Need to Know the Facts of Mumbai
Health & Safety
Health
India Tour Packages - The entire Indian sub continent has the same health hazards so one line of defence should cover you on all territories. The major risks to your health from the armies of mosquitoes are malaria, encephalitis, kala azar and dengue. Cover your arms and legs; be liberal with the repellent and in problem areas sleep under a mosquito net. Traveller’s diarrhoea is another running problem and year after year traveller after traveller gets the ‘loosies’. Ensure it’s nothing nastier by avoiding green salads, uncooked food, and water that you haven’t sanitised by dropping an iodine pill into. Slightly higher is the risk of contacting AIDS, Hepatitis B and other sexually transmitted diseases. For your sake and the sake of the people you’re visiting always use a condom. Have safe responsible sex - Tour Packages of India.
Indin Tour Packages - The quality of health services is excellent with Mumbai boasting of first class public and private hospitals, 24-hour chemist shops, highly competent doctors and top of the line medical services. Medicines are fairly cheap in India. Though chemist shops in the cities are well stocked, it is always a good idea to take along prescription drugs - Indian Tour Packages Asia.
Tour Packages to Mumbai - Travellers from yellow fever areas are required to have an inoculation certificate. Prior immunisation for poliomyelitis is recommended - Mumbai Tour Packages.
Safety
Tour Packages of Mumbai - Mumbai is a safe travel destination. Crime is on a grand scale with gangs and international mafia organisations but the life of common citizens and travellers remains unaffected. Cases of mugging, theft and worse aren’t completely unheard of but by and large serious crimes against travellers are few and far between - India Tour Packages .
Basic precautions:
Tour Packages of India - Keep your money and travel documents close to your body (perhaps in a pouch slung around your neck, tucked out of sight under your shirt) - Indin Tour Packages.
Indian Tour Packages Asia - Keep several photocopies of your passport, insurance, travellers’ cheques etc. scattered through your luggage - Indian Tour Packages Asia.
Do not use a waist pouch, it may as well be a transparent plastic bag: it’s that fragile and that obvious!
Do not put all your money in one place,
Be extremely alert in the dark. One of the things that protect travellers to India is the vast crowd in any place. The multitudes however, disappear into their homes at night, and you go from having a huge thick safety quilt to a flimsy sheet! Try your best to be in a familiar area when it gets dark. If you are not, at least know how you can get to that area from wherever it is that you happen to be.
Many women travellers wear the long tunic and loose pyjama dress of Indian women called the salwar-kameez and find that it substantially dissuades unwanted male attention.
If you are travelling alone, do not advertise it.
If you lose your passport, lodge a First Information Report at the local police station and contact your embassy.
Weights and Measures
India uses the metric system where 100cm=1meter; 1000meters=1km, liquids are measured in litres and solids in kilograms.
Electricity
220volts/ 50 hertz is the frequency at which electricity is available WHEN it is! Power cuts and ‘load shedding’ is a regular feature all over the country except Mumbai. The state capital has an efficient privatised power supply that has no power cuts or shortages unlike the nationalized power companies. If your electric razor has flat-pin plug then carry a combination plug that will feed into a round-pin socket: across the sub continent plug point sockets are round rather than flat.
Customs & Duties
If you are above 17 years you may import the following in without attracting duty:
200 cigarettes or 50 cigars or 250 grams of tobacco, a litre of alcoholic drink, 250 ml perfume, gifts up to a value of Rupees 750 (foreign passport holders), gifts up to a value of Rupees 6000 (Indian passport holders) and articles of personal use.
It is illegal to bring in drugs, gold and silver bullion, plants and coins that have gone out of use.
Post & Communications
The Indian Postal services are quite efficient and have both airmail and railway mail services. Letters overseas must be marked "Air Mail" or "Par Avion". It takes a week to 10 days for letters to reach the U.K. and the U.S from Mumbai. The GPO and bigger post offices in Mumbai will hold mail for you (surname first) addressed to the GPO ‘Poste Restante’ for 30 days, and you’ll have to show them your passport for identification. Parcels are a bit tedious to send or receive and often when they do finally arrive, they’ve been tampered with. Courier services are widely available in Mumbai. "Cyber cafes" are an increasingly common fixture in though rates may vary from locality-to-locality, so you can check your mail and surf the net. Very often the Internet business is an extension of what used to be a just a "PCO".
In loopy lanes, beneath shady peepul trees, in busy markets.....all over the city, little yellow boards spill out of little kiosks with the cryptic letters "PCO-STD-ISD" (........huh?) 15 years ago the telecommunications miracle swept India and today, proud bearers of that legacy, ‘Public Call Offices’ bring to the streets the services of ‘Subscribers’ Trunk Dialling’ and ‘International Standard Dialling’. Most offer fax services, and more and more now, Internet facilities too.
Country code for India: 0091. Codes for the metros: Delhi-011, Mumbai-022, Calcutta-033 and Chennai-044. When calling from overseas omit the zero in the city code.
Tipping
It is customary to tip 10% of the bill at restaurants, but you may tip less if service charges have been included in the bill. At hotels tip 10 bucks to the bellhop, the same to the doorman ‘durban’; if the service is particularly good, substantially more to the concierge and housekeeping. You’ll find some of the most friendly and colourful service at tiny nondescript roadside stalls called ‘dhabas’. A small tip, even if it is only loose change, will be appreciated tremendously.
Black and yellow cab drivers do not expect to be tipped. The opposite is true if you have a hired a cab for a long period. Your rented car driver and your tourist guide do expect to be tipped. Coolies (porters) at railway platforms have to be paid; negotiate the payment before you hire one.
English Language Media
All the major dailies, and there are many in this country where the fourth estate is startlingly independent and strong, have Mumbai editions with one on the net. A number of city editions of leading Indian newspapers and business papers are brought out from Mumbai. There are two major weekly newsmagazines and both are easily available at kiosks all over. Even international fashion glossies have an edition coming out of Mumbai.
Cable TV has reaped a rich harvest. The Mumbai skyline blooms with electronic blossoms of dish antennas and these are only going to proliferate further. BBC World Service and CNN beam the latest news; ESPN and Star Sports keep you up to date with how your club is (or is not) thrashing its rivals in UEFA; and Star (elsewhere known as Sky) beams an entire stable of entertainment channels.
The more widely accessible national channel too has some English programmes, and a daily English news segment.
FM means Music like everywhere else in the rest of the world. BBC World Service and Voice of America are on the MHz bandwidth but the frequency is variable.
Recommended Reading:
A Taste of India by Madhur Jaffrey
Bombay: Gateway of India by Raghubir Singh
The Business Guide to India by Jitendra Kohli
Salaam Bollywood by Bhavana Somaaya
Business Legends by Gita Piramal
A History of India by Romila Thapar
Arts & Crafts of India by Ilay Cooper, John Gillow & Barry Dawson.
