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Published: October 13th 2007
Today was a bit of a slower paced day which was nice since it was very hot and humid today, much more so than Tuesday or Wednesday. I slept in a bit and just got up in time to get breakfast. I headed out to the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai’s most prestigious museum. There were three floors of displays showing everything from sculptures, metal work, paintings, coins, an interesting collection of stuffed birds, mammals, and sea creatures (including a gigantic 475 pound perch caught in Mumbai harbor in 1931) and arms and armour. It was interesting and a nice way to spend two hours, although it wasn’t air conditioned and I got tired of being followed by the guards. Every room I went into, a guard came in after me. Do I look like someone who’s going to make off with the silver???.
After that I wandered along Colaba Causeway again and went into to a few shops that I didn’t see yesterday. Again, it was frustrating to be in a store where you have said “I’m just looking” and then have someone follow me around saying “that’s an elephant made of wood” as if I were too stupid
to figure that out myself! I didn’t end up buying anything because I was just too hot and it was too annoying.
I had lunch at the well known Leopold Café and Bar on the Causeway. It’s been around since 1871 and is very popular with the tourist crowd. The food was good and I had a beer also. The street vendors outside the restaurant seemed a bit shocked at that: a female, alone, drinking alcohol, in the day time - yikes!
I decided to head back to the hotel to cool off so I took a route along the promenade. I ran into two girls from Sweden and we chatted for a few minutes. They are studying in Pune for a semester and were doing a little traveling. They were nice, but a bit overwhelmed by the masses of people in India. They thought that a semester was going to be a very long time!
I cooled down in my air conditioned room for about an hour and then headed back out. I asked the concierge to call a taxi to take me to see the Haji Ali Mosque and then to visit the Mahalaxmi Temple.
Trash and the Gateway of India
It's very sad to see how much trash there is everywhere in India, even by its greatest monuments.We headed out and stopped at the street along side the mosque which is approached by a long causeway which gets submerged at high tide. The tomb on the sometimes-island dates from the 15th century, although the mosque itself was built in the 1940s. The popular Mahalaxmi is dedicated to Laxmi, the Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity. In the 18th century, an embankment was being constructed along the bay, but was repeatedly being washed away. The contractor dreamed that if a temple was built to Laxmi, the wall would hold. He built the temple and the wall held. The cab driver kept trying to get me to go into stores owned by his cousin or brother and he wanted to drive me around Mumbai and I kept asking to go back to the hotel. We were supposed to be on the meter and he had already taken the long way to get from place to place so when we got back to the hotel and he gave me the total, I said it seemed quite high and didn’t match the meter. He said that he’d rounded for me. We went back and forth and I finally paid him, but I
Me
Hot and sweaty me on the promenade near the Gateway of India didn’t give him any tip. I’m so tired of this crap!
When I got back to the hotel, I asked of there were any message since I hadn’t heard from either my driver or my travel agent about tomorrow’s pick up time for the airport. There was nothing so I called Asutosh. Guess what? He had
just gotten off the phone with the driver and was about to call me! What great timing! We agreed on a time so that should be all set.
Tomorrow’s itinerary: 9:00am pick up for the airport, flight to Trivandrum, three hour drive to Kanniyakumai, the southern most tip of the subcontinent where the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, and the Bay of Bengal meet and has spectacular views of the sunrise and sunset. I’ll be there only long enough to see one of each.
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