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The Gateway to India - Colaba
Note the large skittle balloon! We arrived here yesterday morning and it was raining quite a bit, my first impression of India was seeing a dog run across the runway in front our plane after we had landed! The airport was very sparse and it is very humid everywhere. After filling in about 4 forms and waiting in as many queues we finally managed to work our way out of the airport only to be told that the hotel I had pre booked for us was a dump and in the middle of the red light district (Grant Road) with no places of interest nearby! We therefore decided to change accommodation to a more desirable location (Colaba) and took a "cool cab" (AC included) to the city centre. After driving through probably 10 miles of shanty towns we arrived in central Mumbai. Mumbai is home to 18 million people, 60,000 taxi's and more filth than London has accumulated in its entire lifespan. Everything is cheap here, even by city standards. It is the monsoon season at the moment hence the rain and humidity, when it does rain it rains hard, but not for long, it is good as it keeps the streets clean. There are few
Replica Architecture - Big Ben
I don't know if the bell is the same westerners about which in a way is very refreshing on the other hand we stick out and are continually hassled for taxi’s, money and to buy souvenirs in the Bazaar’s.
Mumbai is a very interesting place, we visited the gateway to India, built by the British at the turn of the 20th century, a very well built monument, it was the place where the British ceremoniously left India after the second world war finished. A lot of local people congregate here at night and we were continuously trying to be sold ridiculous 6 foot long balloons the shape of skittles, why??? I have no idea...
There are plenty of bazaar's selling useless stuff, but some have interesting cloths and trinkets etc, not worth buying though. There are many restaurants offering very good traditional Indian cuisine, I have decided not to eat any meat (health reasons and so forth) however the vegetarian choice is excellent and there are many pure veg eateries to choose from anyway.
On the second day we tried to get a boat to Elephenta Island, really worth visiting apparently, however due to the monsoon the sea was too rough. Instead we decided to hire
a guide for half a day. After fighting off some ludicrously priced hustlers barely managing to say hello in English promising to show us the city we made our way to the tourist office and arranged a government approved guide by the name of Mr Veer, this method proved to be a fraction of the price of the touts. We also hired a taxi for 4 hours and set off. To start we visited the first English church built here after our occupation started. In a stark contrast to the rest of the many unpleasant smells of Mumbai, the church smelt musky and damp like one of our churches, it was built in a very similar 19th century style with all the materials imported from the UK. Cruising the city, heading north we made various stops along the way to view interesting buildings and architecture, notably close replicas of Notre Dame and Big Ben. The main train station (CST) is very similar to St Pancras station in London. Our next destination was Malabar Hill to visit a Hindu temple called Jain temple. It was a fascinating building with exceptionally ornately painted ceilings and amazing panoramic views over Chowpatty beach and
the rest of the city. Just along the road are Mumbai’s Hanging Gardens, again brilliant views and home to many giant snails. The guide was very good and spoke very sound English. On our return journey to Colaba we briefly stopped to see the site where all the dirty washing in Mumbai is washed, it was a huge, many people were hard at work, a bit like Widow Twankies! The main thing I took from the tour was that so much architecture has been built with our influence, the majority of buildings are pre WWII and as such the city bares a great resemblance to many parts of central London.
Just walking around the city is an eye opener, there are many great sights and in contrast there are some horrific ones, poverty is widespread as is rubbish and dirt. We wandered into a fabric market which was fascinating, the range cloth available is exceptional, people were trying to sell us meters of cloth etc…
We hastily arranged a train ticket under the tourist quota and took an overnight AC sleeper departing at 22.50 to Margao, Goa and after many very cheap good cups of coffee said bye
to Mumbai…
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