I mentioned in last week’s Picture of the Week post that I had hired a guide a couple of times while in Mumbai last March, and after evidently asking a million questions about the fishing village featured last week, I guess my guide came to the conclusion that I must REALLY like fishing and the like. He wasn’t wrong – while I don’t personally fish, I have found in my travels that visiting fishing villages can be an interesting view of a particular culture, and one not necessarily “on the beaten path” so to speak. In any case, my guide worked into our afternoon a stop by one of the boat docks and fish markets in the city, and it was quite interesting. For starters, the boats in this particular port were all very large, wooden vessels, and all of them were super colorful, with lots of character. It made for a lot of fun street photography for sure. It was also a bit fascinating to watch the process of off-loading all the fish from the boats, and then the negotiation process of the people there buying fish in bulk, presumably for restaurants around the area.
After about 45 minutes of exploring I had noticed enough funny looks from the workers in the market that I finally said something to my guide about it. He conceded that tourists don’t go there, so the workers weren’t used to seeing foreigners. He also later explained that the port where we were was one of the two ports used by terrorists in 2008 to enter the city, which explained the heavy police and military presence there (and explains why I was instructed not to photograph them). This of course kicked off another series of questions from me, as there was a lot about those attacks that I didn’t understand because our media here in the States didn’t cover much other than the standoff at the Taj Mahal Hotel (you can read more about the attacks here). While no doubt tragic, the conversations helped me better understand part of Mumbai’s history, and underscores why I like hiring guides while traveling. Often times you learn about things you would have never even thought to search out for yourself!
More next week!
–Dan Thompson