Atul's Blog about Clustering, high availability and storage

Mumbai Trip

Today was the second day in Mumbai. I am here to attend Lustre file system training by Cluster File Systems Inc. Today I realized that Mumbai is really BIGGGG! It took us one and half hour to travel from Andheri to Taj Mahal hotel near Gateway of India in the early morning. Roads were relatively empty and cab driver was driving at full speed. Still one and half hour... Luckily we did not travel by local trains. Early morning is THE RUSH HOUR in Mumbai local trains.

Taj Mahal hotel is architecturally wonderful. Taj group has now built another new building just next to old Taj, but the old Taj still steals the glamour. Taj combined with Gateway of India makes a rare combination which you must visit if you are first time in Mumbai.

Training went on for the whole day. I decided to blog about training some other day. In the evening we decided to go on shopping spree after the training. We left Taj and went hunting for leather jackets. A nice jacket is the thing I was looking for since many days. A jacket is a must have if are in Bangalore and travel on a bike. For a Mumbai resident, leather jacket is a useless thing. Whether is so damp and moist in Mumbai that with minimal cloths you sweat a lot. Think what will happen if someone wears a leather jacket.....

After visiting few shops in VT and Fort area, my cousin Gandhar suggested to go to leather bazaar in Syon. According to him Syon is the place to shop if you are looking for leather accessories. All you need is bargaining skills. We visited every good shop in the bazaar and finally ended up with 3 great jackets, 2 belts and 2 purses. We are very happy, we almost reduced the initial price by 50% by bargaining. That's a great achievement for me. Never in my life, I would have bargained so much. Gandhar told me the secret, all the leather goods were manufactured in nearby Dharavi slum. Apparently this is a big business in Dharavi and hence shop owners can reduce price so much.

After finishing shopping we realized that we were left with only Rs 70. We barely could manage a auto-rikshaw (tuk-tuk) to come back to Andheri. Took a nice bath with cold water, watched New zeland beat South Africa by 85 runs in Champions troffee and now recollecting the whole day events.