Mumbai, India

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Feb 24, 2008

Had a pleasant evening at the Hotel after a late evening arrival last night in Mumbai. ( some still prefer the old name of Bombay )

Our adventures in India started today with a city tour of Mumbai. This morning we took a 1 hour boat ride to Elephant Island a small island ( With no elephants ). This was named for elephant carvings found by the Portuguese a few hundred years ago and is close to Mumbai. This island is famous for the very large caves carved out of the stone that are religious temples and contain many carvings and Hindu religion artifacts. It is a short climb up to the caves but a fairly impressive place to see and worth the trip. This island is home to many monkeys who have figured out that with people there is food.

We continued our visit to Mumbai with a trip through the city and visited some interesting parks and a former Parsi ( Persian ) burial site. Interesting place as they leave the bodies out in a large open “well” where the vultures’ come to clean of the bones which are then taken away to be put in a permanent site somewhere. There is a still a very large and rich Persian community in Mumbai who are descendants of people who left Iran to escape religious persecution a long time ago.

The many years of the British being here is very evident in some of the architecture, churches, a replica “Big Ben Clock Tower” and other very British customs including “Tea”.
We visited a Jain Temple as well. The Jains are an offshoot of Hinduism and are devoutly vegetarian. To the point of even not eating root vegetables as harvesting may kill a bug or two !! Most are businessmen as they could not farm without killing something. ( ??? )

We finished the day with a visit to a famous outdoor laundry facility where over 100 people still do thousands of pieces of laundry everyday by hand. This is a must see place. Hard to believe. These people have their own recipes for detergent and their own way of beating the hell ( and dirt ) out of the clothes and then hanging them to dry outside. We guessed about 15 cents for a shirt and they pick up and deliver.

Mumbai is a very interesting city and we were impressed with how modern most things are. Quite frankly not what we expected. There are some very poor slum areas as people migrate to the city to find work. 17 Million or so here now.

A very interesting city and a good start to our India adventure. Off tomorrow to Jodhpur, Rajasthan.

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