Round the World Again: 3 11-12 MUMBAI, INDIA

I know many people who visit Mumbai, or Bombay as the locals still call it, mostly see the poverty since it is adjacent to the prosperity. What I mostly notice, since this is our second visit here, is the color. Sometimes it is the lack of color, like today when it is amazingly smoggy.

Similar picture to the one we took 2 years ago (they give you roses when you disembark the ship on the dock)

We were here for 2 days and the city looked like this the whole time. The first day we took at tour that came with our cruise. I don’t remember is I mentioned it before, but we booked online with the agent that gave us the best price. It turns out they are associated with a consortium of travel agents. This group, vacations.com, has a concierge on board and takes us on 3 excursions. This is at no additional charge. We also get a couple of cocktail parties. Anyway, on the first day in Mumbai we had a tour. We went to many of the places we saw last time we were here. For example, we saw the Gateway to India

Notice the pigeons in the tree. No, I did not do any photo magic with it. I realized that you don’t usually see pigeons in trees, usually they are on buildings or statues or the like.

and the Taj Mahal Hotel, which was bombed 2 years ago, soon after we left the area on our last world cruise in 2008,

(it is under repair right now), the laundry where only men can clean the clothes by beating them on concrete slabs with dirty water, and the whites come out sparkling white.

Did I mention, this laundry is HUGE?

We did see some new sites along the way, too. There are many temples right on the street that people stop at on their way to work..

There is still beautiful British architecture

And as I said color….

even in the poorest areas

Notice the mud flaps on this taxi. We saw many taxi’s like that. Also, trucks are sometimes decorated.

We went to Mahatma Gandhi’s room in a house he stayed in while in Bombay…notice the spinning wheels. We learned a lot about him, but you would need a book to tell it all, Oh yeah, lots of people have written books about him :)

This house, yes that huge ugly building in the distance is a 27 story personal residence of the 5th richest man in the world. I don’t remember his name.

We learned about a fascinating activity (that is not the right word) that happens every work day in Mumbai and only in Mumbai. We were told it is in the Guinness Book of World Records and is studied all over the world for its efficiency. What is it you ask? Well, every day, after the husbands have gone to work, the wives make their lunch and put them in”pails”. Then a man comes and picks it up, delivers it by train to the city (many men live at least 45-60 minutes by train from work) where they meet with other delivery men. They sort the lunches and deliver them to the desk of the workers. Their error rate is unbelievably low. They deliver the meals at the same time, on time, every day and everywhere. How do they do it? You need to hear their lecture. We were lucky enough to be at the right place and time to see the process at work.

Here they are trading lunches, by area.

Then they head off

on their bicycles or push carts

and deliver the bags to a stacking area at each office building, where it is delivered to the individuals.

We also went to a museum. This piece of art was particularly interesting. Besides being beautiful, it was not carved. It was made out of thin wood in a manner like paper mache.

The museum has this sign out front, since Mumbai is experiencing a major draught. Their monsoons last year were down 30%, so water is severely restricted

The second day we went to Elephanta Caves

We went by ferry from the Gateway to India archway to the island on a boat like this.

This is how you get to the upper deck. Notice the wording on the trash can.

When we got to the island we found 126 steps up to the caves. If you were unable, or unwilling, to climb the stairs you could take the carry chair. We walked.

Inside the caves are carved walls that were used as temples. All the caves, 5 of them, were carved by men. Pretty amazing.

When we reached the island we also found monkeys.

We were told on the way over that the monkeys like coke. So we picked up some mostly empty cans. (since we cannot do movies, these sequential pictures will have to do for now.)