Mumbai

Editor's note: The pictures from this trip are still on our camera so I will post pictures later.

For our last week in India, we decided to travel. So Saturday night we took a train down to Mumbai. It was not a fun train experience. Our berths ran parallel to the train so we were right on the walk way and didn’t have any personal space. Fortunately it was late so we went right to sleep, or at least tried to. I don’t sleep well on trains because of all the stopping and starting, fear of missing our stop and sleeping with Anna. I decided it was the best way for her to sleep but it doesn’t do much for me.

We arrived at about 7 am and our hotel let us check in early without an extra charge. We decided to upgrade to the nicer room that was on its own floor. Someone in the restaurant said that it was a new room and we were only the second people to stay in it. It was nice and I especially liked the fact that I didn’t feel like Anna’s crying would bother anyone because we were removed from the rest of the hotel. I don’t know if this was actually the case but it helped me feel better.

That morning we went in search of the church in Mumbai. From the LDS website we had an address, name and number of the Branch President. Unfortunately, the address was in the middle of a market area where street names and numbers aren’t posted. We had the cab drop us off at the entrance of the area and went looking. We tried calling the Branch President several times but he never answered his phone. After walking and asking and walking some more, we finally found someone who seemed to know where we wanted to be and pointed us to a different address. We thought there might be a sign telling us when we were in the right place but when we got to that address, no sign. By this point we were hot and tired and had been walking around for close to 45 minutes so we decided to stop. I was a bit disappointed in not being able to go to church but reminded myself that we will be in London next week (weird!) and can go then when things are labeled and there will be a sign.

After resting, we decided to walk around an explore Mumbai. We took a cab to the Gateway of India. It was pretty crowded and they are doing renovations on it so it was shrouded in plastic in parts and there was scaffolding. Oh well. Then we just kind of walked around. Mumbai is different from where we have been in India so far in that it had a pretty strong British presence and you can really see that in the buildings. They look much more European but have a distinct India influence. It’s also a lot more green and lush and very pretty. While we were walking around (in the middle of a field in fact), it started to rain. We were able to get to some trees then a tent but we did get quite wet. Funnily enough, Anna loved it. She was laughing and kicking.

So between the two days we were there, we saw most everything there is to see in the southern parts of the city. We saw: the Gateway of India, the Victoria Terminus (train station), Mumbai University, the high court building (with various courts in session), St. Thomas’ Cathedral (the oldest English building standing in Mumbai), the Royal Bombay Yacht Club (from the outside, it’s members only) and we took a ferry around the bay. On the ferry we went past the main Indian naval base which is a naval base Jason studied for a project to analyze harbor developments so it was fun for him to see in person the base he had studied from google satellite maps. To add to the experience our ferry driver wasn’t paying attention and sailed us into the path of a naval destroyer entering the base. Needless to say we got out of the way and all took pictures of the ship and sailors. We didn’t get a chance to go into any of the museums (although we did see them from the outside) partly because we didn’t want to (Indian museums are not very well put together) and partly because the only one we would want to go into (the Prince of Wales Museum) wasn’t open on Monday and was freakishly expensive.

We had yummy food both days (including beef!) and pretty good weather. We arrived a few days into a big festival for the Hindu god Ganesh. He’s the one in the form of an elephant. There were statues of him in little shrines all over the place and at night they would turn on strings of lights and dance. Mostly we stayed out of their way. Our hotel was nice enough to hold onto our bags on Monday after we checked out but before we had to catch our train late that night to head out to Aurangabad. We were so glad we didn’t have to haul them around. As an added bonus, we were able to get a new battery for my watch and get the strap replaced for a mere 170 rupees (about $4). We are looking forward to spending half a day there when we go back on Thursday before heading back to Ahmedabad.