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Published: August 4th 2010
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Well, here I am in Mumbai, one of the largest and most heavily populated cities in the whole of India! First of all it is worth mentioning that I actually arrived here a day later than was scheduled, due to the fact that the wild monsoons that I spent the majority of the last entry complaining about flooded the tracks and caused landslides over them so the train was canceled! I had to go back to my hostel and wait twelve hours for a bus that would take me to Mumbai overnight. With that obstacle overcome I arrived in Mumbai on Tuesday morning, and since then have been having an awesome time! The people here are incredibly friendly and always seem genuinely happy to see and speak to a westerner, the demand from people to have their photograph taken with me has never been so high!!
Once I had spent a couple of days wandering around and finding my bearings (which I haven't really done if I'm honest, this city is so vast it is simply too much to get your head round!), I ventured out into the city to do some proper exploring and see exactly what the city
Mumbai can be a wild place at times...
Saw this guy chillin at the side of the road whilst out for a stroll. Not really. has to offer. The first day was spent walking round the city in order to see some of the key tourist sites in the city centre. We headed to the Gateway of India, where after taking some photographs of my own I was then asked to pose for a few myself, including one with an incredibly cute Indian toddler whose poppa threw her at me and demanded a photo. She started crying as soon as she sat on my lap so I don't think it was quite the portrait he was hoping for!
The second day I headed to the national park on the outskirts of the city in order to try and observe some wildlife, the highlight of which was watching a monkey gang fight occur over some bananas near the entrance. We also caught a glimpse of some Lions and Tigers but with the park only being small it was not like seeing them in their natural habitat, more like seeing them in the zoo so you really just felt sorry for them!
Day Three was spent back in the city centre, after a rather interesting train ride in the second class carriage in the middle of rush
Gandhi
Where Gandhi used to live and work whilst stationed in Mumbai. hour. However, the people of Mumbai's hospitality was again the highlight, the guy's on the train made me fell incredibly welcome and seemed to appreciate the fact that I was traveling with them in second class, and when I got off the train I had half a carriages hand to shake! From there we went to the Gandhi museum, which is actually a house in Mumbai that served as the great mans headquarters in Mumbai over the course of a 17 year period. A more than inspirational visit. From there we also checked out the outstanding architecture of the Chhaatrapati Shivaji Terminus, undoubtedly the most impressive looking train station that I have ever clapped eyes on, it looks more like a cathedral!
However, without doubt the highlight of this leg of my trip was the visit that I paid to two cave complexes that are about 11 hours by road outside of Mumbai, known as Ajanta and Ellora. Everything that I have described thus far were experienced within the company of other travelers but I traveled out to the caves alone on an overnight bus. Both complexes are reachable from another town called Auarangabad, which is where I stationed
Ellora Caves
This used to be a three storey monastery back in the day... myself in order to be able to explore both sets of caves properly. To give a bit of detail the caves are two separate complexes that are cut into rock faces and were completed between 2nd century BC and 10th century AD. The bigger caves in the complexes were used as Buddhist monasteries, but there is also examples of Brahmanical and Jain caves at the Ellora complex. The caves, particularly Ajanta, where the setting of the caves was absolutely breathtaking as they are cut into a horseshoe shaped section of rock, were incredible to walk round and it is frightening to think of the amount of time and effort that was invested in creating the caves. The caves were also covered in paintings, which are considered masterpieces of Buddhist art. There are plenty of pictures included as they can do the caves far more justice than me talking about them.
Well I'm going to leave it there for now, I have been in Mumbai for almost a week and from here on in the pace I'll be moving at quickens, I am traveling on from Mumbai with a French-Canadian guy that I met at the hostel in Mumbai called
Cave No. 16 at Ellora...
This was by far the most impressive of the caves at either of the two sites. Jean-Simon, we have similar itineraries for this portion of our trip to India, so I will likely be traveling with him for the next 3-4 weeks until I reach the far north of the country. From this point forth I will be stopping at a range of different cities for a few days at at time, the first of which will be Udaipur, so I will go and have a lot more fun and see many more wonderful things, and pop back to tell you all about it in a weeks time!!
Speak to you soon!!
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tracey mccue
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soooo jealous
Hi Ryan - well done you on such a fantastic blog - ive read it about 4 times already ( just remind me again why you didnt go down the journalism route). Glad to hear you are having such a good time and seeing all those amazing things and places - keep on telling us about it and taking lots of pictures. How have you dealt with the language in mumbai? do people understand any english? Good to know you are travelling a while with someone else - lets have some pics of people you meet along the way. Not much going on at home at the mo but if anything exciting happens you will be the first to know. Looking forward to your next update. Love you loads from Mum xxxx