17 Dec Meeting Mom in Mumbai

After the yoga training that I was a part of my Mom decided to venture to India to visit. I couldn’t wait to check out India with the queen. Up until this point my only experience with India had been in Goa. Which some people will tell you isn’t the Real India. It is but definitely skewed as it has tons of tourists and is known as the Hawaii of India. I had been to Mumbai but briefly en route to Goa. So I was going to meet my Mom as she arrived at the airport and couldn’t have been more excited about it.

India is full power and can be sensory overload. It was clear that we were tourists and if it wasn’t my mom would happily tell you that she was on vacation from America. People were everywhere, begging for money, striking up random conversations, showing and or yelling at you to buy whatever they were selling. My darling mother not being used to any of this was incessantly getting stuck chatting to someone.  I had been a bit desensitised to this as I didnt want to waste my energy saying no to everyone that wanted money or to take me to a shop where they would make commission or something to that effect. My mom scolded me and said that I was being rude. I had to explain that it wasn’t rude. It was rare to hear someone say excuse me, bless you, please or even thank you. Mumbai alone has a population of 13 million and no concept of personal space. India’s population is 1.252 BILLION and that is from 2013.

We had wandered around and checked out Elephanta caves which is a UNSECO
site. It was almost an hour boat ride and we watched the bustling city line of Mumbai almost the entire way. It was shocking to see such a large city without any end. My mom was admittedly overwhelmed (so was I) we spent lots of decompression time back at the hotel. True. However when you are traveling with the queen and in lap of luxury at a palace you soak it up and enjoy. And we did.