Day 44 Mumbai | ROCK SHOTS

Had a crappy breakfast again, either doors open and bees flying in the dining area, or doors closed and AC not really going, or overhead fans at warp speed blowing everything off the table! Still misunderstandings about ordering simple breakfast food.

Ravinda and our rep picked us up and took us to the airport about 45 min drive. Flight with Indigo airlines, a relatively new Indian company, very clean and efficient.

Arrived in Mumbai around midday and were taken to our hotel, the impressive Trident Nariman on the Arabian Sea!

Shamal our guide picked us up for our afternoon tour. First stop Churchgate station to watch the unloading of the Lunch boxes! The chaps that effect this amazing non computerised delivery service are called Dabbawalas. The cost for this service is between 800 and 1000 rupees per month ($12-$15), depending on distance. In the event you haven’t seen the movie ‘The Lunchbox’, the wife prepares her husbands lunch at home and this is collected every day at the same time by the same Dabbawala and delivered to his desk, and then collected and returned. The error rate in reality is 1 in 6,000,000, and all without being hi tech!

Next was The Victoria Terminus (Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) the main railway station for Mumbai with both local and national trains. The reservation hall was packed with people waiting patiently for their number to come up. Some camp out overnight to get in line first in the morning. Tickets can sell out 4 months in advance on some routes. You can book online but cannot choose a seat or sleeper berth online, which can be a pain apparently!

The station design is incredibly similar to that of London’s Kings Cross St. Pancras Station, which was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, who also designed the Rajabai Clock Tower in Mumbai (modeled on Big Ben). We drove by the High Court, the Clock Tower, the Hutatma Chowk (Flora Fountain) and then detoured into the ‘Crawford’ market to get a feel and smell for the real life of Mumbai, and it really did smell! Thankfully it is full mango season, which helped the aroma.

Onward to the Malabar Hills, the posh part of town, to the Hanging Gardens to brush up on our horticultural knowledge!

While visiting the Tower of Silence next to the Hanging Gardens, we learnt that the Zoroastrians whose religious burial procedure was to leave the body open for the vultures to eat, thereby carrying off their sins, and then collect the bones for burial, can no longer do this. Apparently the vultures have died off in Mumbai as a result of ingesting Diclofenac, also from the carcasses of bovines!

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/26/death-city-lack-vultures-threatens-mumbai-towers-of-silence

Finally a visit to the inspiring Gandhi Museum – Mani Bhavan, a collection of memorabilia and information located in a house that Gandhi was a regular guest at when in Mumbai. A powerful heart renting display.
Much of the architecture of the Mumbai is attributed not only to the British but also to the Parsi who migrated to Bombay from Iran.