The Famous Mumbai

Well, this is Mumbai, busy, popular and- some what smelly Mumbai. A beach called "cow patty", the house of the most famous man of India, street vendors galore, I have to say, Mumbai is full of exciting things.

We arivved after a 12 hour train ride ( they keep getting longer and longer) at night, and stayed at the first hotel we could find. The next morning we changed hotels and after lunch, took a taxi to the Gateway of India. When the British were in control of India, they built the gateway as a passageway for the Brtish army, so they had a formal way of entering a battle. The structure is an amazing sight and deserves more than one photo (I sound like a guidebook).

On our second day in Mumbai, we visited Gandhi's house which has now been turned into a musem of the man's life. Gandhi (for those of you that don't know) was the man that freed India of the British and their laws, in 1947. He was assasinated by a man of the Hindu religion, who thought Gandhi wasn't treating the Hindu's well, which was not true.

On the same day, we also visited the "dhobi ghats" dhobi meaning a person who's job is to wash clothes, and ghat meaning a watering hole. So, Dhobi Ghats is were the dobi's live and where they wash their own clothes and all of Mumbai's clothes-that's their job.

Our third day was- well interesting. During the day we visited the beach called Chowpatty, or better known as cow patty beach. We ate barbaqued corn and roasted peanuts as we walked on the crowded shore of Chowpatty. That night we went on a horse drawn carriage ride expecting a nice quiet venture in the street. Boy, were we wrong! We got in the carriage and settled down and started to ride off. My dad and the driver talked and soon we were well into our ride. The driver then took a right turn onto a- suspiciously quiet road. Then sirens. Looking behind us, we saw an old fashioned police van with 6 fuming police inside it. One of the police told the horse drawn carriage driver to pull over and threatend him with a stick, saying he would have to pay a fine if he didn't stop at the side of the road. The driver yelled at the police and surprisingly (and illegally) sped away from the police and lost them. The story, I learned afterwards, was that the man was on a part of the road that was strictly prohibited and when the police caught him he refused to pay the fine, because for Indians a fine that amount means a month's salary. We ended our ride laughing so hard we barely made it off the carraige. Then, after snapping a few photos, we returned to our hotel, with a new memory in our minds.

Today is our fourth day in Mumbai and today we're just hanging out in pizza hut and the internet cafe all afternoon. The day after tommorow, we leave on a plane to Rajasthan and then we head to Agra and then to Dehli, and finally we take a plane to Japan. Who knows what adventures lie ahead? From Alia

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