Christmas in Bombay

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We arrived in Mumbai (aka Bombay) on the 23rd December and have stayed over the Christmas period. The city has a small but vocal (and rich) Christian community and so there were quite a few Santas and reindeer to be seen. Even the Hindu population regard Christmas as a special day, an excuse to eat cakes and do some shopping- not that they need much encouragement to do either.

Now that our tour has finished, the pace of sightseeing has slowed a little. There are no forts or temples to see in Mumbai, but there is a beach, good restaurants, and the buzz that comes from being in a big city. New Delhi may be the capital, but Mumbai is the home of big business, Bollywood, and the 'beautiful people'. We're staying in Colaba, which is the most Westernised and touristy area. There's a lot of colonial architecture- you come across a delicate little Jain temple, a row of concrete apartment buildings, a few palm trees, and then wallop, a massive Victorian edifice the size of St. Pancras station. Fortunately there's a lot of green space as well, most notably the 'Maidans', a series of connected parks which are the venue for about a thousand impromptu cricket matches. Judging by some of the bounces we saw, I'd say the spinners have the advantage.

We went to the Mahatma Gandhi museum, where the life of the great man is represented by a series of dioramas with miniature figures playing out significant incidents. It's history, 'Action Man' style. The penultimate scene is the assassination, for which the caption reads: "On January 30 at the sun-set hour, the perverse assassin of the ages lodged hot lead in the soft flesh of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi". You can also see a letter Gandhi wrote to Hitler, essentially asking him awfully nicely if he wouldn't mind not invading Western Europe. Overall, it's a very simple and humble museum, quite fitting for the man.

Also on our itinerary was Chowpatty beach, whcih comes alive at sunset with courting couples, families, and the smell of bhel puri. This last is the quintessential Mumbai snack food, consisting of puffed rice, onion, potato, tamarind water, spices and crackers, mixed together with speed- and a spectacular lack of hygiene- by the grubby hands of the vendors who trudge up and down looking for business. The next day we took a boat trip to Elephanta Island, which is a pleasant enough jaunt but not much to look at- a climb up to a series of progressively grottier caves, inhabited by delinquent monkeys who relieved Linda of her bar of Dairy Milk within about five seconds of arrival.

We've arranged our flights out of India. We'll be flying out of Cochin on the 31st December at 9:20 pm, going to Bangkok via Sri Lanka. As 2006 dawns we will probably be a terminal 1 of Colombo airport and we will be sure to raise a glass in a north western direction to you all. Before we leave, we're doing a two-day backwater tour in Kerala, which we're hoping will be a highlight of the trip.

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Photos

Bhel puri on Chowpatty beach
With or without salmonella, sir?

Steve and thieving monkey
Our simian friend scopes out the Dairy Milk from an elevated position

Out on the town
At Indigo, in Mumbai- one of the top 50 restaurants in the world, don't you know

Tiffin wallahs
These guys deliver hot lunches from the Mumbai suburbs to hungry customers in the city. Each tiffin box is marked with coloured symbols to indicate its origin and destination