India s Infamous Neighborhood Pure Chaos 24 7

Let's face it, India has a mixed reputation. On one hand, you have this vibrant, rich, colourful culture with some of the most breathtaking landscapes. And on the other hand, you have some of the most polluted cities on this planet. India's capital, Delhi, has overtaken the Pakistani city of Lahore as the most polluted city on Earth. People are living amidst an ecological and public health crisis. But Indian people are some of the most resourceful people on this planet. Today, we'll be venturing deep into the back alleyways of one of the most notorious neighbourhoods in Mumbai, a city of 22 million people. And witness the incredible ways that the locals here put bread on the table. No stone is left unturned. And we'll see how one man's trash really is another man's treasure. Let's do this. And that's how you cross a road in India. So we've arrived in Dharavani. We've entered into the biggest slum in India here. And you can see this is the commercial area where the business goes on and everything. That's a banana. You know, in a slum, the banana is the best friend for everyone. They eat banana in the lunchtime. They eat the banana in the dinnertime. Because when they don't have money, they eat banana and they fill the stomach. How many bananas do you eat a day? 10 pieces. 10 bananas. You can see how many carbs he was taking in the body. 10 bananas are big. New Zealand. How much do these guys earn a day? If they're earning $7 a day, then how much do they pay rent and food? Because where they work, the owners provide their homes. Means they work in downstairs and live in upstairs. And food is very cheap. They just charge $0.50 for the lunch and $0.50 for the dinner. And unlimited. You have as much as you want. These guys are taking random plastic containers, detergent, bleach, food containers, you name it. And they throw it into this huge chipper. Cutting the plastic into thousands of small pieces. Then it's melted down and recycled. I cannot tell you how loud that is. And they're sitting in there with no hearing protection. Just all day chopping up all bits of like oil containers, detergent containers, bits of old plastic. And you can see this man here is organizing all the plastic by color. And he owns this business. And it's just him sitting in this small little brick hole, sorting through plastic for hours every single day. How many hours a day do you do this? 12 hours. 12? Is it boring working for 12 hours doing this? You enjoy it? You like it? Yes, I enjoy it. Oh, really? And is it a good business for you then? Right. Amazing, man. It's inspirational. Do you have a family? Yes. You've got kids? Nice, man. One kid. How old are you? Do you mind if I ask? How old are you? 30. 30? How is India? Is it a good place to live? It's very good. You love India? Yes, of course. Wow, amazing. And you're gonna stay here for the rest of your life or...? Entire life I will stay here only. You love it? Yes. Amazing. Thank you so much, sir. Good luck. So here this is a Wi-Fi modem station. And you can see there's just hundreds of Wi-Fi modems. And this man sits here all day pulling them apart into little pieces and separating them by color and parts. And then they'll go on to get recycled. How many hours a day do you do this? Maybe eight to nine hours. Do you get bored? You do? Yes. It must be quite boring, right? Yeah, just watching the movies on Wi-Fi. Oh, you're watching movies on the mobile? Yes. What are you watching today? Bollywood? No, South Indian. Indian Bollywood. Yeah. Is this going to be your permanent job for the future? This is my own business. Oh, wow. Wow. And you're gonna keep doing this for many years? Yeah. Wow. And how is India? Is it a good place to live? Yes. You like India? Yeah. Happy with how everything's going and the government and everything? Maybe. Government is doing the wrong decision. What are they doing wrong? Something is related to the religions dividing. That's it. Nothing else. Okay, so the government is dividing Muslims and Hindus. Yeah. Right. The world's second most populous country is grappling with a fundamental issue. India was founded as a proudly diverse country. So how did it go from this? Prime Minister Nehru called upon leaders representing many shades of political thought to this. The Hindu nationalist ideology that inspired the murder of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi was a fringe element of the country's politics for decades. Now, it's the ideology of India's ruling party, the BJP. Here, everybody seems to be friends, right? In real life. But on the media, they say there's a problem, right? Okay. And what do you hope will happen for the future of India? Okay. And you're Hindu or Muslim? I am Muslim. Okay, cool. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, sir. Yeah. So this is where they sharpen the blades for those plastic machines that you saw. So people from all over this area who are cutting up and recycling the plastic bring their blades here because it's just constantly running and they need to be sharpened. Every last thing is covered here. It's like medieval times when there were shops for each thing in the neighborhood. You don't have to go to a big factory or a big trade shop. What's your name? Abdul Qadir. What do you do for a job? He's a tailor. He's working in the textile. Oh, wow. And do you like living here? Yeah, you love it? Okay. Thank you. Cheers. So this is like the car parts recycling area here. It's all recycling old bumpers of cars. Namaste. Machinery, loud noises, the smell of food and a lot more I'm sure you can imagine. It's absolutely incredible here. The biggest industry in this slum is recycling. It's a recycling. Every day they get more than 7,000 kilogram to 20,000 kilogram plastic. Doesn't matter if there is a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. They work every day. Seven days in the week and 30 days in the month. Just the intricate streets like... Look at those stairs up into these nests that people live in. You know, look at the cables. Look at all these stairs everywhere. Every last square inch is taken up. You got people migrating from all over the subcontinent of India to come here because this is where you can get your start in life. What's your name? And do you deliver all around Mumbai? Is that good money? I'm New Zealand. Is that good pay, good job? He works really hard. He works 11 hours in the motorbike. Imagine sitting in one position, you're driving in the traffic with the dust. Good luck, good luck. They sacrifice this for Islamic tradition, right? It's for the Islamic tradition. Is this goat on steroids? No. It's huge. Because of the breed. These breeds are different. They grow much more faster. But their meat is not that much tasty. So this guy's doing welding and his eye protection is a little piece of glass you can see there. Thank you, sir. So all these guys are preparing hundreds of meals for the other parts of the slum. So you can actually get them delivered up into the other parts of the slum. So we got rice here. And then we got bags of curry here. Amazing. Peace be upon you. That would blow me up from the inside out, right? Yeah. No, they don't make that much spicy. As a baby, you're born with a chili in your mouth, right? Something like that. But Mumbai people, they eat less spicy. If you go south part of India, they're normal spicy. For me, it's very big spicy. So this is where they make soap. Yeah. So what they do, they collect the used soap from the hotels. Tomorrow, you're going to love the hotel. You're going to love the piece of the soap. For them, it's not used. And for you, it's not used. So all the waste soap left over from the hotels and old half-used soap comes here, gets all melted down into these cases here, combined, mixed with animal fats and cooking oil, and then made into soap used in laundries or for cleaning purposes. Unreal. And you can see here the guys cutting it into squares and packaging it up ready to be sold. With Mumbai having 22 million people in it, you can imagine there's a lot of waste, and there's a lot of people wanting to make a dollar. What you're seeing here is the result of that. So we've come up one of these extremely steep ladders here. And in here, what are they doing here? They color the clothes. Means you saw they have a white... They're dyeing them. They're dyeing them, yeah. This is a new diamond made by plastics. And what they're going to do, they're going to take this diamond and they're going to stitch into the clothes. So this man makes a design on his computer, and then it gets put into the laser machine, and the laser machine carves a design into this piece of wood. Then they put the plastic diamonds on the piece of wood, shake it. So all the plastic diamonds fall into the design. Then it's compressed onto the fabric with glue. So you have clothing with plastic jewelry pressed into it. Can you put it on for me? Why not? Sure. Very pretty. This is not for me, it's for the woman. No, it suits you. Okay. The tiny plastic for you, it's waste. But for them, it's a diamond and it's good quality. Butterfly. Half butterfly. I think you're a butterfly kind of guy, right? Beautiful. And that's a Porsche. The car. You like the car? That's a Porsche. No, this one's definitely your style. Thank you so much. Thank you. Keep up the great work. So this is outside the diamond shop and they actually keep it shut because they don't want people stealing their designs because everybody makes their custom version of it. And so the recycled diamonds are viewed as a thing of value, right? So they keep it top secret here behind these shutters. I've been crossing borders a lot lately. And the last thing that I want to be doing when arriving at a new destination is hunting for local SIM cards. That's why I've been using MobiMatter, who is the sponsor of today's video. What I really like is that it's not locked to just one eSIM provider. It's a marketplace where you can compare plans from a bunch of different companies. Everything's really transparent before you buy. You can see exactly what local networks it'll connect to, whether it's 4G or 5G. Even details like IP routing, so you know exactly what kind of performance you're going to get. MobiMatter offers some of the most affordable eSIM plans available thanks to its marketplace model that lets you compare and choose the best value options from multiple different providers. Their pricing stands out as budget-friendly, often significantly cheaper than major competitors. No matter if I'm in Asia, Europe or the US, I just search for the destination, pick the best value plan that fits, hit buy and I'm connected almost immediately. It's been affordable, simple and reliable. Use my link in the description or use code IndigoTraveler, all one word, to get 50% cash back up to $5 on your first MobiMatter eSIM. A massive thanks to MobiMatter for sponsoring this video and keeping the travels going. Now let's get back to India. They're making pants here. They make the pants here and you can touch the quality. This is great. That's a great quality but no brand. All right. They don't use any brand. Only they get separately the brand name. They're going to stitch the labels. It's counterfeit. Yeah. How old is this man? How many hours a day does he do this? 13 hours, 14 hours. Sitting in the same position with no support, the back gets pinched. And this is not the cushion chair. This is made by wood. You know the bums get hurt. They're washing the plastic here. This place is absolutely incredible. He takes all the clothes from the people, those who don't want to wash the clothes. And he's going to put the tag number. And he's going to send all the clothes to the laundry, one of the biggest laundry in the world. They go there, they get washed on there, they're going to dry on there and give back to this guy. And he's going to do the ironing. Your horse? What was your name? Nick, nice to meet you. So, the moment you've all been waiting for. Here are the toilets. So, have a look at this. It just goes straight through to a river underneath. So, this is the river where the toilet drops into. You can see there's some animals down here looking through the toilet trash. Yeah, this is the reality of this area of India. So, we got some apple juice here. But has it got milk? I've never seen an apple milkshake before. And where does he get the ice from? They have the equipment to make ice cubes. And they call them, I want one block. They give them a block and the people put it here. You need the supply, you will get the supply. You will get everything in the slum. You don't need to go outside. Bates banana shake. Bates and bananas have good carbs and sugars. Good for the bodybuilders. Right, right. Get your haircut here on the side of the road. Smells good. Here you're going to find mostly men's only. Okay. Because their people are immigrants. They have a family. They are from Uttar Pradesh. Oh, really? Yeah, he's from Uttar Pradesh. Right. And he came here for the work, to make more money. How long have you lived here? Four years. He's 18 years old. 18? And he came here when he was 14? Thank you, sir. Thank you. Behind every one of these doors, there's a thousand stories to tell. And there's just people on computers, people doing physical work, all kinds of different activities and money-making industries and residential areas. It's everything that you can possibly imagine and more goes on in these incredible streets. The people are honestly so hospitable and friendly. And, you know, they seem somewhat content. Hi, you good? Just as I was saying, I've been invited up. What's your name? I'm Nick. Nick. Nick, me. My name. This is your house? Yeah. Oh. You live in here? Closed. Oh, building. Yeah. Okay. Oh, you're moving. Okay. What about upstairs? You show me? Come, come. Oh, wow. Printing. Oh, printing. Clothes. Yes. Fish, making fish. Fish? Oh, wow. What kind of fish you got? Oh. Printing. What's your name? Saif Khan. Oh, wow. Nice to meet you. Are you from? New Zealand. Yeah, you know it? Cricket. Hi. India cricket. Yeah. One of the most favorite sports of India is cricket. And in New Zealand, it's very popular. So it's always a way that I've found to bond with Indians is to talk about cricket. Instagram? Yeah, yeah. Same as getting Indigo Traveler. There you go. That's it. They're all subscribing to my channel and following me on Instagram. Yeah, yeah. You like that? Thanks, brother. Appreciate it. It's sucking wet. No, that's it. Sudan. Central Sudan. South Sudan. Africa. What about Africa? What do I know about Africa? We are here. Vlogging video. As-salamu alaykum. Your brother? Yes. Oh, wow. Real brother or cousin brother? Cousin brother. Okay. Selfie. Brother. Where are you from? Auckland? No. South Island. Oh, South Island. Yeah, yeah. We're video calling everybody now. Your mom? My wife. Your wife? Wife. As-salamu alaykum. He's from New Zealand. Auckland. Nice to meet you. Alhamdulillah. Hello. Nice to meet you. Shukriya, brother. Shukriya. Nice to meet you, sir. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. Grab me rope so I don't die. Going through the tight alleyways now. If someone coming, just turn it on and try to pass it. Okay. This is their downstairs and downstairs. Left, left, left. You can look left and right. Look right. Like this, left, and then you can look right. Like that. That is the upstairs. Just turn around and verify. Oh, wow. The chili is in the air, man. Somebody's cooking spicy food. No, no, no. You can see how the houses are built here. It's like just stacked on top of each other with bits of metal welded together and all bits of whatever they can find, really. Old gates, recycling even when it comes down to the houses. Believe it or not, I was here in this exact slum almost 10 years ago making videos. So that really shows my age. I had a bit more hair then. This has just been an amazing experience. Say hi. Hi. But what has also changed since those days is the development. There's big skyscrapers in the background here and they weren't there. Also, the bridges and the metro that goes over the slum wasn't here. So there's huge development going on here. And they're actually... Ultimately, all these people will be pushed out to another part of Mumbai. Far, far away. Maybe an hour and a half away because with the developing population of India and the rise of the financial and middle class, the neighborhoods are developing at an unmatched pace. And this is prime, prime real estate. Back then, Mumbai wasn't as big. But now, it's growing astronomically. Remarkable to see from a first person's perspective. Over 10 years, how much it's changed. Mumbai as a whole has day and night difference. It's so much more developed than it was 10 years ago when I first came to India. It's pretty impressive. How are you? Good. Where are you from? I'm from New Zealand. Where are you from? Yes, this is my first vlog. Oh, this is your first vlog? Yeah. We're coming up to where some people actually live. Check this out. This is a tannery. So, you got the animal skins here from the goats and they dye them. And also, they live here. So, you've got the kitchen here. And then over here, this is the bedding. So, they roll out these fabrics on this hard concrete ground. And they sleep on that. And up here is their bags. So, as I was saying earlier, people come from all over India to work very, very hard, as you can see, for hours on end, day in, day out, seven days a week. And they live in these conditions. But they're so hospitable and kind. I mean, it's the same thing that you'll see in a lot of places. But it's always, you know, makes you consider your own life and your own complaints, you know. Make sure you look where you're putting your feet in these places. Hi, how are you? Hi. Give me a kiss. Huh? Give me a kiss. Fist bump, yeah. That's what I like to see. Give you money? You give me money, how about that? Hello. A family house here. It's just basically a few meters by a few meters. So, Naira. Yes. You live here in this house? Yes. How many people live in this house? Four, five. Five, wow. And do you sleep upstairs or on the floor here? Yes. On the floor? Yes. Yeah, wow. So, your mom, your dad and your brother and sisters all sleep down here? Yes. These are my sister. Oh, wow. So, sister, brother, sister, mom, dad working. Yes. Do you like living here? Yes. Yeah? And you've got lots of friends? Yes. Do you go to school? Yes. Will you live here for your whole life or will you go somewhere else? All life. What do you want to do for a job when you grow up? Navy. Navy? Yes. Wow. And that's a very brave job. Yes. So, why do you want to be in the Navy? Navy is... My father tell to you job Navy. Oh, your dad wants you to be in the Navy. Wow. And what about you? Lawyer. Oh, you want to be a lawyer? Yes. Oh, wow. You're gonna be very successful then. Good luck. Nice to meet you. High five. Thank you. Welcome. Hello. So, we've jumped on the train and we're about to go to this huge laundry area. This is the biggest open-air laundry in the world. In the world. They wash 100,000 pieces of clothes in a day. They get all the clothes from the hospitals, restaurants. This business was started by the English people in 1890. Thanks for joining me as we ventured deep into the heart of Mumbai today. Although India does have a mixed reputation, the one thing that can't be disputed is that Indian people are some of the most innovative, hard-working, resourceful people on the face of this planet. And you can have a great laugh with them. Thank you for watching. And I'll see you in the next video. And in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and namaste.