We rolled out of Royal Palms at 7.00 am to discover the neighbourhood in 180 minutes. Imagine our surprise to find a man sitting cross legged on a culvert reading a Tamil vernacular in Aarey Milk Colony, Goregaon! We stopped to chat.

Pit Stop 1 – Dairy Farm

We continued driving and stopped at a huge Dairy Farm. This was our first experience of seeing huge Buffalos and discovering that there were a number of varieties.The Kathiawadi a native of the Gir Forest produces 30 litres of milk a day and the other variety is the Dilli ( Delhi).
10 Buffalos are taken care of exclusively by a caretaker and the 10 caretakers report into a supervisor and 10 supervisors roll up to a Manager. Sounds very similar to the hierarchy in a Business Process outsourcing set up in India!

“Who’s your Daddy?”

Gopi after his morning run to the local milk collection centre.

Regal Dairy Farm.
. Pit Stop 2 – Local Chai Shop
After the Dairy Farm, we wanted to have the popular adraki cutting chai before proceeding to our next Pit Stop which is the Train Station in Goregaon East.

Got to chat up with the Chaiwala and the friendly neighbour Panwala and got some tips about local Vada pav which is Mumbai’s snack to go.

Pit Stop 3- Goregaon Train Station

Mumbai’s life line is the local train and we wanted to get a glimpse of the rush hour as it began in Mumbai

Pit Stop 4 – Vada pav vendor

Met this enterprising man selling Vada pav and what caught our attention was his catchy phrases which go like this.

“ Aakar hamare Vada pav khaoo aur Churchgate tak paidal chale jao”
“Aaj kal baarish ka mausam hai, Vada pav khao aur jopadpatti se nikalkar makan banao”
“Hamara Vada pav khane se , Bollywood ka superstar ban jaoge”
His one liners were witty, business was brisk and people were grabbing their breakfast on the go and rushing to catch the 8.23 local.

It was time for us to report back to Royal Farm and managed to return without getting lost after stopping for a quick bite but the only regret was that we could not manage a good Biryani from Bagdadi as we had to complete this task by 10..am and it was too early for a Biryani!!!