Mumbai - The marketing jingle “Incredible India” is admittedly banal, but if you allow a clutch of paradoxical descriptions – like surprising, prosaic, chaotic, serene, bewildering – to be embraced in one word, “incredible” is a passable adjective.
For a start, the traffic in Mumbai is nothing short of a predictable fright. Sure, I’d heard about the eye-boggling, hooting, tooting swathe that snakes into the city and fans out in every direction 24-7, but you can’t claim to really know that experience until a few nerve endings have been properly shredded.
Indian cars have zero-personal space, and with their “ears” tucked back, weave through six-highway lanes that are supposed to be three, hooting with customary abandon and blissful ignorance of the shocks to a mortal heart. To Western ears, hooting is an aggressive sound, but in India it’s only the car on the right shaving past, saying “see me, I’m here”. By the time I got to the oasis that is the Intercontinental Hotel on Marine Drive, I was in need of a stiff drink.
Amazingly, you get used to it. It’s a matter of giving yourself a chunk more time than usual to cross a road. Half-an-hour, say, which is what it took to traverse the street outside the iconic Victoria train terminus, one of the most regal and impressive examples of colonial architecture in India.
At night, the station’s magical show of lights is complemented by the weave of headlights below, but of course, nobody, but nobody, in Mumbai seems to adhere to traffic lights or even a traffic officer on site.
Eventually, after a lot of unintentional loitering and staring enviably at an elderly man as he walked like Jesus on the water with his hand held up, I asked two cops parked off on motorcycles “how do I cross the street?” They looked at me as though I was asking how to put one foot in front of the other, which in a way I suppose I was.
By the time I’d lurched to the other side, I felt I’d earned a celebratory beer, so I made my way to Leopold Café in the Colaba area, which has boomed in popularity since Gregory David Robert’s bestseller Shantaram, where it gets plenty of reverent mention. “It’s just a hole in the wall,” my young guide told me, in that unexpected but delightfully candid manner of Indian folk.
He’s not far off the mark, but it’s a vibey little place, good for a paneer tikka and the signature “Tower of Beer” (which constitutes two pitchers) if you’re a group, and a trip down memory lane with 1980s disco hits like Footloose and Girls on Film.
Still, back at the Intercontinental is Mumbai’s coolest hangout (Lonely Planet agrees), the rooftop Dome bar. So, with a rather pricey Corona (R130) at Leopold’s, I dribbled back into the humid human soup outside and caught a taxi back, taking the lift to the top floor and plonking myself on a crisp white sofa, in a trippy daze, fuelled by the ubiquitous trance music, to assimilate one of the city’s best aerial views of the Queens Necklace, the semi-circle of lights around the bay.
It’s a treat to be in a hotel that happens to contain a good night spot, because the novelty of getting around Mumbai wears thin as midnight approaches. A zip down the lift and I was tucked between lovely white sheets in my elegant, air-conditioned room.
If your ship has yet to come in, lost at sea like mine, and you can’t afford the palatial Taj Mahal Palace at the Gateway of India, the Intercontinental is ideal, whether you’re on business or holiday. It’s a contemporary, 59-room boutique hotel so it has that personal touch, with superb food offerings at two restaurants, Long & Short (for street fare) and Kebab Corner (speciality Indian fare). You get a free 20-minute massage, but you can also book a treatment in your room, and there’s a small gym.
It’s the perfect spot to launch a foray into Mumbai, which to me looks like a down-at-heel London and begs for more time than I had to explore it.
The following day I flew to Cochin, in Kerala state on India’s west coast. Cochin has been a port city since 1341, a spice trade stronghold for the Portuguese, Dutch then British empires. Old Cochin is a heady mix of all these influences, but I was particularly interested in the Paradesi Synagogue, the oldest (15th-century) synagogue in the Commonwealth. Shabby, rustic and airy inside, the ceiling is liberally bedecked with elaborate chandeliers, and if there’s an epicentre of religious tolerance, this old synagogue has to be it. “There are only six Jews in Cochin. The youngest one, a lady in her late 40s, is at the door. Let me do the talking. She is the sort of character that doesn’t let you speak,” my guide Satish cryptically cautioned. Still, she allows everyone in, including Muslim men in groups, Indian women in saris and me in a sun dress. And within spitting distance is the ancient mosque, temple and church, all coexisting in peaceful unison.
Just before we hit Jew Street, a charming alley of shops and eateries, Satish pulled me aside and addressed me earnestly. “If you buy anything, be sure to bargain. Don’t be put off, it is the way things work here. The opening price will be double of what you can expect to pay. Are you clear?” But again, until you’ve jumped this hoop, it’s all academic. And jump it you will, because the shops here are impossible to resist, selling jewellery in attractive modern designs, exquisite silk cloths, arts and crafts that you can only acquire in exotic India.
It took a long stretch of time, a cup of masala tea and a staged walkout, during a gruelling cat-and-mouse bartering session, before I managed to escape the Indian Bazaar with an expanse of beautiful cloth intricately sewn from the over-the-top nuptial gowns of many Indian grooms, at a little more than half the price it was originally pitched for.
What I’d really come to Cochin for, however, was its famous backwaters, the Venice of the East. If these watery meditations in a boat are all you come to India for, it’s worth it. Rather than visit Alleppey, the more touristy backwater hub, my guide took me to Kumarakom, with its hundreds of interlinked canals set against the backdrop of the Vembanad Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Kerala. We set off in a long motor boat, quietly passing chilled-out houses painted in various bright colours – “the colours are to warm yourself up during the monsoon season” and frequently, women in their usual bright hues washing clothes in the waterway.
We passed the Sree Kumaramangalam Temple, in honour of a “living god” who died in 1936. “He is a living god because he was a man of healing. He did a lot of social work,” explained Satish. Just my kind of god, I thought.
Three hours of boating later and I was in a kind of contented funk, but it was time for lunch, so we alighted and taxied to Abad hotel, a well-known franchise in India. “It is better to lunch in a hotel,” stressed Satish, dissuading me from trying a streetside eatery and no doubt evading another case of tourist Delhi belly.
Were I to return, I’d book onto a houseboat for a night, with all food on board (spicy Kerala cuisine), and uninterruptedly continue this waking dream, stepping off here and there to visit villages, temples, churches and farms. In this troubled world of ours, Kerala is the perfect antidote.
Again, my land base was the Intercontinental, the sprawling, Crowne Plaza resort with its restaurants, spa, hair and beauty salon and lovely warm pools. In India, it’s important to have a refuge that feels homely, where you’re well-looked after, the food is good and safe and the staff well accustomed to any request.
The Intercontinental hotels absolutely fit this bill. A must at their Crowne Plaza is its signature Ayurvedic massage, an extravagant, long-sweeping oil-up from head to toe, unfolding over two and a half hours (for 6 200 rupees or R1 349). It’s an indulgence I hope that heaven, if against the odds I get there, offers on tap.
l Intercontinental Hotel, Mumbai: King Deluxe room – 11 000 rupees (R2 395) plus tax. Crowne Plaza, Cochin: King Deluxe room – 7 500 rupees (R1 631), plus tax. www.ihg.com
l Flights were business class, courtesy Emirates Airlines, via Dubai. www.emirates.com
Helen Grange, Saturday Star