Mumbai was a huge change from Goa! While the airport seemed orderly and very nice and new (reminded me of the new Bangalore airport), the city itself proved to be absolute chaos. We stayed in the Juju Beach area of town at the J.W. Marriot. It was astounding to be in such a nice hotel and then look out the window and see one of the city's slums across the way.
Here is a map of the some of the spots we saw in Mumbai.
View Mumbai in a larger map
We only had one day to explore in Mumbai so we had our driver take us south to the famous India Gate where we could catch a ferry to Elephanta Island. Our way to the south end of Mumbai including driving on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link still being constructed pictured below.
We also saw the Rajabhai Clock Tower.
The ride to Elephanta Island was about one hour on one of the slowest ferries I’ve ever been on. The sights along the way included several oil tankers and many fishing boats.
View as we left from the India Gate - you can also see the Taj Mahal Hotel to the left of the Gate.
You can tell how smoggy Mumbai is from this picture that looks really hazy even though we are not too far from the shore.
Approaching Elephanta Island
The trek to the caves reminded me of the long flight to stairs to the Great Wall of China. You can see here that some people choose to have men carry them up in these chairs. Along the way were many, many stalls with people selling little trinkets.
You can see here some people choose to be carried up in these chairs.
I was sweating when we finally reached the top and I was excited to take a picture of this sign to document the arrival when these women insisted on being in my picture. Of course, they then insisted we pay them for being in the picture as well.
Elephanta Island has several carved caves on it which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Elephanta Caves is most famous for a massive carved statue of Shiva (or Vishnu depending on who you are talking to) with three heads (the creator, destroyer and the protector).
This is the entrance to the main cave.
Carving of Shiva
The carvings were worth the exhausting climb, as you can see, it is amazing this was carved out of the natural rock of the island.
Other interesting locals included the monkeys that run around freely here. Visitors are warned not to taunt them and sure enough – as we didn’t get in their way – they didn’t get in ours.
I'm enjoying a snack of roasted corn with spicy seasoning. Yum!
Return to Mumbai
Returning in the early evening to the India Gate we spend just a short amount of time taking pictures and then hopped back into our car to return to the hotel.
I took a short video at the India Gate
On the way back we drove by the famous Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (Victoria Terminus) train station. This is the busiest train station in Asia and is on the World Heritage List. It was also recently featured in the movie Slumdog Millionaire. The traffic was so bad we couldn't get out to see the building closeup so this picture is from the car.
The drive back to our hotel took about two hours - the traffic in Mumbai is probably the worst I have ever seen in my life.
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