Mumbai, India

On Sunday, we went into the city of Mumbai, which was a short (15 minute) drive from the port where our ship was docked. When India was under Portuguese and later British rule, the city was called Bombay, which means beautiful bay. But after India gained its independence, they changed the name to Mumbai, which means mother goddess. Mumbai is the biggest port in India.

Sunrise over the "beautiful bay" - Arabian Sea

 

We had two excursions scheduled for Sunday: a tour of the city of Mumbai in the morning, and a Bollywood Dance and Dinner event in the evening. Our morning tour was supposed to leave at 8:00, but due to a lengthy delay at immigration control, we didn’t get away until closer to 11. We returned at 3, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and ran out again to meet the bus for our evening excursion at 5. What a whirlwind day! At the end of the day, we were exhausted, but we had a great day.

It seems that immigration control in India is very strict. Each person had to go through immigration, hand over their papers, get their picture taken, get fingerprinted, and then were waved on to another booth where they took another look at your visa. After that you went through security where you put your purses, backpacks, etc. on the belt to be scanned, and then walked through a metal detector. The ironic thing here is that as tight as they were with immigration control to this point, there was no one at the security area. We put our bags on the belt, walked through the metal detector, and picked up our bags. When Joe walked through the metal detector, he set it off as he usually does due to his dual knee and hip replacements, but we looked around and no one seemed to care, so we just kept going and boarded the bus.

Our tour guide’s name was Jerroo. Our first stop was at the Gate of India. This is an arch-monument that was built in 1911 to commemorate the landing of King George V, who was the first British monarch to visit India. Our first impression when we got off the bus was the noise. The city is very crowded and very noisy. Horns were beeping constantly, and people were shouting. We worked our way into a crowded line to get into the area to view the Gate of India. Jerroo went near the front of the line and had our entire group of 35 people jump the queue. She said that generally people here are very hospitable and don’t mind letting us in ahead of them in line. Jerroo told us that she took us here first on our tour because if we waited later in the day it would be too crowded. Really? It gets a lot more crowded than this?

 

Jerroo

Gate of India

Across from the Gate of India is Mumbai’s most famous hotel: the Taj Mahal Hotel, a five-star hotel. It is the place where many dignitaries stay when they visit Mumbai.

 

Taj Mahal Hotel

Our next stop was at an open-air laundry. Okay, now you’re probably wondering why we would stop at a laundry as part of a tour in Mumbai. Well, this was no ordinary laundry. This laundry had open pools of water where they washed the clothes, and then they hung them up to dry in the open air. Everywhere you looked, you saw large vast areas of laundry hanging out to dry. In fact, it has become such an intriguing phenomenon – at least to westerners – that there is actually an overlook. Yep, that’s right, an overlook to see laundry. We all got off the bus, went to the overlook, took pictures of other people’s laundry, and then re-boarded the bus.

 

Open air laundry

Our next stop was at Mahatma Gandhi’s house, which served as Gandhi’s Mumbai residence. Gandhi’s great grandson runs the place today. In the house, there is a research library, statues of Gandhi, and photo displays of the important events of his life.

Mahatma Gandhi's Mumbai residence

Our last stop of the day was the Hanging Gardens. This sounds like it would be a nice outdoor area of greenery and flowers; however, it wasn’t really that nice. It was not well-manicured, and in fact, in some places, looked messy and sloppy with tall grass and weeds in abundance. To be fair, it’s not really the blooming season. Jerroo told us that it was called the Hanging Gardens because it was built over the water. She even cautioned us not to expect the hanging gardens of Babylon.

 

Hanging Gardens

We walked through the Hanging Gardens while Jerroo gave us the background of the place. She did tell us an interesting story. One of the minor religious groups in India, Zoroastrians, do not believe in burying or cremating the dead, because they believe this pollutes the earth. So what do they do? Their preferred method of body disposal after death is to leave the body out to be eaten by vultures. At one point in our walk, there were birds flying overhead in a circular pattern not too far from us. Jerroo told us very casually that there must be a body close by, because when you see birds circling like that, there’s usually a dead body. (Or a tour group of senior citizens, with the birds lying, or rather flying, in wait!)

When the Hanging Gardens were built, they had a lot of strict rules, like no running, jumping, or playing. This made it hard for children to enjoy the gardens, so they built a park across the street for the children to play in. This park is called the Kamala Nehru Park and it has great view of the skyline of Mumbai. There is also a big shoe, from the fairytale of the woman who lived in the shoe, for the kids to play on. We took a brief walk through this park to get pictures before our return to the bus.

 

Mumbai skyline

That was all of our stops for the day, but we also drove by some other points of interest: the Victoria train station, the stock exchange building (Mumbai is the financial center of India), the University of Mumbai, a number of cricket yards and stadiums, city hall, the high court, and the “Court of Small Causes”. I guess that would be similar to our small claims courts.

Everywhere we went we saw people playing cricket. They played in the streets, in parks, in front yards, anywhere they could. Jerroo said that there are two things people in Mumbai are crazy about: cricket and the movies (more about Bollywood in a later post). Because it was Sunday, Jerroo said that they would be out all day. They play cricket from early in the morning until late at night. They do love their cricket.

 

Cricket players

We also drove by the home of India’s richest man. Now you’re probably thinking he would have an enormous palatial palace. Well, not quite. He has an enormous palatial skyscraper. That’s right, a 60-floor skyscraper for this family of 5. It cost him two billion dollars to build. Some of the floors house things such as a gymnasium, a swimming pool, a hospital, a temple, and one floor has a snow-making room because, according to Jerroo, his mother likes to sit in the snow.  

 

Top of India's richest man's home

We also passed by the Haj House. This is a place for Muslims who are making the pilgrimage to Mecca. Since many Muslims are not very wealthy and yet it is mandatory that they make the pilgrimage at least once in their life, the Haj House offers them a friendly, inexpensive place to stay. According to Jerroo, for $1, they get a mattress and a pillow.

Since Mumbai is on the coast, there are many beaches here. We drove down Marine Drive, where the beaches are located. Marine Drive is like Ocean Drive in Los Angeles, and is also called the Queen’s Necklace because it looks like jewels when it is lit up at night. Part of the beach we passed is called Grandparents’ Park, and no one under 60 is allowed there. The beaches were very crowded, probably because of it being Sunday. But no one was swimming. Jerroo said that there were two reasons for this: 1) the water is polluted and 2) dress code. Indians are very strict about how they dress. Women do not wear bikinis in public, and men do not go shirtless.

Mumbai beach

We passed a number of gymnasiums or men’s sports clubs, called Gymkhanas. There were different gymkhanas for different groups. There was a Hindu Gymkhana, a Muslim Gymkhana, and a Catholic Gymkhana among others.

Jerroo also told us about the “Laughter Club”. She said that it started because they learned that when people age, they don’t breathe as deeply as they should, and therefore their organs do not get enough oxygen and then begin to deteriorate. The idea was that laughter would force deeper breaths and would result in improved health. The way Jerroo described it is that people get together and someone tells a joke. Usually it is not funny, so people force laughter, then people laugh at the way other people are laughing, and by the end, the artificial laughter has turned to real laughter. Everyone goes home with healthier organs.

As we traveled the streets of Mumbai, Jerroo pointed out the different types of dress women wore. Many Indian women wear the long flowing dress known as a sari. Jerroo said that you can tell where a woman is from in India by how the sari is draped over her shoulder. She pointed out one woman and said that lady is from central India. It is kind of amazing that they can tell where someone is from, not merely by the way they're dressed, but how the saris are wrapped. Jerroo pointed out one woman whose sari was nine meters long!!! Nine meters!!! That's like thirty feet! How many times must you wrap that around your shoulder!

The religious affiliation in India breaks down as follows: 80% Hinduism, 15% Muslim, 2% Christian, .7% Buddhism, and .4% Jainism. Christianity (specifically Catholicism) was introduced into India in the year 52 AD by the apostle Thomas. Buddhism is only .7% of the population even though Buddha was born here and was a Hindu monk at one time. The reason why Buddhism did not flourish in India is because of the caste system: the Hindu priests wanted the hierarchy of the caste system to remain in place since they were at the top of the hierarchy. Yet Buddhism did not rely upon priests for enlightenment. The popularity of Buddhism spread mostly to other places in southeast Asia while India remained mostly Hindu. In fact, 94% of the world’s Hindus live in India.

Other interesting tidbits that we learned:

There are 22 languages spoken in India and over 1500 dialects.

They still use bamboo as a building material, as it is the toughest material found in nature.

Rudyard Kipling was born in Mumbai.

There are a lot of Banyon trees here. These are trees where many roots sprout from the branches and grow down toward the ground. Jerroo said that the largest Banyon tree has over 10,000 roots. We had seen Banyon trees a number of years ago when we were in S. Florida. We had read then that they are abundant in India, and here we are now in India, looking at Banyon trees. It's amazing where life takes you!

 

Banyon tree

And one last thing of interest that happened when we were on our way back to the ship. At one point, the bus stopped and the bus driver got off and no one knew why. We were sitting up front, so we looked out the front window and saw our bus driver arguing vehemently with a police officer. No idea what about. Jerroo said matter-of-factly that the bus driver would give the police officer some money and then we would be on our way. At this point in the day, we were all willing to take up a collection to bribe, I mean give, to the police officer if it would help.