Lima is for Lovers (and Hungry Stomachs)

Well hey there, fellow Awesome Seekers.

WELCOME TO SOUTH AMERICA.

This is my first time on this continent, and to say I'm excited is perhaps one of the biggest understatements in the history of the world.  Or at least of this blog.  If you've had the misfortune of being anywhere within five feet of me in the last few months, you are well aware of JUST HOW PUMPED I have been to go on this adventure.

ANYWAY...

Lima:  Undoubtedly the first stop on pretty much any visit to Peru.  It's the biggest city in this country with a little less than 9 million people.  It's massive, sprawling, and traffic-filled, but also quaintly and very beautifully nestled right next to the Pacific Ocean.  Drive down the Circuito de Playa--or the road right up against the beach--and you could swear you're in Southern California on your way from Malibu to Santa Monica.  There's even a pier that juts boldly into the ocean.

Lima is also, I've noticed, for lovers--it's hard to look at this city without seeing couples cutely lost in each others' worlds.  Everywhere.  I saw a few couples cuddling at a construction site, for example.  It's sickening and fantastic; there's a popular park called El Parque del Amor, with mosaic benches reminiscent of Gaudi's in Barcelona, topped off with a giant statue of a couple full on making out in a passionate embrace.  It all makes you both want to puke and find the love of your life, especially at sunset.  For a single girl without a main squeeze in sight...it's begrudgingly beautiful.

We get it, Lima--you're romantic.  Now stop making us gals that are here for work feel lonely. 

We were greeted at the airport with a sign (I always miss this when I travel not for work), and were immediately welcomed into the five-star arms of The Belmond brand.  This was a (Awesome) recurring theme of this trip, as they were our sponsor-turned-hand-holder-turned-comfort-provider-turned-over-the-top-spoiler throughout.   

I am not worthy of the amount of luxe, believe me.

(SIDENOTE: Let me just throw this in now, and then continue on with a discussion of Peru.  The Belmond will ruin you for any other hotel experience ever.  It's just a thing.  But it is a wonderful, luxurious, take-me-away-and-never-look-back kind of thing.  Consider it, if you ever make it to this part of the world.  A few nights at a Belmond hotel is a great way to bookend a rough-and-tumble adventure at Machu Picchu.)

Ok, so...Lima.  If you read a guide book about Lima, or perhaps tune into some of the online travel conversation, a lot of the advice you'll get goes something like this: "Stay there for a night, and then move on with your trip--there is nothing in this congested city to see."

Awesome Seekers, I beg to differ.

Lima has recently become synonymous with good food.  No, wait--not just good food, but the kind of food that defines a culinary adventure, a city that begs you to eat, eat, eat, and then shoves more food down your throat when you're full.  If you do Lima right, you should never be hungry, but always be hankering.  At least that's what I took away from it all.

We were, admittedly and unfortunately, only in the city for about 24 hours, but in those hours, we ate. 

And ate. 

And ate.

(I later talked to a couple from Mexico who had spent a whole six days in Lima--just eating!--before moving on to the rest of the country.)

Our Guide to All Things Edible for the day was chef Jean Paul Barbier (who can be found at the restaurant Tragaluz in Miraflores), a man who has cooked for a fistful (or two) of celebrities in his time, and knows his Peruvian foods without missing a beat.  The first stop was the Mercado Surquillo in Miraflores, a market that, I was told, is a pretty typical neighborhood market.  There are, of course, supermarkets in Lima, but the mercados are kind of like daily farmers' markets, offering high quality fresh ingredients to families and chefs alike.

There are a few reasons for Peru's recent rise on the food scene, one of them probably being that Peru's economy has been booming as of late, allowing a vivid and expressive restaurant scene to truly begin to thrive.  But certain gastronomic groundwork had already been laid long before, particularly through the mix of cultures that make Peru, PERU--global influences brought on the backs of immigrants from Spain, Italy, Germany, China, Japan, and West Africa that combined with the already developed Peruvian palate to create new national dishes like lomo saltado or even ceviche, which is thought to have its roots--at least partially, and with dispute--in the Moorish culture that came with Spanish conquistadors. 

But maybe one of the biggest reasons Peru has such a blossoming food scene is simply because it has so much food.  This place is fertile.  The mercado was practically overflowing with produce--and with a whole lot of produce I had never even heard of before.  (There were avocados there as BIG AS MY HEAD, which is pretty much my definition of Awesome.)

Peru has three different regions--the mountains, the coast, and the Amazon--and each region has its own personality with distinct ecosystems.  Of the 112 bioclimates in the world (some say 104--either way, there are a lot), Peru has 84 of them--which means, as our guide explained, Peru can "grow almost everything and anything."  And it's true:  People in this area of the world have been mastering the art of agriculture for hundreds if not thousands of years (more on this later).  The potato as we know it was developed in Peru (there are somewhere around 4,000 types of potato in Peru, which makes eating even french fries a serious delight).  Avocados, peppers, tomatoes, cocoa, corn (lots and lots of corn)--all native to this part of the planet.  Basic staples for delicious eating just sprout from the earth here.

Peru also has a lot of not basic staples too, or at least foods that had never crossed my path before.  Chef Jean Paul steered me in the direction of fruits and veggies like granadilla, caigua, and--perhaps the weirdest--pacay, a giant pea-pod-looking thing filled with a starchy, sweet fruit the consistency of Styrofoam and giant black seeds to match. 

Next, Chef Jean Paul bought fresh fish at the market, and mixed us up some stunning ceviche back at the restaurant, explaining the key ingredient to Peruvian ceviche, the leche de tigre, or Tiger's milk. (Apparently, if you mix it with pisco, Peru's national spirit, it makes one hell of a hangover cure.  I can't say I tried it, but something tells me the Peruvians know their hangover cures.  I'll take their word for it.)

I'll admit, I'm not a huge fan of seafood usually, but this stuff--it was good.  Really, really good.  Slightly spicy, fantastically tart, and incredibly fresh, accompanied by sweet potatoes and two different kinds of corn to help construct the perfect bite.  When he finished it out by bringing us all pisco sours to wash it down--well, I might as well have died and gone to (tastebud) heaven. 

It was like Peru had just jumped inside my belly.

And that was just the beginning of chef Jean Paul's showcase.  He proceeded to throw down course after course of scallops and shrimp and beef and quail eggs and gnocchi and potatoes (lots of potatoes) and avocado that wowed us all into a foreign food coma, making this whole "work" thing we're supposed to be doing a difficult concept later in the afternoon.  It was truly Awesome.

Work on we did, though.  The afternoon was filled with the more historic (and picturesque) sites of Lima, which began to paint the picture of just how beautiful this city is up close.  Sure, from far away, it's a bit overwhelming: bland buildings crawling up hillsides and and spilling across any open space, busy traffic, billboards filled with advertisements--all coupled against a sky that was (at least while were there) gray and depressing.

But, like a lot of places, it's the details that make it magical.

And Awesome, of course.

Because what would the world be like without Awesome.

 

(SIDENOTE: These balconies pictured above are on the Archbishop's Palace, or the administrative headquarters of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lima.  They're a good example of the famous wooden balconies of Lima, called celocias (from the word "jealousy"), which were built during the Spanish and signified the Moorish influence.  The balconies were used as a place for women to be allowed outside (kind of) without being seen.  Apparently this is the only "outside" those women really ever got.  Major bummer.  BUT they look really pretty, don't they...?)

 

You caught me, Lima.  I guess you really can't be in Lima without falling in love at least a bit...

Mumbai: A City Oozing With Awesome

Hey there Fellow Awesome Seekers.  It's been a long time, I know.  MONTHS since I made it all the way around the globe, and I have yet to even begin to tell you about what may be the Most Awesome City on the Planet.

How could this be???

Well, two reasons, really.  (Three if you count seemingly endless shifts behind the bar.)

First: After returning, I found myself in what can only be described as a Travel Hangover.  Jet lag??  Sure, but it was more than that.  It was a full-on, mind-obscuring haze, a travel-induced body-and-mind slump.  It was the kind of low energy blah where I silently scrutinized my "normal" surroundings, seeing them in a whole new light; where I slept way too much, dreaming about the places I'd been in order to maybe process it all a little more; where I found myself newly thankful for all I have, while missing what I'd left behind; where I curled up on the couch for days simply being still because I had been moving non-stop for three weeks and 24,807 miles (but who's counting, right?).

Travel Hangover.  It's a thing, guys, I swear.

Second: I've been struggling with how to even begin to describe Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the final stop on the trip, and (dare I say it?) my new Favorite City. 

Since touching down in Mumbai, I had been jotting down words and phrases, trying to figure out how to portray a city that immediately punches you in the face so hard you reel for days and days before finally settling into it.  

I've been to crazy cities before--Cairo specifically comes to mind--but Mumbai is a whole new kind of Woah.  Mumbai assaults your senses, all at once and completely unapologetically.  Mumbai brazenly shouts "I DO WHAT I WANT" over and over again, and all you can do as a visitor is nod and hold on tight.

(We landed in Mumbai at night, and one of the first things our driver told us was, "To drive in Bombay, you need three things: Good breaks, good horn, and good luck."  It took about ten seconds of observation to understand exactly what he was talking about.)

Mumbai smells--but not good or bad, just distinct, and the smell changes constantly, wavering from curry to jasmine to sewage to car exhaust to chai and back again.  Everything is colorful--doorframes adorned with carnations, women wrapped in saris, trucks hand-painted with mesmerizing detail, cows covered in decoration, shops selling knickknacks pilled so high the shopkeeper seems buried.

It's hot. Sweat poured from my pores, drenched my clothes, stuck dirt to my skin, and caused general discomfort that was mostly ignored--thanks to the chaos.  

Mumbai defines busy.  

People push constantly--not aggressively, but indifferently--and motorbikes, auto-rickshaws, taxis, trucks, and bicycles vie for attention as pedestrians attempt to simply stay alive. Beggars, mostly children with children, are omnipresent, pulling at shirts, tapping on car windows, staring into souls.  

This city pulls at heartstrings.  It builds you up, then quickly breaks you down.  It is an enveloping emotional roller coaster. 

And the noise never stops.  Honking, yelling, children screaming, people chattering to produce a cacophony of general-city-living until it becomes the kind of norm where silence, if found, is eerie.

It isn't a city for travelers looking for a relaxing getaway, but it's a city made for photographers, filmmakers, explorers, and, of course, Awesome Seekers.  Sure, Mumbai explodes with an overall sense of Awesome, but it's the seemingly endless treasure hunt of little Awesome (Awesomette, if you will) that makes the city so much fun.  It is rich in detail--if your eyes are open wide enough, you could stand in one place for hours and never get bored.

Mumbai, you guys.  It is nuts.  But, oh so amazingly Awesome.

Ok, now let's back up a bit...

India has been on my list of "MUST GO PLACES" for years, but Mumbai specifically topped that list about four years ago, when I found myself enthralled with a life-changing, mind-blowing, how-did-someone-WRITE-this book called Shantaram.  (Haven't read it?  Stop what you're doing right now and get a copy.  Seriously.  I'll still be here when you get back.)

Ever since then, in the back of my mind, there's been a little voice yelling "Go to Mumbai. Now."

But I have to admit I was also I little worried.  Mumbai hasn't gotten the best reputation lately in terms of safety--especially for women, and especially for foreign women.  (In fact, India as a whole isn't getting good press on its treatment of women these days.)  One of our crew members who met us in Mumbai said that both the men sitting on either side of her on the plane over had warned her to "be safe" because they had each known a foreign woman who had "gone missing" in Mumbai.  Missing.  Like never-heard-from-again kind of missing.

Gone.

Not exactly comforting first impressions of a city.

And, as she told me that on our first night in Mumbai, looking out at the sprawling city from our hotel room, I could understand how "going missing" would be relatively easy here.  The crowds of people, the maze-like slums, the bustling traffic and crumbling infrastructure--one ill-minded person with a strong grip and you could really be gone for good.

I went to bed that first night excited that I was finally in Mumbai, but kinda scared about what that might mean.  After all, being blonde and foreign and a woman has gotten me in some...rather terrible...situations abroad before.

But, as I came to discover in the next six days, Mumbai is a place full of surprises.

I was never grabbed inappropriately (or worse) once in six days, which is something I can't say for a lot of other places I've been.  And the men in Mumbai--they met my gaze, talked to me like an equal, smiled at me like a friend, starred at me with curiosity rather than that I'm-undressing-you-in-my-mind I became so familiar with when I lived in Jordan.  Now, that's not at all to say that bad (read: awful) things don't happen to women in Mumbai; I just didn't personally feel it like I have in other places.

One of the women we met told me that Mumbai is actually the safest city in India to be a woman, that she often takes taxis alone late at night, maybe even after a few drinks, and feels totally fine.  Our guide confirmed that, but added that despite the safety, there are very few public women's restrooms in the city, meaning that women suffer from UTIs frequently (ouch)--which made me think there must not be much of a collective women's voice in the city as a whole.   I also noticed that women waited--sometimes for a while--for the "women only" busses, and piled themselves onto the "women only" train cars.  It's possible that "safest city in India for women" might not really mean all that much, considering the length women will take to not have contact with strange men.

Our guide in Mumbai, an incredibly spiritual, essence-of-a-yogi man named Ram (who embodied every stereotype associated with a tour guide in India, although Ram, in my eyes, was the protoplast), started off our meeting on the first day with this--which, when I look back at it, I think was a recommendation for how to approach Mumbai specifically:

"It is about integrating between the head and the heart, the logical and the illogical, the thinking and the feeling.  It is about moving from within to without.  This is what's important." He continued in his sing-song Indian accent as we walked out the front door of our hotel. "Let's look for all the aspects," he said, making his hands wide, "and not just," he brought his hands very close together, "the information."

Then he looked up, smiled.  "So," he said, nodding his head in the side-to-side way I came to love in the next few days, "let's begin with a namaste, shall we?"

When in Rome Mumbai...

Mumbai has a population of roughly 12 million (with some estimates of the metropolitan region being as high as 20 million), with a density of almost 60,000 people per square mile (to put that in perspective, Manhattan's population density is around 27,000 per square mile).  And, on top of that, I read somewhere that an estimated 300 families are moving to Mumbai a day--no doubt in search of a slice of India's ever growing GDP.

People are packed in this city--and most are packed even tighter than the statistics show.  Around 50% of Mumbai's population live in slums, and those slums take up only 10% of the total land in the city.  (You can do the math if you want, but you get the idea: There are a lot of people trying to exist together here.)

We took a day trip to the Dharavi slum--which is not only the largest slum in Mumbai, but also the largest slum in India, and, in turn, the largest slum in Asia.  (It should also be noted that it is the slum depicted in the epically popular movie Slumdog Millionaire).  With a population of around one million, and a size of 1.75 square kilometers (or less than one square mile), Dharavi takes Mumbai's crowds to a whole new level.

The word slum has all kinds of negative connotations--all of which were flowing through my head on the morning I woke up to make the trip to Dharavi.  I was nervous.  I pictured, well, basically numerous scenes from Slumdog Millionaire.  I even turned to Zoe, my roommate, as I was getting ready in the morning and said something to the extent of, "I'm trying to figure out how to prepare myself to be depressed all day."

And I know I'm not the only one, because after I got back to the hotel and posted a single picture of Dharavi on Facebook (and noted that it was a slum), comments started popping up about it being "devastating" or "sad" or "terrible".

(Perhaps this is why so many people in India had a problem with the movie Slumdog Millionaire.)

I get it.  We've been programmed to view slums as a living situation forced upon a person, like the aftermath of a natural disaster.  And it gets complicated, because I'm sure the conditions aren't ideal for everyone there, but I also think it's a heck of a lot more complex than an outsider's initial response can neatly package.

Ram, our guide, tried to explain the dynamics of the intense poverty found in Mumbai on our way to Dharavi.  

"What contributes?" He asked us, not waiting for an answer. "The caste system? Perhaps, but there is more.  It is the do's and the don'ts, the social pressures.  You cannot achieve more than you are destined to--it is the system of karma, of destiny, the idea that everything that you give will come back to you slowly."

He paused.

"There is this idea that you deserve in some way the surroundings that you find yourself in.  People here in India, well, they believe maybe a bit too much in the fact of karma.  Every situation you are in," he explained, "is the cumulative response to the universe based on your past actions, so you just live in the now.  You look at the rich man and think, 'He is rich because he is destined to be rich, I am poor because I am destined to be poor.' It all begins to lapse into complacency."

Now, my American born-and-raised mind did not quite understand this.  I was raised to dream big, reach for the stars, pick yourself up from your own bootstraps.  I was taught from a young age to always strive for betterment, that I could be anything and do anything.   The American Dream.

"So you're telling me that people are happy with the living conditions?  That nobody wants better access to, say, clean water or food or better shelter?" I asked from the back seat of the car.

"It's very complex..." Ram answered slowly, "People may not be content necessarily, but not ambitious either.  The average person is not striving to make it into the book of records, for example."

Statistics about Dharavi aren't easy to come by, but here's the picture you'll generally get if you google it (and take these with a grain of salt):  From what I could find, one third of the population has no access to clean drinking water, and it's been estimated that there is only one toilet for every 1,440 people.  The poor drainage systems and sanitary conditions lead to widespread disease--as a result, there are somewhere around 4,000 cases of disease reported daily in Dharavi.  The monsoon season only makes matters worse, as you can imagine, sometimes flooding streets and houses with sewage.

Doesn't exactly sound like the kinda place you want to spend a day.  But, Awesome Seekers, perhaps that's why we travel instead of googling things all day, because as it turns out, Dharavi was pretty Awesome.

We were lead around Dharavi for the day by Fahim Vora, a resident of Dharavi, and also one of the creators of a tour company that trains students as tour guides, showing visitors the "local" side of the slum (while also providing students with an income to pay for school).  The tour was excellent; but what we even more refreshing was the pride that Fahim clearly had in his home.

He explained that Dharavi is essentially its own functioning city, with police stations, hospitals, schools, shops.  "You have everything you need right here," he told us.

Nearly every adult is occupied--meaning that even if they aren't employed by someone, they have found a way to make their own living.  The result is a surprisingly aggressive economy, built on four major industries: recycling, garments, leather, and pottery.  There are over 5,000 businesses in the slum, and some 15,000 one room factories.  Everywhere you look, someone is working--pounding, washing, sorting, welding, selling, baking, sewing, cutting.  It really is impressive.

The goods from Dharavi get exported all over the world.  Ever wondered what happens to all those containers from your airline meal?  Well, I can't be certain, but I did see a room devoted entirely to sorting, washing, and recycling containers that looked eerily like the ones I had just eaten off of on my way to Mumbai, used once and then forgotten about.  And this kind of innovation, this kind of refusal to let anything go to waste is seen everywhere in Dharavi.

This informal economy turns into a lot of money every year--estimates of how much Dharavi brings in yearly range from $500 million to $1 billion, depending on who you ask.  Which, if you don't think about it, seem almost lucrative--until you do the math and realize that with a one million person population, those numbers equal somewhere between $500 and $1,000 per person, per year.

That's not very much, no matter how you swing it.

And there's no way that money is being divided equally by everyone.  Those that run the industries and own the companies are literally millionaires ("Still living in Dharavi!" Fahim exclaimed), while the people who are, for example, sorting the trash for a living are making no more than $3 a day, and sleeping in a shanty above the trash piles.

I will never again complain about my bartending job.  I will never again complain about my bartending job.  I will never again complain about my bartending job.

But there is a sense of growth and the idea that one's life can upgrade.  People often aim to move into better apartments, or add on to what they already have.  And those that make it big--the millionaires that own the companies for example--they still live in Dharavi.  "They will stay here because their family and life are here," Fahim explained.  "Families have been here for centuries.  There is an attachment, and people don't want to move."

So what's the take away from Dharavi?  Well, there was definitely a sense of ambition.  And I wasn't depressed when I left.  Impressed, yes--depressed, not so much.  I'm not really sure how to package up such a diverse, bustling, overwhelming place, but maybe that's the takeaway in itself--simplistic and all encompassing words like devastating and sad are not mine to use on a place like Dharavi.  And if you'd ask any of these people picture below, people that actually live there, I bet they wouldn't like those words used to describe their home a whole lot either.

Now, Awesome Seekers, this blog has dragged on much too long, and I still feel like I have barely scratched the surface of the Awesome that is Mumbai.  I have one final example that might possibly begin to do it justice.  On our last night in the city, we were shown around by a guide from the hotel, set on showing us some of her favorite places in Mumbai.  (Yes please!)

After a gorgeous sunset at Juhu Beach--filled with families, and snow cones, and man-powered ferris wheels--we headed to Bhuleshwar Market.  This place will forever stay in my heart as potentially the most Awesome place I have every unexpectedly found myself.  A predominately Hindu market, Bhuleshwar is not only a humming, hustling street market (with car traffic, of course!), but also home to some 300 "homeless" cows, who are respected, fed, and cared for by the market patrons and shopkeepers.

What.

We went at night, and this place was nuts.  I can confidently say I have never been in a more crowded circumstance, or been so distracted by all the things to buy.  It was, for someone who loves markets as much as I do, essentially heaven.

Being a Hindu area, there are temples situated throughout the market.  Now, I have no idea what was going on there at the time, or whether what we stumbled upon was normal, or whether our guide knew it was happening--I couldn't find my way in that place by myself to save my life (which was unnerving at times, because our guide was definitely not making sure we were keeping up with her).  Either way, we were led through a seemingly nondescript doorway, into a courtyard that I will never forget.  Somehow the market stalls disappeared and gave way to singing, dancing, colors and lights.  A giant, glowing neon "OM" sign presided over the place, just in case you weren't already overwhelmed with an enveloping sense of INDIA.

And then this little girl appeared out of no where.  And I lost it.

I started crying.  Yep, crying.  Crying tears of happiness and oh-my-gosh-I-can't-believe-I'm-really-here while at the same time mumbling under my breath "don't cry, don't cry, don't cry."  It was as if all my dreams of Mumbai--heck, of India--had come true at once, right there in that court yard.  The singing, the dancing, the smells, the colors, the all around jubilation came together to form the Perfect Realization of a place.  It was as if Mumbai, after six days of recognizing me as a mere bystander, had finally opened up its arms, and let me inside.

"Here, Awesome Seeker," Mumbai said, "this is what it's like to be part of me."  And all I could do was clutch at my travel companions, tears welling up, smiling because it felt like I'd been let in on one of the most Awesome secrets ever.

Travel.  There really is nothing else like it.  At least nothing that's legal.

Ram, the connecting thread of wisdom throughout those six days, wrapped it all up nicely.

"Put your heart into it," he smiled, "and then it happens."

Well, Mumbai got my heart.

And it happened.

P.S. Wanna watch a seriously Awesome music video about Mumbai?  YOU KNOW YOU DO.


And just because I get excited when I see the word Awesome anywhere, especially in my new Favorite City: