, expecting to be asked to visit some tourist site, I instead asked him to take me to the neighborhood in which he lived. Why?? I wanted to see and walk through a real Indian neighborhood, not one of the kind of places where tourists are usually taken to, and I wanted to be alone while I was there, not with some guide. He was surprised, but he drove me there, and even pointed out the building in which he resided, parked his car nearly in front of it, let me out, and indicated the direction in which I should walk.

Now I know I’m a little headstrong, but I’m not completely stupid. I’m aware that there is lots of crime in India, especially in large cities, and very especially against confused tourists. But the crime is never violent. It’s generally stuff like pick-pocketing or snatch and run. So I brought very little money, just some basic ID, and only a photocopy of my passport. My wallet was back in the hotel safe, and the money I had with me was in my shoes. The camera I carried was a little underwater job whose body was a kind of plastic looking shiny aquamarine color. It’s not a bad camera, only five mp with a four times lens, but it does a good enough job for my purposes … I do very little underwater work, like the whale photos I submitted here, and mostly use it only when the weather is very bad. And it really looks dinky and cheap, which it is. My more substantial cameras remained back in the Taj, also in their safe.

And off I went.

The rest of this little tale is rather boring, as nothing happened. I strolled through the area for a few hours and, as I walked, I received a lot of side eyes and/or smiles. Sometimes even waves. Nobody ever bothered me, and I got to see a real neighborhood without interference from a well meaning guide. I practiced my usual MO, which is to say I took candid shots from the hip first, then asked permission of my subjects. If they agreed, I took a few more pictures while they stood self consciously at attention and smiled broadly, then I showed them the photos and went off. If they said no, I erased their pics later on. Nothing interesting … meaning bad … happened, and I am now sharing some of this experience with you.

When editing these, I usually try to put the photos in some sort of order that makes a kind of sense. In this case, I decided to post them in the exact order in which I took them. I took over two thousand pictures here, and eventually culled them down to about two hundred for my own collection. (I really enjoyed this little walk and wanted to remember so much of it.) For this post, I re-edited them and got the whole down to forty, which is by far a more tractable number.