Mumbai Mania

The soaring temperatures in Mumbai can get to you, especially if you are traveling during noon. The day we went for the vintage car rally, we were so dehydrated and I get really cranky in this heat. So the instant option to cool off was having a gola (ice slush) at Chowpatty beach.

Its one of Mumbai's speciality, I use to have a lot of those as a kid, so I relived those days when I slurrrped the kala khatta flavored gola and a Hershey-laden chocolate gola, one of the new flavor and more on that later. The gola wala (ice slush vendor) had so many different syrups lining his cart, it made a colorful picture.

The gola wala had many new flavors, cocktail, chocolate with milk maid, eec, so we thought of trying out the chocolate one. First he put the big block of ice in the machine to crush it, then he gathered the crushed ice with both his hands, made an oval shape and pushed a wooden stick through it. Then he slowly added milkmaid around it, my mouth was watering profusely at that time, then he placed the gola in a cup and added herscheys to it, whether its the real chocolate syrup I don't know as long as it tastes good, then he sprinkled chocolate pieces on it and I took the glass from his hand, before Clyde could. Then it was simply fantastic, I slurrped the chocolate flavored ice with milk, and I began to feel better and the smile was back on my face. Then the gola wala made the regular kala khatta for us, mixed with lime, salt and pepper. That was refreshing too, as you can see in the picture below. You need to keep sucking the syrup to get the complete taste of it, and you can feel your body cooling down. Having a gola is no fun without your fingers, mouth and tongue catching the colour of the syrup, you need to keep turning it so the ice doesn't break. If your syrup gets over, the gola vendor is generous enough to add some more syrup.

Its not too expensive either, Kala Khatta was for Rs 15, you can get it for less than Rs 10 in a small town or village and the chocolate gola cost Rs 30. So the gola slurping came to an end, we finished off all the chocolate syrup, but kala khatta was left. We happily started to walk away and forgot to pay the gola wala until he called us out.

If you go to a gola wala, make sure to try the chocolate flavor!