No Sleep Til Nighttime! (jet lag anthem)

21 May 2011

So I had this mistaken belief that overcoming jet lag was as simple as pulling off an all-nighter: Mumbai is 9 and a half hours ahead of New York time, so just stay up that length of time the first day like a trooper then start your normal routine and you’re done. Shira knew a little better, and now I do, too.  We spent more about 27 hours in airports or planes (plus the trip to JFK), but we made it here, and we’re sleepily surviving.

The highlights:

New York to London (7 hours): We have little to report from this leg of the trip except the overwhelming sense of holy-crikes-we’re-doing-it-now, and the fact that American Airlines now has an extractable remote control embedded into your armrest that allows you to play Tetris and other ‘80’s game on the back of the seat in front of you. The 21^st century is terrific.

Also, “No Strings Attached” is a really terrible movie, even against our low expectations.

In London, nobody said “loo”, “cheerio” or anything else remotely cutesy British, so I’m counting that as an unqualified fail.

London to Bahrain (7 hours): Gulf Air has skimped on Tetris in order to provide you much comfier seats (albeit nothing compared to what was about to come next) and their little video screen in the front would periodically update the passengers on where Mecca was relative to the plane – which I thought was a really nice touch for their Muslim passengers.

The Bahrain airport was a little slice of Florida, with a Disney store, McDonalds and random cars you could buy duty free littering the shops area. Among the items even I didn’t know we had culturally exported were the Myley Cyrus autobiography and the Kim Kardashian workout video.

Bahrain to Mumbai (4 hours): Best flight of our lives. As we checked in, the hostess crossed out our ticket numbers and wrote in something else, which we assumed meant nothing important until we got on the plane and realized we’d been bumped up to FIRST CLASS.

A little advice on first class: you are the king of the airplane. We received a DELECTABLE 3 course, chef prepared meal, were waited on constantly, got hot moist towels, and personal tablet style video screens with posh headphones. We sat in lazyboy recliners where I (a 6’3” guy) could kick and punch from my seat and not hit the one in front of me. I have a feeling they do this periodically for American passengers, and I almost felt bad for my white privilege, until they served us our appetizers.

MUMBAI: a cab ride at 6 AM over 15 miles and through a diversity of neighborhoods gave us our first real sense of the city. Yes, we passed through the slums (or at least adjacent them); yes, we saw people sleeping everywhere in the streets; yes, the air generally smelled bad in a way that’s hard to pinpoint. Also, note that we never stopped for a red light over 15 miles. We were definitely not the only car on the road either – I gasped a couple of times at close calls as our driver sang amiably in the front seat.

Our hotel is on the fourth floor of a generally disreputable looking building, but once you’re in it, it’s not that bad. Our room looks out on the ocean, and yes, it’s really beautiful (until you look down to the street). After we got out the next day I felt like we saw every side of India within two blocks of our apartment – again, many more people sleeping in streets (it seems to be not so taboo here), on the backs of rickshaws, piles of garbage being strewn through by a crowd on the sidewalk, cows walking through the street, street vendors hawking (one guy followed us a block and change as we avoided eye contact asking the “good sir” to buy one of his giant balloons, which are everywhere here for some reason), beggars, guys sitting on the curb hawking tiny plastic toys that might come in Happy Meals, and then the Gateway to India, a giant famous monument on the seashore, extolling the “glory of their imperial majesties” the British monarchs who colonized India. Beautiful, giant palaces butt right up against shanties. It’s extremely stimulating and I love it here – everything I had heard or expected about India has been exceeded based on first impressions. Though we are in the “tourist area,” I can count the number of whites we’ve seen on one hand among the thousands of people in the streets, so we are a target for every vendor or beggar.

Now we move on to looking for a real apartment, before starting work on Monday. Pics forthcoming!

Shira’s note: the lonely planet (our trusty guide) aptly describes this area of Mumbai as being full of gently crumbing mansions.