World cruise 33

March 19

At sea again. The routine isn't quite a rut yet, but it might be by the time we get home.

March 20

Mumbai, India. There was some confusion about getting off the ship and meeting our private guide and driver. First of all, we were late because every day that we have been in an Indian port,, everyone on the ship has had to line up by assigned group numbers (depending on which tour you were taking or not) and receive their passport a landing card, and a photocopy of their passport, present it to one of several dour-faced Indian Immigration Officials who look at it all, decide if it's okay, and stamp the photocopy (I didn't notice if they also stamp the passport). They then file out of the room and had your passport back into the ship's personnel. This process, without the passport itself, but with the photocopy and landing card, is repeated at least twice more before you can exit the grounds of the port then a least once or twice more at various points along your way and again when trying to get back into the port area. Even to go into The Taj Hotel, we had to have our papers checked. They are very security and terrorist conscious here.

So, we did finally connect with our guide, Nandini. We spent much of the day driving around town in the kamikaze traffic, looking briefly at various standard sights. There are occasional traffic lights, but it's mostly drive-on-the-left, full-speed-ahead and watch the jaywalkers jump. The roads are clogged with anything that might conceivably have wheels: trucks of all sizes, buses, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and heavily laden handcarts like this one.

We even saw a cart being pulled by a bovine...not exactly sure which species, but it was plodding along oblivious to the other wheeled traffic zipping around it.

We saw the University Library tower

the Prince of Wales Museum, the Flora Fountain, the central railway station (formerly Victoria Terminus but now Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus) built in 1888 and still handling 1.7 million passengrs a day.

We went along Marine Drive with its collection of Art Deco buildings along a curved beachfront, sometimes called the Queen's Necklace.

From Marine Drive we could see the tomb of the Muslim saint Haji Ali Dargah.

We visited the house Mahatma Ghandi would stay in when he came to Mumbai. It's a museum now. Margaret went in, but it was not wheelchair accessible, so I waited in the car and watched locals of various ages try to sell souvenirs to the tourists that came by. They were persistent, but not inordinately so.

Margaret got this shot of the Dhobi Ghats, a huge open air laundry where all the washing is done by men. And I got the next shot of Margaret about to be accosted by a souvenir salesman.

We saw homes from a fishing village in the heart of Mumbai, to a 10 story mansion for a billionaire who also owns 170 cars. Sorry, I didn't get a photo of that one, but here's the fishing vilage.

Time for lunch. We went to the Sea View Lounge at The Taj Hotel. The menu had at least 10 pages devoted to types of tea and chai you could get.

The Taj was opened in 1903 and is a fabulous example of British Colonial architecture. This is an atrium in the old part of the hotel. Then a view of the grand staircase.

Finally, here is a sort of side view of the Gateway to India built to commemorate the visit in 1911 by King George V and Queen Mary.

However, the air pollution was so bad that you could barely see buildings on the other part of the small bay where we docked fairly near The Taj. I could not identify either The Taj or the Gateway from on board the nxt day. Many passengrs with breathing problems couldn't leave the ship. Some who did came back with sore throats and burning eyes. I didn't have problems, but was in an air-conditioned car for a lot of the time.


March 21

There was a second day to our Mumbai visit, but that's Margaret's story. Most of what was left to do in our short time here involved places that Leviathan and I couldn't go -- like native markets. I sent Margaret back out with Nandini on the second day.