At the end of october my hosts had to got to Mumbai, former known as Bombay, for the registration as an expat.
So we tvs were very excited to see another indian city.... And WOW, what a city that is!!!
According to extrapolations carried out by the World Gazetteer in 2008, Mumbai has a population of 13.662.885 and the Mumbai Metropolitan Area has a population of 20.870.764 !!!
The population density is estimated to be about 22,000 persons per square kilometre.
So Mumbai is India's biggest city and surely one of worlds most expansive Real Estate areas.
Mumbai is so much of everything you can imagine.
It's unbelievleably dirty and ugly,
but beautiful and facinating.
You get every kind of Designer Shop there like Prada or Luis Vuitton
and on every street's corner little children, holding Babys in their arms, coming to you sitting in the three-wheeler to beg some money.
You sometimes can hardly breathe because of the smog (people say, to breathe one day in Mumbai is like smoking one package of zigarettes)
and it is home of the worlds biggest film industry, called Bollywood, who produces 1 movie each day in the average.
Not only thousands, but millions of people (54% of the population) sleeps literally on the street or in slums built of carbage. They came from the villages on the surch for work and a little wealth and a better future for their children.
And everybody, who visited Mumbai once, wonders, when this city will collapse?!
We stopped at a true Landmark of Mumbai, The Gateway of India, which was built to commemorate the arrival in India, on 2 December 1911, of King George V and Queen Mary and was completed on 4 December, 1924.
Opposite of the gate, there is the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, that has hosted a lot of famous people thru all times.
And none of us could imagine, that just a few weeks after our visit, a terrible terror attac happend just inside this nice hotel.
Over 100 people died in Mumbai, it was one of india's very black days.
Humans can sometimes be just so cruel and stupid, I just cannot believe.....
