India is a true kaleidoscope of cultures where the people live with many sacred rivers, coveted empires, and two of the world's great religions, depending on your point of view. As these two religions are not mentioned in the Lonely Planet book, we will not give it a guess, although we think one has to be Hinduism.
Sometimes over-crowded, there is much poverty and sticky bureaucracy. India is "incredible" as their new slogan indicates. A frenetic energy begins each work day as millions of folks are in a rush-hour crush. You simply have to see it to believe it.
The best time to visit is from November to March in the plains, or July to September in the Himalayas.
What is there to see? The Taj Mahal, simply the most magnificent example of a tomb of remembrance. Visited for the first time in 2007, we will never forget it. We have never been to the banks of the Ganges River in Varanasi, but we heard it is most holy. If you want to see a crush of humanity….go to Mumbai, where we are right now for two days. There are over 12 million people here….the fourth most populous city in the world.
Things to do are really too numerous to mention, but here are a few suggestions. You can take a camel safari through the dunes of Rajasthan. Or how about search the jungles for Bengal tigers? We did just that two years ago on an overland safari – only the two of us and private drivers and guides. Over-the-top for sure. A visit to the palm-brushed beaches of Goa is relaxing, or try a sleeper train ride across India. It is said to be the best way to explore the subcontinent if you have the time and patience.
What is the food like? A special meal we enjoyed was called thalis, which consisted of little dishes of rice, curries, chapatis, pappadams, and condiments. They may or may not contain fish or chicken or can be totally vegetarian. These metal bowls are served on a metal platter or sometimes on banana leaves.
What would you expect to drink with the food? Lassi, sweet or salty yoghurt shakes, or you could enjoy lots of chai, a sweet Indian tea.
Trademarks are maharajas, holy cows, Gandhi, the Taj Mahal in Agra, towering temples, bottomless slums, Bollywood, and outsourcing revolution. Looked for holy cows all day, but saw none….darn.
One random fact: There is no such thing as "curry" in India. The actual word in southern India is "kari", and it means something fried or saucy.
Of course, our port of call was Mumbai today and also tomorrow, as we are overnighting here. As we already mentioned, there are 12 million people in this city and the surrounding areas. It has the richest natives, as well as the poorest people. There are modern skyscrapers built alongside colonial mansions. Ancient temples are mixed in between high tech businesses and traditional bustling food markets.
The many Victorian buildings reflect the British occupation that lasted over 300 years. These can be seen while on some of the ten HAL tours here. They run from 1 ½ hours to 5 hours. And the cost ranges from $40 to $160. They include a trip to Elephanta Island to see the caves. We did it once and had a ball because of the folks we went with. Once was enough, however, since the monkeys at the top are really bad, stealing everything they can get their little paws on….even sunglasses and hats.
There is a tour to drive the "Queen's Necklace" or the boulevard along the back bay that it well-lit with street lights. You can include a dinner on the $160 tour.
You can tour Gandhi's modest house (really where he stayed with friends), Victoria Terminus, which is the railway station (another terrorist scene), the Gateway of India, and the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Both of which we saw today for free. The Dhobi Ghat laundry is a must-see to believe how laundry is hand cleaned outdoors, and the Crawford Market and Colaba Street shopping is wonderful for photos, spice-buying, and even shoe buying (that's what we accomplished today). Temples are everywhere, as are mosques, and churches. Museums are numerous. Most everything was open today, a Saturday, but may not be opened tomorrow, a Sunday.
So, here we are, arriving to the city later than planned. Originally, we were to come here at 8am. However, due to tidal fluctuations, we could not get into the bay until 10am. Another change was that we would not be docked where we usually are, but in an offshore container terminal. A shuttle bus would be provided to take us to the Green Gate, where we are always shuttled to. No change there.
So we went to breakfast around 8:30am in the dining room, and took our time. There were few guests this morning, because lots of them had tours booked. The scheduled Indian immigrations procedures were scheduled to begin at 10:30am. And since we had the letter "S" for President's Club and suite guests, we went to the Explorers Lounge at 10:15am to be among the first to go through the checkpoint. We wish our letters with the group numbers would be collected and enforced. It was announced that only the "S" group would be allowed first, but we know for a fact that some of the guests in line near us were definitely not "S", and no one stopped them.
Well, the officials were not even there yet, as we saw the entire group heading up to the Lido for breakfast, we assumed. They did not come back to the lounge until after 11am. By then, we had been handed our passports with the landing cards and a copy of our passport. Finally we saw the shore excursion folks being seen first, since they were the sign-holders for the tours. When they were finished with them, we finally got the go-ahead. Took a few extra minutes because we have the 10 year Indian visas in our old passports. The officials had to locate them as well as check out our current passport. And the yellow landing card was missing our exit date, so I had to fill the correct date in. This was missing on the instruction paper yesterday. Bill's official did not catch the missing date, but stamped the card anyway. By the way, all of our passports were collected after we cleared immigrations to stay on the ship.
By now, it was already 11:30am, so we grabbed our things and went off the ship. Bill was stopped because his date was missing. Henk was standing nearby, assisting a passenger into a waiting ambulance. He came over and filled in the date with his pen for Bill. Good to go, we hopped on the first shuttle to the gate. Barbara H told us there would be eleven buses to take folks to the gate and back all day today and tomorrow.
Once out at the gate, we had to show these cards and the copy of our passport ID page. Then we had to go through xray before exiting the Green Gate. That's when we had to weave our way through the taxi drivers, saying we wanted to walk. They also treat us like we are crazy, but never intimidate us into taking their ride. These drivers were much better than the ones in Sri Lanka, as they kindly accepted our NO, thanks, as our final answer. That's one good thing about having a lot of passengers filing out the gate right behind us. They got a lot of business from our crowd.
The streets were busy this morning, as it was a Saturday, and families and kids were all out and about. We headed towards the Gateway of India, hugging the wall of the police station most of the way. The traffic was heavy, with the heavy part being the horns. No one can drive here without laying on the horn. Big trucks, taxis, vans, and little cars…..doesn't matter….they all blow their horns. Then there are the motorcycles. They will resort to driving on the sidewalks when they can get away with it. So needless to say, we were most careful where we walked.
Eventually we reached the road that went to the Gateway of India. Today it was busy with local families and young couples to visit. Many of them were on their way to Elephanta Island, a fun place to spend an afternoon for a picnic. The place to catch the ferry there is below the gateway, which was built in 1911 to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to India. Following that, the gate greeted passengers on steamships, and also served as the last point of the departure of British troops in 1947. It stands just a proud as it did back then.
Today the area is cycloned off, and you have to go through the police screening. This happened after the terrorist's attack at the end of 2008, when they staged shooting and bombings in at least three separate areas in Mumbai. Seem to recall the gunmen hit the railway station, the Taj Mahal Palace, and Leopolds Café. You can still see bullet holes in the walls of Leopolds, although the Taj has been completely fixed from what we saw. We took our time walking around the gate, but there were dozens of fellows trying to sell postcards cheap, and offers to take your pictures with their camera and sell you photos for cheap. Always an angle. Then outside the fencing, you had to fight off taxi drivers selling tours.
The next stop was close….right across the street was the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Once again, we had to go through security xray before entering the hotel. It is a most elegant hotel that we always like to see when we are here. It is a wonderful place to cool down, and enjoy a lunch in their dining room. Today we were too early for lunch, so we just walked through the boutique shops, used their restroom facilities and continued on.
One stop that is always on the list for Mumbai, are the shoe stores in the Colaba shopping area. It is a sprawling district where you can find jewelry and clothing at great prices. Guess it could be called the mini-version of the Night Market in Hong Kong. The only problem one of us runs into is that the larger shoe sizes are limited. Shopping for a pair of gold and a pair of white dress shoes, we were lucky to find the perfect pair of gold sequined sandals with a medium heel. White ones were impossible to locate. Looking into four shops, only one pair of white sandals were close to the right choice, but no size was available. The humorous thing is that all of their surplus stock is stored in the ceiling overhead. One fellow goes up through the hole, searches for the right sizes, then throws the boxes down to the salesman below. Once they are done, the extra shoe boxes are thrown back up through the hole.
That was all we could find that appealed to either of us. It was impossibly crowded on this street, so we headed back to the ship. We thought we might see someplace interesting for lunch, but found nothing. Leopolds Café would have been OK for beers, but they were over-packed, and it was too hot to sit in a crowded bar setting. Lunch on the ship was sounding better and better.
By the time we got back to the Green Gate, it was near 3pm. Security was lax at this point, because we went through without being xrayed…not even or bag or purse. The shuttle was waiting, so we got back to the ship right away. Sure was nice being back in the air-conditioning. Assuming the xray was present on the ship, we were wrong. It was not operating. First slip-up of the trip.
For a change, we got a Dive-In burger and hotdog up at the Grill. Only took about 10 minutes, since we hit the line just right. No one was there to order anything. Took it down to the coolness of our room, and dined there. We ended up staying in until dinnertime. Got interested in a good TV movie while working on photos. Perfect.
Dinner was fun as there was only Barb and Martin there. Sometimes it is nice to get to know your tablemates better when there are fewer people at the table. Conversation is easier. Martin told us all about his tour to the spice market, which he found very interesting. Poor Barb was not feeling well, so she spent the day onboard, catching up on much needed rest. Hope she is not getting the "bug", because she is our Rock of Gibraltar. Martha stopped by after her dinner in the Pinnacle. She had made reservations for our entire table, along with watercolor instructors Carol and Kelly for a farewell dinner on April 19th. We told her she made it possible to celebrate our oldest son's birthday that day. So Bill, we shall be toasting you that day….and probably ordering a birthday cake too.
Tomorrow, the plan is to stay here until 9:30pm, instead of the announced 5pm. Must have something to do with the tides again.
Bill & Mary Ann
Arriving to Mumbai Harbor
Many vessels in the water
Oil-drilling rigs
The city awakens
Look at the number of ships
The Costa Classica was in our spot
We were forced to dock elsewhere
The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, and the Gateway to India on the left
Naval port
Heading towards the shoreline
Ships for cargo
Small tug
Coming to help
Dozens of small fishing boats
We saw hundreds of these small boats all night
Larger tug
Coming to help us
The boats fish at night
Tug
Both were assisting
Costa Classica - 53,000 gross tons – 1766 guests (1992)
A newly-built cabinet
It will replace the older & smaller lifejacket cabinet
Here comes the tug
Looks like an island
This ship was on a turn-around voyage today
Amsterdam docked in an offshore container pier
Unlikely garden near the port area
This is more what the port area looks like
New equipment
Typical Indian transport
Rolled aluminum
Outside the Green Gate
So many taxi drivers
They were not as pesty as the ones in Sri Lanka
Many folks were looking for cheap taxis
Few people chose to walk like us
There are many historical buildings in this area
Used to be cows roaming around also
Sugar cane used for juice
Colonial building behind the trees
Remember this corner – it is the way back to the gate
Traffic not too bad….yet
Typical crow
Balconies
State Central Library
Locals like to eat lunch on these stairs
Colonial-style
Walking towards the Gateway to India
Motorcycles are everyhere
Typical apartment building
Shops below apartments
An eagle or hawk
Carefully crossing the street
The cars have the right of way
Blow the horns and go…..
St. Andrews Church
Found our way to the Taj Mahal Palace
The big roundabout
Many neat colonials here
Busy today…..it is Saturday
Trees helped give shade
Lots of young folk out today
The gateway to India
Modern high rise
Relaxing in her own shade
Built in 1911 to honor the visit from British royalty
The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel is across the street
The Gateway square is huge
Ferry to other places
Stairs to access the ferries
Get from one to the other on the side railings
Ferry to Elephanta Island
Many ferries in the harbor
Impressive gate
Few tourists here – mostly locals
Looking into the center
Almost a holy place for these Indians
Trying to dodge the vendors
The ladies all wear saris
No jeans for her
Impressive hotel
Not one sari is alike
Intricate design
Leaving the gateway
