Getting around

So during the daytime here we've mostly been just scouting around the neighborhood, trying to get a feel for where the goods and services we'll need once we are living here are located.  This is probably one of the bigger challenges for me, at least for now. It's very different than the US, where you can say "I think I'll go to the Auto Zone" for instance, and drive to their store, or one of their several competitors.

Here, things are a little more disorganized, as a lot of goods/services are sold through these randomly located roadside storefronts that line nearly every road that is even remotely traveled.  You can see some in the photo below:

Good luck finding a place to park

Fortunately, there are large traditional malls here, some of which have things you wouldn't normally expect, such as the one near our apartments with a small grocery in it.  Yesterday we went to one that is about 4 miles away, which is one of the nicer ones in a reasonable distance.  It has a surprising number of US brand stores in it, mixed in with some I don't recognize.  This mall is about 4 miles away from our apartment, which requires a form of transportation other than walking, so we took one of the auto rickshaws mentioned previously.

This proved to be a pretty entertaining experience.  For one reason, there are TWO of these malls, but in different neighborhoods.  The rickshaw drivers have been the first people I've run into here that don't speak English, likely due to their lower position in the caste system.  At any rate, we had no trouble getting there, but coming back was an issue.  We'd walked down the street a bit before we decided to catch a ride back to our hotel (staying in a hotel for this visit, apartment when we move here for good).  We told him to take us to the Infinity mall ANDHERI which is the neighborhood we stay in.  Instead he took us to the Infinity mall MALAD, which is where we'd just left.  After some gesticulating and pointing, the driver did what most of them do when they aren't sure of a destination: he just started asking other people.  Eventually that worked out, and we were on our way.  The great thing about this mode of transport is that it's remarkably inexpensive.  Total cost one way was $2, and that included the distance we covered going the wrong direction.  

I took some video of the ride over and back, and spliced them together.  It doesn't give as good of a feel for just how close you are to other vehicles on the road as I'd hoped, but it will do.  I kept missing the sillier parts of the ride, but at about the 1:30 mark you can see what it looks like quite often, with a mix of vehicles of every size mixing in with pedestrians.