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Published: March 27th 2012
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ELEPHANTA ISLAND, MAHARASHTRA, INDIA. Wednesday 21 March, 2012.
We were collected on time at 8.30 am by Miss Unknown and the same driver as yesterday. M asked her name and wished she hadn't - so for the rest of this blog she shall remain Unknown. We did establish that she was married with a 4 month old son and was the daughter of a doctor. She had also travelled to Egypt so she was rich by Indian standards. As she is married we will now call her Mrs Unknown.
Our destination this morning was Elephanta Island (Hindu name Gharapuri) which is a World Heritage Monument. The visibility in Mumbai today was appauling which was caused by pollution. We caught the first launch of the morning from the landing stage near the Gateway of India and the journey to the island, which is about 10 km off the coast of Mumbai, took about an hour.
Only about a thousand people live on the island which takes its name from a huge carved elephant found there in the 16th century. After we docked we walked to the nearest village where we climbed up the steep staircase that leads to a
group of cave temples. There were plenty of monkeys and lots of dogs and puppies as we climbed the steps. One good thing was that the staircase was covered by a canopy - not to keep we tourists cool but to protect the stall holders who lined the long steps, from top to bottom, from the sun.
On reaching the top of the steps we paid our entrance fee. As usual the price was 5x more for us than for Indian Nationals. Mrs Unknown first took us to the square shrine in the centre of the first cave temple. It is carved into the rock face and dates from the 7th century. It contains a sculpture honouring Shiva, one of the three basic divinities of Hinduism. We sat while Mrs U filled us in on the Hindu Gods and whatnot. We are thinking of converting now as we are near experts on Hinduism (joking of course - there are over 30 million gods!). The central shrine houses the Linga, a cyindrical stone on a square base representing the phallus, which is venerated as the eternal source of life (which we suppose it is - at least it has a
small part to play!).
There are nine carvings in the main cave, all of enormous power and beauty. The best carving is the 5.4 metre (18 ft) high panel of Shiva Trimurti (triple faced) showing the 3 aspects of the god. The features of the east profile are raging and destructive, the west profile has a gentle feminine expression and the centre full face is Shiva in his completenes wearing the symbolic Linga Headdress. Mrs U took us to all nine carvings and started the story of each with "once upon a time .....". We listened sometimes intently and sometimes not intently enough. We regretted the not so intently times when she gave us a test. "Now what can we see in this one?" Mrs U asked expectantly. We weren't too good on any of them but we have a good excuse. The Portugese had used the statues as target practice when they were in occupation of Bombay (so called as Bom Bahia means Beautiful Bay in Portugese and it was anglicised when the British took over). Therefore, most of the stautes had their faces shot off (seems they aimed more at the faces than any other part of
the anatomy). So Shiva with his 3 faces probably had none. M was great at recognising the celestial dancers though and excitedly pointed up to the top of the carving - they were on every one so it was a good bet!
Mrs U then left us alone to wander for 20 minutes and told us to meet her at the bottom of the steps. We wandered around and found another couple of caves which had still more carvings, but the Portugese riflemen had made a really good job of these and there wasn't much left of any of them. On the way back to meet up with Mrs U we bumped into two of our tablemates, Dave and Irene, who had also stayed in Mumbai for a few extra days. We chatted for a while and then descended and found Mrs U. There is a little train that transports you from the village back to the jetty at a cost of 5 rupees each and, as it was there, we climbed aboard and chugged our way back to the boat.
Mrs U took us to a fantastic Chinese Restaurant for lunch where you can pile a lot
of food in a bowl and then a chef cooks it in a wok. There is a choice of sauces and you can go back as many times as you like. After lunch we went to the fishing docks where we saw the catches of the day being weighed and packed. There were old fashioned ice crushing machines that took huge blocks of ice and crushed it into small pieces. The fish were then packed in the ice and polystyrene boxes for transportation. There were all sorts of fish, from crabs and lobsters to catfish and sharks.
After the fishing port we went to the Afghan Memorial Church. The church was mainly interesting for its architecture - in particular the church tower. The church commemorated all the soldiers who had died in the Indo-Afghan wars. The pews inside the church had notches cut into them so that the worshipers could stand their rifles and pray without encumberance. The church also had several stunning stained glass windows.
After this Mrs U took us to the Discovery of India Exhibition. This museum unfortunately did not permit the taking of photographs. It consisted of two quite distinct exhibitions. One detailed through
models and displays how the Indian sub-continent has evolved from before pre-historic times until present day. It wa extremely well done. The other section of the museum was dedicted to the life of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first and longest serving Prime Minister. It consisted of facinating insights into his childhood in the form of photographs and letters and continued right into his adult life with letters from Ghandi and other prominent world leaders. It detailed with photographs his time in prison and all other aspects of his life.
At the end of the tour we were dropped at a bar in the downtown called Cafe Mondegar. It is famous for its juke box. There were plenty of westerners in there. We sat and had a Kingfisher and soaked up the atmosphere. The waiters were called Mondies. It was a 30 minute walk back to our hotel from the bar. We were too tired to go back to the downtown so we returned to the Barat Excellence for another good meal. We have to get up early tomorrow as we have to catch a flight to Udaipur.
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