Mumbai, India - Day 2

We saw so many different things in Mumbai that I've had to go thru our pictures to remember what we saw when. We met up with Freni at 9 a.m. again. First stop was the Jain Temple. It was covered with colorful figures and flowers, really beautiful. We had to remove our shoes to go in. Mel and Joan opted to sit on a bench in the entrance way while Tom, Freni and I entered. There were people coming and going constantly while we were there. The Jain are all about peace and harmony. They don't allow any killing, including roots, so no potatoes in their diet. No leather is allowed inside the temple. Some of them even had face masks on to prevent them from breathing in microbes in the air and killing them...a bit extreme? It was a beautiful temple though and there was a great view of the city from the balcony. Unfortunately it was pretty smoggy, so we could barely see the large buildings on the other side of the bay.

We went to see an Anglican Church what was built in the 1500's. It was quite beautiful. While there I ran across the street to an ATM. The tour required cash in rupees at the end of the day, each day. I'd gone to an ATM the day before also. While at the first ATM on Day 1, I forgot to mention that we saw some men with Tiffen boxes. They are stainless steel boxes that stack that are used for lunches. Every day, a man picks up boxes from wives to take to their husbands in Dubai. The carriers take the train into the city and distribute the lunches there. Each day 6 MILLION boxes are transported to the right person! We went to take pictures of some of the carriers with these boxes on the back of their bikes--20 or 30 of them on one bike! There was also a hand cart loading some on to return to the wives. That cart must have had hundreds on it. We asked if we could take a picture with one of the bikes. I gave the man a dollar for letting us. He didn't want it because it was only ONE. Several other carriers came up to inspect the bill. Freni finally took a 50 rupee note out and gave it to him. He handed the dollar back to me. I indicated that the dollar was the same value as the 50 rupee note, he asked for it back. It was very funny. Amazing to find a group of people who had never seen a dollar bill before. We've used mainly dollars at pretty much every port we've visited.

We had finally finished seeing the main sites in Mumbai and headed to shopping! Freni took us to a beautiful shop that had small drawers along one side. We were able to open any drawer to look at what was for sale inside. They had a lot of beautiful silver pieces. Since we were in the area and wanted to shop more after lunch, we went into Leopold's (I think that was the name), an open restaurant near the back of the Taj Hotel. We had several Indian dishes that were delicious. I enjoyed that lunch better than the day before. As we were leaving, Freni pointed out the bullet holes in a marble doorway as well as one in a mirror on the back wall. That was one of the places hit by the terrorists last November. Scary. We continued to shop along that street then went to the Taj Hotel. The shops there were beautiful. I bought a People magazine that turned out to be the Indian edition. It was all about Indian celebrities that I'd never heard of.

After more shopping, we returned to the car. Freni asked if we were ready for just one more neighborhood. She took us to a place that had been kept as it was originally built over 100 years ago. We left the car on a busy, noisy street and in less than a block it was almost quiet. The neighborhood had been built by the Portuguese. During a plague epidemic in Bombay in 1899, it was the only neighborhood not touched by it. Seems that their way of life was cleaner than other areas, so they were spared. In turn, the neighborhood was preserved. There were 2 story cottages next to each other for several blocks. They were in need of repair and restoration but we could see that they were once really beautiful with porches on the first and second stories. They were painted different colors. There were people on the porches, as well as a lot of cats. It was a nice little neighborhood in the middle of a bustling city.

We headed back to the car to return to the port. It was just after 6 by the time we boarded the ship. Our visit to Mumbai was so full of sights thanks to our terrific guide. I'm really glad we decided to do that. Not sure I need to go back any time soon, but seeing it once was pretty interesting.

On another note, we saw a report from Jakarta, Indonesia that a fruit picker was killed by 2 Komodo dragons. Apparently he fell out of a tree while picking and was attacked. The article said they had had a string of attacks recently. Hmm, wonder if our "attack" was included in that "string"? Someone from another ship that was in port at the same time as ours told a friend of ours that they had heard someone on our ship was eaten by one. How rumors fly!