Marching Through Mumbai

For more pictures, see the album.

In our second day in Mumbai, we started with a visit to Victoria terminal, which is a beautiful old railway station. Following that we walked up to the bazaars just up the street. We started in the food bazaar, where, upon entering we were accosted by a guide who pointed to a sign saying that visitors needed to use a guide to see the market. It was in stone, so we were stuck. Our guide was nice and took us to a number of stalls and showed us the pet section where you could get budgies, rabbits and other animals. Not for eating though, even though it was right beside the chickens.

We bought some delicious green mangos and a number of spices from a merchant to had great quality samples. The cinnamon in particular was spectacular and he had a black salt from the himalayas that was very sulfurous. It should work well with eggs. 

Then, we were guided through the textile sections of the market, where you can get custom tailored suits, shirts, saris and more. We ended up going to a wholesaler where Catherine bought a number of scarves and pashminas. 

After that, we had lunch at Revival, which does a vegetarian thali lunch. Thali is the indian equivalent of a small plate meal where small quantities of many different things are places in a large plate. Then you're given a selection of rice and breads to eat it with. They were so efficient and fast with their service that we couldn't keep up mentally with what we were eating. Very tasty though, oh and they had gulab jamen with saffron in the middle, which was delicious and different.

After lunch, tried to hire a cab to go visit a private museum at the Victoria gardens. The cabbie didn't know where it was but eventually we got there. It was a completely ridiculous museum. It's primarily a collection of Indian goods and clay figurines of Indian people that a British colonialist collected. The figurines were made to document the different cultures in India and they were annotated by a book of that time in a completely ridiculous, paternalistic way. For example: "… the women have been taking advantage of new educational opportunities in painting, weaving and other arts."

After the museum, we went to Chowpatty beach to watch sunset and walk in the direction of dinner. For dinner, we ate at Kyber, which specializes in northern Indian roasted meat dishes. We had some chicken, eggplant and mutton and it was good, but we've had better tandoor in other places.

The next day before our flight was dedicated to Elephanta Island. To get there, you take a 1 hour ferry ride from the Gate of India. Hint: the ticket offices are before you go through security; it took us a while to find it. The ferry ride was relaxing. At Elephanta Island, you get off on a jetty and you can take a mini train maybe 200m to the shore if you're really lazy. Then, you walk up some stairs which are flanked on either side by hawkers of cheap crap. Once you run the gauntlet, you get into the Unesco World Heritage Site that is composed of a number of rock cut temples with Buddhist carvings and shrines made around 750 AD. The workmanship is incredible and totally worth the visit if you come to Mumbai.

After getting back to the city, we went for a late lunch at a charming restaurant called Britannia that serves North Indian/Iranian food. It's been open since the 30's and looks like it hasn't been repainted since. The guy who owned the place is of the same era and is particularly charming. He's a charming talker that takes a great interest in the people who visit his restaurant. He also guides his guests through the menu to the best dishes, which included mutton dhansak and a palau made with berries specially imported from Iran.

After lunch, we hopped back to the hotel to grab our bags and headed out to the hotel near the airport so that we could relax for the night and get up nice and early (4am) for our flight to Aurangabad.