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Published: November 17th 2015
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Being thoroughly spoilt at my treat hotel, Abode Boutique Hotel, Bombay Mumbai is massive, majestic and marvellous!!
Although I was advised to skip Mumbai as I was told it is expensive and just another big city, I am glad that I decided to take some time out to explore this historic and interesting city.
Yes it is expensive and it is a big city but as I said in my previous blog every place I visit in India is a completely different India. Mumbai is very much influenced by the British Raj and has many huge Victorian buildings, libraries and museums. To me it feels a little like London but with very Indian twists. Poverty is very much in your face here with slums stretching for miles across the city and homeless and disabled people scattered across the streets. The city is busy and quite nosy but has sophisticated vibes due to the extremely wealthy that live or spend time in this city.
Mumbai is famous for two main things; the very expensive and posh Taj Hotel, which faces India Gate – the gateway of India. I was lucky enough to stay about 30 seconds walk from both of these historic pieces of architecture in a very beautiful hotel
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The Prince Of Wales Museum, Colaba called Abode Boutique Hotel. This was my treat hotel of my whole trip and after two nights stay I feel very pampered and spoilt. The hotel has a vintage feel and encourages eco-friendly and ethical awareness. At Mumbai airport I was picked up by one of the hotel’s drivers; a female driver who is a single parent coming from a lower class background. The hotel had trained her to be a driver giving her the chance for a decent paid job. It was very reassuring for me arriving in a new city alone to be picked up by a female driver. I also treated myself on the Monday to a massage at the hotel spa. Abode Hotel have links with a local Blind Hospital where they train blind and partially sighted women to be masseuses, so I experienced a wonderful full body Ayruvedic massage by a blind woman. It was such a beautiful massage and amazing to think that she couldn’t see me and was totally relying on the sense of touch to massage my body, make me feel so much better and fully relaxed.
The part of Mumbai in which I was staying is known as Colaba in
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Looking back at the Taj Hotel and India Gate from the ferry to Elephanta Island South Mumbai. I didn’t actually venture out of this district; partly due to the fact that I had limited time and was alone but mainly because there was so much to see within this one district. I visited the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, formerly known as The Prince of Wales Museum, which was very close to my hotel. This is a really huge but very interesting museum full of ancient art work, sculptures and artefacts of India including many prints of old Bombay. I particularly liked the sculpture exhibition on the ground floor and by using the free audio guide I was able to learn so much more about the Hindu religion and their different Gods. It was a really interesting museum with almost too much to see but because it was very hot inside I could only manage to explore two of the three floors.
On my third and final day in Mumbai I had a guided tour, arranged by the hotel, on Elephanta Island. Elephanta Island is situated around 11km off the coast of Mumbai and took about one hour to travel there by ferry. It was fun being on a little ferry boat again and
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Inside one of the caves on Elephanta Island, you can see Shiva's Lingam inside the temple in the background really made me feel like I was back at home in Poole Harbour for a moment. The island itself is very mountainous but at the harbour point it has a real beachy feel to it. The just over 1000 people that live on this Island rely on tourism and fishing for their income. When we arrived on the Island we had to walk up 120 stairs to get to the famous Elephanta Caves. The weather on the Island was extremely hot and humid but inside the caves it was nice and cool. The main cave was fascinating; it was basically a massive ancient temple dedicated to the Hindu God Shiva. When the Portugese came to India in the 16
th Century they invaded Elephanta Island and used the caves for shooting practise. What took years for the Indian’s to carefully design intricate statues for their cave temples took seconds for the Portugese to destroy with their guns. However luckily they didn’t manage to destroy all of the statues – you can still make out a lot of the original beautiful artwork, and the main columns supporting the entire caves have been re-made to hold the foundations for these amazing caves. It was a very interesting tour and my guide was full of information about the stories behind the different statues of Shiva. He was born and lived on the Island and so knew everything about it, he even invited me to his family home after the tour to share some Diwali sweets which was very lovely.
So my brief but wonderful stay in Mumbai has now ended and I’m currently sitting in my hotel lobby waiting to get an overnight train to Goa tonight. I’m very glad that I did come to Mumbai even for the short amount of time that I did. I learnt a lot and managed to see some interesting sites. I also ate far too much in some fancy restaurants and felt thoroughly spoilt in the hotel. The highlight for me was arriving back on Monday night from my dinner and finding my bed to be made with a note saying ‘Sweet Dreams’ and some flowers and chocolates left on the bed – a very surprising and thoughtful gift from the housekeeping of the hotel.
If I ever come back to Mumbai again I will be sure to stay in Abode Hotel and I will recommend it to everyone. Now after feeling very pampered I am looking forward to spending five days on a beach in Goa.
K xx
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