Bombay: Chasing the Unicorn

Leopold Cafe


Went to Bombay this last weekend for a conference and to speak at a university. Its an awesome city, and I'll go back soon and do the full photo tour to ensure there are more compelling blog entries. Its by a considerable margin my favorite city in India, and I've been to all the big ones now. Sure, its dirty and old, but there is a bunch of new modern buildings, as well as a nice high rise skyline over the bay extending to the Arabian sea. The first night there, we stayed at the Taj President and ate dinner there, then went out on the town. Its important to mention that in Bangalore everything closes at 11pm. All bars and clubs. And there is this rule about not being able to serve alcohol and dance in the same establishment. Bombay is open all night. We hit the town at around 11pm, and club hopped through town until about 3am. Clubs are expensive, like US prices. At one club, 4 redbull and grey goose were 4000 INR, or about $20 US a piece. At another, 3 Corona were 2000 INR. But the music was loud, the clubs were packed, the people were dressed to the nines, and the women were beautiful. Cleavage, mini skirts, little party dresses, all the things that would get a woman stoned here in Bangalore. Not a saree in sight. We had been told by a couple guys that lived in Bombay before moving down to Bangalore for DreamWorks that Guinness was freely available there. Its completely unavailable in Bangalore. Like, at the Irish pub inside the 5 star Windsor hotel when I asked if they had Guinness he just laughed at me and confirmed that they only had Kingfisher. So, a top priority for me was to have a cold, delicious Guinness. It quickly became apparent to me that we were bold faced lied to, and Guinness was as unavailable in Bombay as it is in Bangalore. After the 3rd or so place that didn't have it, I dubbed Guinness as a unicorn, a mythical beast that doesn't really exist, but is lovely in concept and often spoke of. The rest of the night was "chasing the unicorn". Of course the unicorn was never found. Its a fucking unicorn.
Night two we went down to the Taj Palace, an amazingly beautiful hotel that was unfortunately the site of the 26/11 terrorist bombing in mumbai last year. A good portion of the front entry of the hotel is still boarded up to cover the bomb damage , and the "palace" part of the hotel is still not open for occupancy, just the "tower" part. We met up with an Australian we met at the conference that day, and headed down to Leopold Cafe. Leopold was made famous by being the hang out of Gregory Roberts in his beautifully written novel Shantaram, and made infamous as the second stop of the terrorists who rained machine gun fire into the open front cafe, killing a dozen people in the cafe and injuring scores more, right after having killed 50 people at the train station, on the way to the Taj to bomb it and raid the rooms hunting for foreigners.
Leopold Cafe is a big, bustling, dirty place and a ton of fun. Its a complete cross section of people, from teenagers sharing some western food, to old people, foreigners, locals, and everyone else. The beer (Kingfisher only, of course) is served in big tubes they call pitchers but more resemble big beer bongs. The food is good, and surprisingly so is the service. We stayed there for the whole night.
Night three our IIT presentation went late. We stayed at the Taj Land's End that night, a huge 500 room ocean front "5 star plus" hotel on the other side of the bay from the Taj President and the Taj Palace. It was late, so no going out, just had dinner at the hotel restaurant, but had a great, although overpriced, bottle of too young but still delicious 2004 Mouton Rothschild.
Our new Australian friend Kateland has the pics of Leopold so when I get them I'll update this post.