Well this was a busssssy day!!
Up at 4.30am to get our last train to Mumbai. 8 hours, but it was quite a comfortable journey as we have air con but Jackie had a resident mouse chilling in the airconditioning unit above her head! Haha
The platform at Amedabad was more how imagined Indian stations to be like...busy with lots of people and a nice fragrant smell of sewage! Ha
When we arrived into Mumbai it felt very chaotic and busy! We checked into the hotel and we out again having lunch within 20 minutes! Then we split into 4 taxis and had a quick tour around Mumbai. It was a bit of a shame we didnt get more time to explore this city and it had an interesting different vibe and there was so much to see! It felt so much more westernised than any of the other cities - especially Delhi...the driving was still crazy but not quite as crazy and the people, even though they stared, they seemed friendlier - we even got a few smiles when we caught people checking us out! Haha
I will do a quick run through of what we saw:
- Hanging Gardens : Felt like Hyde Park or Central Park, a more serene place to go and it takes you away from the crazyness of the rest of the city. There was a gorgeous view over Mumbai from here - quite an unexpected, impressive skyline!
- Power of Silence : This is used by the religion, Parsi. It is a tomb where they put respected dead people. It is on the top of a hill and they leave the bodies there to be eaten by vultures...nice! They believe if you get cremated, as your body is reduced to ashes so you can't get reincarnated...this way you can!!
- Public Laundry : This was the most amazing/organised place I have ever seen!! We looked down onto rows and rows of hanging laundry, all colour coded drying in the hot air! They had rows of concrete 'baths' to wash the clothes it - it was just incredible! And so amazing they get the whites so white!! Even the launderette in Bondi didn't manage this! It is apparently Asia's largest manual laundry and they wash all the hospital uniforms and bed sheets here too.
- Victoria Terminus : This is Mumbai's main train station and it is such a beautiful building! You can probably guess after the name it has major British influence and it did look like they had transported it from London. This was the same with the main University and High Courts - very old British buildings!
- We drove the Racecourse and Hazi Ali - the muslim area with mosques
-Marine Drive, Chowpatty Beach : Interesting to see everyone fully clothed on the beach but I don't think many people would have chosen to take a dip as it wasn't the cleanest ocean I have ever seen!!
- Shanty Town : This wasn't the biggest shanty in Mumbai but one on the outskirts of the city. We didn't go in or take photos as we felt a bit weird but it was just how you would imagine, teeny doorway next to teeny doorway leading into single rooms which were peoples houses. There was the same set up on top of the lower levels!! Incredible how they build it all! It was interesting to hear that apparently a lot of the people that live in the slums actually have white collar jobs but they choose to live here as it is with their families and communities. We saw a lot of kids playing in a open area and they all looked so happy... despite playing around the rubbish!
Up at 4.30am to get our last train to Mumbai. 8 hours, but it was quite a comfortable journey as we have air con but Jackie had a resident mouse chilling in the airconditioning unit above her head! Haha
The platform at Amedabad was more how imagined Indian stations to be like...busy with lots of people and a nice fragrant smell of sewage! Ha
When we arrived into Mumbai it felt very chaotic and busy! We checked into the hotel and we out again having lunch within 20 minutes! Then we split into 4 taxis and had a quick tour around Mumbai. It was a bit of a shame we didnt get more time to explore this city and it had an interesting different vibe and there was so much to see! It felt so much more westernised than any of the other cities - especially Delhi...the driving was still crazy but not quite as crazy and the people, even though they stared, they seemed friendlier - we even got a few smiles when we caught people checking us out! Haha
I will do a quick run through of what we saw:
- Hanging Gardens : Felt like Hyde Park or Central Park, a more serene place to go and it takes you away from the crazyness of the rest of the city. There was a gorgeous view over Mumbai from here - quite an unexpected, impressive skyline!
- Power of Silence : This is used by the religion, Parsi. It is a tomb where they put respected dead people. It is on the top of a hill and they leave the bodies there to be eaten by vultures...nice! They believe if you get cremated, as your body is reduced to ashes so you can't get reincarnated...this way you can!!
- Public Laundry : This was the most amazing/organised place I have ever seen!! We looked down onto rows and rows of hanging laundry, all colour coded drying in the hot air! They had rows of concrete 'baths' to wash the clothes it - it was just incredible! And so amazing they get the whites so white!! Even the launderette in Bondi didn't manage this! It is apparently Asia's largest manual laundry and they wash all the hospital uniforms and bed sheets here too.
- Victoria Terminus : This is Mumbai's main train station and it is such a beautiful building! You can probably guess after the name it has major British influence and it did look like they had transported it from London. This was the same with the main University and High Courts - very old British buildings!
- We drove the Racecourse and Hazi Ali - the muslim area with mosques
-Marine Drive, Chowpatty Beach : Interesting to see everyone fully clothed on the beach but I don't think many people would have chosen to take a dip as it wasn't the cleanest ocean I have ever seen!!
- Shanty Town : This wasn't the biggest shanty in Mumbai but one on the outskirts of the city. We didn't go in or take photos as we felt a bit weird but it was just how you would imagine, teeny doorway next to teeny doorway leading into single rooms which were peoples houses. There was the same set up on top of the lower levels!! Incredible how they build it all! It was interesting to hear that apparently a lot of the people that live in the slums actually have white collar jobs but they choose to live here as it is with their families and communities. We saw a lot of kids playing in a open area and they all looked so happy... despite playing around the rubbish!
- Final stop was the Gate of India : A very random but impressive piece of architecture built during the British Raj.It was a crude jetty used by the fishing community which was later renovated and used as a landing place for British governors and other prominent people. In earlier times, it would have been the first structure that visitors arriving by boat in Mumbai would have seen.
We then met everyone for a drink at Leopold's - the bar from Shantaram. As I am currently reading this (thanks to Tom!) it was very nice to go an visit as this is where Gregory Roberts spent most of his time in Mumbai! The downstairs is a restaurant but the upstairs is quite how I imagined it to be...Kinda dark, edgey with little booths, smaller tables where you can imagine all the dodgey deals he describes going on! It had a lovely feel to it but unfortunately a cockroach fell of Izzy's arm so a few of us opted out of eating there and went to Cafe Mondar down the road for dinner. An awesome bar - lots of atmosphere and it felt very westernised! I had my first vegetable stirfry in India...absolutely delish and it stayed down! Yay!! :)
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