Mumbai, India - April 2, 2012

Arriving Mumai at dawn

(Still having internet issues - limited loading pictures...)

Gateway to India

Cruising into Mumbai in the Arabian Sea, you cannot even begin to see the richest of culture or the excitement and bustle of this city of 22 million.  Mumbai was 7 islands, filled in over time to form one land mass as it became a strategic seaport on a major trade route.  It then became a city that many people from different parts of India came to seek work and fortune, making it religiously and culturally diverse.  Today it is the financial capital of India and it handles half of Indian’s seagoing trade traffic.  With this distinction, we can see in the port there are many, many ships and boats and while touring the city many, there are many diverse people in both traditional and western style of dress.  This is also the epicenter of Bollywood, the largest film producer in the world.  I don’t think we would know any of their movie stars’ names, yet they know ours – there was a billboard with an advertisement for Pawn Stars (the U.S. show on the History Channel)!

Another tour for us today, with an absolutely outstanding tour guide.  She explains many of the sights on our route and educates us on where the various styles of Sari dress originate, the significance of the colors of the traditional forehead dots for both women and men, a bit about the Hindu religion and the Jain religion, and then tells jokes about Indian people.  Snippets of history are related to us as well.  This tour allows for learning about the culture, history and religion while sitting in the horrendous local traffic.  Mumbai traffic is similar to a rush hour in Chicago or New York City.  Most of the taxis are 1970’s Fiats; no tuk-tuks are allowed in the city any more.  Almost 6 million people commute via the train to the city each workday, compared to the few hundred thousand in a city such as Chicago.  In the next 6 months, to ease the strain, there will be a Mumbai monorail system and they are currently working on a subway system.

Taj Mahal Hotel

Marine Drive

We visit several sights and pass many more on our tour of the city.  Here is a list of the sights:

The Gateway of India, a drive through the Horniman Circle and by the University and High Court, the Victoria Terminus (train station), Mani Bhavan (the house where Ghandi lived), Marine Drive along Chowpatty Beach, The Hanging Gardens, the International Society of Kirshna consciousness (dancing and joy permitted!), the City Museum and Dhobi Ghat (there are 12,000 dhobi’s – laundries – in the city; where are they hidden?).

Ghandi's Room in Mumbai

Kirshna Temple

This city is a place that has so much ‘eye candy’ it would be impossible to describe here.  While we didn’t do much walking around, I snapped as many pictures as I could from the bus to catch a glimpse of the diversity that we were told to expect.  Yes, poverty is everywhere in Mumbai with over 60% of the population living in slums.  No, we did not visit the slum shown in the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” but we passed several on the bus – it was hard not to.  Our tour guide assured us that many living in these conditions also have cable TV and internet.  :-D

Blue Jeans Need Washing?

Dhobi Ghat

Definitely this a city in India worth experiencing and we wish we had more time here, as well as to explore the rest of India.  However, our tour is over and we are heading back to our home on the ship.  Back at the port, security is readily apparent and we are told since the terrorist bombings in Mumbai, nothing is goes unnoticed.  This is actually reassuring, especially as we now head into a very interesting geopolitical part of our world.

The evening’s entertainment on the ship is called “String Fever”.  Three brothers from the U.K. play popular music on electronic violins and cello.  Excellent!

Tonight we turn the clocks back 30 minutes in our continued march back towards our home time zone, now only 9 hours ahead of EDT.  Now we will be traveling across the Arabian Sea for two days, toward Dubai, UAE.