Mumbai - Visiting Nikhil

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Nikhil's family was visiting Mumbai. We wanted to see them and also take the opportunity to see the city. So we flew down for a weekend trip. One good thing we did was to stay there on a Sunday since the traffic was light and we were able to cover a lot of ground that day. Monday was a whole different story. We were on the road 70% of the time even though we had a late flight.

We arrived on Friday. The travel agent had arranged for us to stay at Hotel Sea Princess. A friend had warned us about the place and she was right. The carpets in the room were stained, bathroom was not too clean and we weren't too thrilled about staying there. The travel agent quickly changed our reservation to Taj Land's End for the same price. We highly recommend this hotel - beautiful views (if you discount views of some slums right behind the hotel), good restaurants and you can claim you were Shah Rukh's neighbor while there😊. One other bonus was that we got a free upgrade to a Taj Club room. We have never had issues at any Taj locations so far. So Taj it is for us from now on!!! After checking in, we went to JW Marriott for dinner. Excellent hotel and food!!!

Thanks to a friend's recommendation, we knew what not to miss food-wise. Saturday was mostly spent ticking off things on our food list - Elco chat (the world's best chat IMHO - I would go to Mumbai just for this) and Mahesh Lunch Home (yummy Mangalorean seafood). We also met with Nikhil's family (we remember Arjun's pranks at least once everyday since then), saw the ISKCON temple (good) and went shopping at Soles to Soul (funny that the name is very close to our slogan for the RGH school kids' fundraiser).

Sunday was a hectic day. We covered the following:
Haji Ali Dargah - Walk to the Dargah was not very pleasant, but it was nice to see people of all faiths going there
Mahalaxmi temple - Long lines so reminded me of Tirupathi, but was clean
Jain temple - Nice and clean
Hanging gardens - A waste of time and I couldn't figure out what was "hanging"
Kamala Nehru park- Better than Hanging gardens
University of Mumbai, High Court - Gothic treasures. Very nice but we couldn't go inside
Taj Mahal hotel - Still felt a bit strange going there. There is now a memorial to all those that died there on 26/11. Generally, we went through a lot of security checks in Mumbai.
Banganga tank - Not recommended unless you are brave enough to pray to Ganga Mayi even if the waters don't look too clean. There was a search and rescue mission going on since someone that had gone there to immerse a body had fallen in and died. We read about it the next day.
My favorites were the following:
Mani Bhavan- This was the house of Mahatma Gandhi in Mumbai. He undertook a fast here to restore peace in the city. Our Bengali driver kept calling this Moni Bhavan and so no one knew where it was 😊.
Chantrapathi Shivaji Vasthu Sangrahalay (alias Prince of Wales museum) - It is a actually a very good museum with artifacts from the paleolithic age and Indus Valley civilization. An audio guide was also available, but the instructions in the audio guide and the corresponding artifacts didn't follow in an orderly fashion. It was a treasure hunt game.
We had dinner at the Taj's Chinese restaurant, Ming Yang. Food and service were excellent. Wah Taj!!

Monday was a day driving on the streets of Mumbai. The traffic was horrendous but we managed to cover Dhobi Ghat, Gateway of India, Siddhi Vinayaka temple, Bindy bazar, Victoria terminus, Chor Bazar and Crawford Market. We went shopping at the new Phoenix mall which has some excellent stores. Then we needed to head back to Juhu because Sunjay had forgotten his jacket at the Sea Princess. But we hit some commuter traffic that made any traffic jam in Bangalore look like Sunday afternoon drive. We barely made it to the airport on time. Mumbai is a wonderful city full of surprises. We will go back with more time on hand especially for Elco chat.

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