Manic Magnificent Mumbai

---

Mumbai Airport was our first taste of what we expected in India. Baggage claim is bad at British airports where few stay outside the yellow lines to claim their bags, however, in India they do not bother painting yellow lines for obvious reasons. As you can guess chaos prevailed but no harm was done as our luggage, in typical Indian fashion, did not appear for one and a half hours and after most people had left. Our taxi, which had been waiting two and a half hours (plane was 40 mins late), was waiting and after a very slow 90 minutes journey, through the slums of Mumbai, deposited us at our hotel which was surprisingly nice.

We do not normally eat in hotels as they are usually expensive but we were too tired to go elsewhere. However, vegetable jalfrezi with veg rice and veg makhanwala with pilau rice plus drinks came to £5 so we were happy with that.

Tuesday morning found us bright and breezy and down for breakfast by 10.30a.m. (yes a.m.). We caught a taxi down to India's most famous hotel the Taj Mahal Palace (where terrorists attacked 3 years ago, held hostage and killed over 100 people) and went inside for a look, where we basked in the luxurious atmosphere with India's air kissing jet set. Tom Cruise is apparently staying there but he did not make himself known to us therefore we moved on to the British built arch called ‘The Gateway to India’. Here the Indian tourists gather to sit in the shade and take photos of each other but preferably with western people. Terry was a sucker for this and, wishing to make everyone happy as usual, was photographed hundreds of times with grandfathers, fathers and sons with the odd female added in. Michelle quickly grew tired of this melee and retired to the background. After about 30 minutes of photos Terry said, “Is there any more? Can I go now?” Only after shaking hands with everyone who had been on a photograph (seemed like half the population of Mumbai), were we allowed to move on.

The evening took us to the Leopold Cafe, partially famous for many murders during the earlier mentioned terrorist attack. In 2008 our friends Mick and Di were about to have a drink there when they had a hand grenade rolled under their table and they received serious injuries, however, although the cafe kept the crater as an attraction for some time, all is now returned to normal, as mainly have Mick and Di. Leopold Cafe is a haunt for tourists and although expensive (by Indian standards) is full of western travellers.

Not a lot to do in Mumbai. We wanted to do a tour of the Bollywood Studios but the price of $50 each put us off. We had heard of Elephanta Island, one hour boat trip off the coast, which had a temple greatly revered in India. There are many statues of Shiva and others. The guide book said 110 rupees(£1.50) for standard boat and 130 rupees for the deluxe boat which included a government guide. No contest really and that is what we mistakenly did, bought two deluxe tickets. It is a con, we never saw a deluxe boat and the only guides we saw wanted to charge 350 rupees to show us around some very poor caves with the remnants of carvings which had largely been damaged. Half way round we asked another western couple was there anything worth seeing and they laughingly replied “Some toilets; but they are ancient toilets!” The highlight of the trip was to see the monkeys who would snatch a bottle of water or orange out of the hand of some unsuspecting tourist, unscrew the top and proceed to drink the lot. We were happy to return.

Last day in Mumbai took us to the beach which was not exactly St Tropez (and does not pretend to be). After 5 minutes looking at empty water bottles and other human waste we moved on to see Ghandi’s house, which was free (leave a donation) and very interesting. And so we move on, happy to see the back of noisy, hot and humid Mumbai. However, we had no hassle, Michelle received no unwanted staring or touching and in the main the people were lovely (except the grumpy taxi drivers); tomorrow Jodphur by plane.

---

Photos

Victoria Station
The beauty of the station cannot be shown in this one picture.

Elephanta Island carvings
They did not excite us.

Monkey with orange juice Elephanta Island
She took the bottle out of the hand of a tourist who at first chased after her but then gave up. She drank the lot.

Chowpatty Beach
Not as clean as it looks here

Comments

[Janette Jones]

At last
Been really looking forward to this so thankyou for letting me read you holiday blog and see your photos. As usual full of interesting information, i cant wait for the next entry.